FWIW: The question is not directed to those who went to school with the intention of become programmers.
I’ve heard the Learn to Code meme several times recently.
45 years old. 14 years into my 2nd career. I picked up the SAS programming language over the last year and have pretty much been doing database programming as a primary function.
Anyone else?
No. I’ve wanted to know more and understand it and do something practical either inside or outside of work. Just a matter of time and commitment.
Anyone who works in a technical field should know some rudimentary coding. The challenge is that the actual coders keep changing the language. I mean FORTRAN 77 still gets the job done.
Anyone who works in a technical field should know some rudimentary coding. The challenge is that the actual coders keep changing the language. I mean FORTRAN 77 still gets the job done.
Got a new guy at work who graduated this past December with a mechanical engineering degree. One semester of a MATLAB class, no “real” programming language classes (not even python). When I was in school, I had to take Fortran programming. 30 years later. Some younger engineers know python,but those that don’t have any programming experience are at a distinct disadvantage. A few minutes of programming beats much longer time beating your head against the wall even for simple things like moving large amounts of data from one format to another.
At the same time, engineers need to know when they are in over their heads. Plenty of projects have had issues because of bad code written by an engineer.
My thesis project was written in Matlab and compiled into C. That (and Fortran) is what I knew and it worked well enough. I am sure a component CS could have put it together in half the time and made it run 10x faster.
Not quite that deep for me. 48 years old, picking up SQL the last few years. 6 years into my 2nd career.
At the same time, engineers need to know when they are in over their heads. Plenty of projects have had issues because of bad code written by an engineer.
My thesis project was written in Matlab and compiled into C. That (and Fortran) is what I knew and it worked well enough. I am sure a component CS could have put it together in half the time and made it run 10x faster.
Sure, but in the field, for everyday work, engineers should know enough to be productive. Engaging software folks takes time, have to charge their time to something, be on the same page, … Certainly stuff that ends up in a finished product is better left for the pros. But everyday stuff you need that day? DIY!
I learn PASCAL when you had to write the program and the link file, send it to the main frame and let it compile if for you, then you either got a program the may or may not work, or a file saying there was a problem, but no explanation.
I leaned C later in life, but these days I just program in Visual Basic for Applications - mostly excel. I suck and I still amaze people with the cute little tricks I can pull off.
My wife did. She was an operations manager for a large bank and they were looking for people to help with all the necessary coding changes for Y2K. They sent her to a six-month training class and she still does it today, managing a coding group for an investment firm.
I’m currently getting more into software development. I’ve been an IT manager for just shy of a decade, and I’ve decided I want the option to choose a technical career path. I started off the year with CodeAcademy for Python and a couple of other small things. I’m more of an infra/tools guy, so I then started playing with Jenkins and Ansible on Udemy. Recently got into AWS, and I’m going to do the develop path on that.
Basically trying to get my technical cred up enough that in case I need to move out of management I can. I work remotely, and my company recently changed to have all directors required to go into one of the main offices. I assume they’ll do that with managers at some point as well.
Wife just got her masters in computer science at Georgia Tech at age 48. This from a journalism degree. She had the opposite problem as most of the other students she worked with. When it came to writing papers easy breezy. When it came to coding it took much longer than most, but she made it.
At the same time, engineers need to know when they are in over their heads. Plenty of projects have had issues because of bad code written by an engineer.
My thesis project was written in Matlab and compiled into C. That (and Fortran) is what I knew and it worked well enough. I am sure a component CS could have put it together in half the time and made it run 10x faster.
I’m a mechanical engineer and graduated in 2000 (albeit with just a bachelors).
Any amount of programming is above my head. Fortunately for me, it’s not part of my daily activities. Although my job can be technical at times, it revolves around materials, thermodynamics, stress/vibration analysis, etc. The majority of programming activities (plant PLC) is performed by a dedicated team. But as engineering is a very broad field, I appreciate that not every role is similar.
The programming classes i took in university involved a lot of alcohol and profanity in order to complete the assignments. Not something I found interesting or enjoyable (the programming that is).
Anyone can code. But the best developers think differently. And there is a lot that you learn through school that you do not learn just taking an online class or reading a book.
Tell her well done. Tech tough to get into for undergrad. Was it hard to get into grad school, take any prerequisites before admittance ? I have relative thinking of doing same. Thanks
Anyone can code. But the best developers think differently. And there is a lot that you learn through school that you do not learn just taking an online class or reading a book.
I wholeheartedly agree. Code development requires both interest and aptitude. I work with quite a few developers, all very smart people. However, I see significant difference in the code written by those who are genuinely interested in the project as opposed those just cashing a paycheck so to speak.
For my part, I scan code (static and dynamic) for vulnerabilities.
Tip my hat to all people that code. That would be in one of the rings of hell for my life. Just glad I never had a need to do that at all.
Tell her well done. Tech tough to get into for undergrad. Was it hard to get into grad school, take any prerequisites before admittance ? I have relative thinking of doing same. Thanks
She has a broad range of real world experience. She did not have any prerequisites but took a couple semesters of calculus and other math in college. She was also a bit of a pioneer in computer assisted reporting in her day. The program she was admitted to I believe took about 15% of applicants if I remember correctly so it was tough to get in.
I graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree. After about 5 years of that moved into programming. First with C/ProC, then Oracle back end and Powerbuilder front end. Eventually got into project management where I felt that as a programmer I basically got stupider every day. 
My best days as a PM were when I got to dig into some code to try and figure out what was wrong. In recent years with .Net and the like I felt pretty out of my depth in understanding the details of what was going on. You have to trust the experts working for you on the details and stick to the big picture at that point. Code is code and it’s fairly easy to follow what is going on in some module, but the big picture is complicated and as a PM I had to focus on other stuff.
Where I worked (I retired at the end of March) we had a lot more people who were properly trained as software engineers than when I became a programmer and everybody had some other degree.
Now I mess around in MySQL and PHP and HTML and the Strava API 'cause it’s fun. I’ve even installed Visual Studio on my laptop and might try and figure that out, but even simple programs seem much more complicated. Of course it is extremely powerful… But complicated.
What if we went back to school after having a career? Wife and I both left law went back to school when we were in our mid-30’s, got jobs before we knew Jack. Finished school while we were working full time. We’ve both jumped around areas and switched languages a couple times in our careers, learning new stuff along the way.
Anyone can code. But the best developers think differently. And there is a lot that you learn through school that you do not learn just taking an online class or reading a book.
This. The learning curve isn’t steep but it goes on and on and on… I’ve been coding in several languages for over a decade and I don’t know if there will ever come a time I don’t look back on something I wrote 6 months ago and not wonder WTF I was thinking at the time.