I can see some definite similarities between your start in your Career and mine, although I have pretty much just started. I was pretty much just out of high school when I got a job as a trainee software engineer at a small dev shop. I only spent about six months there as I ended up leaving to enroll in university on a Computer Science course. As during my time working there, I was able to identify many areas where my lack of education was prevalent, although I did do Computer Science in high school.
I didn't want to become a software engineer who was lacking in basic, foundation knowledge. Plus the fact I have wanted a CS degree since starting high school, and it is becoming harder for developers without degrees, as companies will avoid hiring you and you generally will get paid less than developers with degrees.
I think boot camps are great for the practical side of things, but yes, fundament CS theory REALLY helps.
The difficulty, as I see it, is balancing between CS theory and just plain ol' building stuff.
College was super practical but at the same time learning about memory management, parallel programming, distributed programming, etc. are things that have been super helpful in any programming endeavour I've been on.
The market seems over-saturated right now, and given the popularity of boot camps, I think building a reputation is at least one way to make sure you can stay hire-able and growing in general.
I have been quite lucky as I am now working as freelance dev over the summer, with the same team. Which should help me gain more experience with industry practices and workflows. In addition to the theory from uni. Actually me and a friend are working on a podcast where we plan to talk about computer science from a student perspective and compare our own experience in in the industry with our experience at uni. We also plan to blog some of projects.
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I can see some definite similarities between your start in your Career and mine, although I have pretty much just started. I was pretty much just out of high school when I got a job as a trainee software engineer at a small dev shop. I only spent about six months there as I ended up leaving to enroll in university on a Computer Science course. As during my time working there, I was able to identify many areas where my lack of education was prevalent, although I did do Computer Science in high school.
I didn't want to become a software engineer who was lacking in basic, foundation knowledge. Plus the fact I have wanted a CS degree since starting high school, and it is becoming harder for developers without degrees, as companies will avoid hiring you and you generally will get paid less than developers with degrees.
I think boot camps are great for the practical side of things, but yes, fundament CS theory REALLY helps.
The difficulty, as I see it, is balancing between CS theory and just plain ol' building stuff.
College was super practical but at the same time learning about memory management, parallel programming, distributed programming, etc. are things that have been super helpful in any programming endeavour I've been on.
The market seems over-saturated right now, and given the popularity of boot camps, I think building a reputation is at least one way to make sure you can stay hire-able and growing in general.
I have been quite lucky as I am now working as freelance dev over the summer, with the same team. Which should help me gain more experience with industry practices and workflows. In addition to the theory from uni. Actually me and a friend are working on a podcast where we plan to talk about computer science from a student perspective and compare our own experience in in the industry with our experience at uni. We also plan to blog some of projects.