If I have to work with code written by other people I would much rather it be Python. At least it will look the same. Most IDEs can handle converting spaces to tabs.

Google has a ton of seminars/conferences about Python on Youtube btw. There's too many to link, just search for them.

I think it depends on the project/code you are working on, this is the biggest factor.

Only 2.5 experience coding is very little. Do you mean 2.5yrs at your current job or 2.5 years since you wrote your first line of code. Most c++ guys I know have been coding since they were teenagers.

That said, I would expect any competent c++ developer living in the LA area to make over 100k/yr. If you want real numbers, maybe you should poll stackoverflow or hn. I think you would get much better feedback from those places than here.

I moved the 2 posts linking lecture videos from here into this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...hread-1007358/

and designated it the "** OFFICIAL PROGRAMMING LECTURES / VIDEOS THREAD **".

Hopefully more will get added over time and it'll become a useful resource.

Juk

interesting forum.

I'm not much of a programmer. I was fairly proficient at it in a younger life, but I've been a hardware guy for the last 10 years or so, between college and work, so I've forgotten a lot. I've got a barely workable knowledge of c++, I'm OK with perl, a little tcl, and that's about it (not counting verilog/system verilog).

Recently, though, I've been doing a lot of work on the validation side of things, and I can tell my programming skills is holding me back a bit. Any tips for ramping on c++/perl/whatever else in a quick and timely manner? I'm thinking either like a book with "homework" or online courses. Thanks in advance for any info.

Sup? Used to code for a living (webbased ERP, Python) and now I do it for kicks

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Anyway, I've been using python for the last four months and I'm quite enjoying it. The spaces thing is almost always a non-issue since we all just have our editors set to convert tabs to spaces automatically (A good thing to enforce regardless of your language of choice).

And in terms of heavily indented code - the poor readability is a nice reminder that you probably shouldn't have code nested five levels deep in a single method.

The two things I miss the most from Java are code completion and easy refactoring. But other than that... I don't miss much.

IntelliJ makes a pretty damn nice Python IDE (PyCharm specifically). I haven't pulled the trigger on buying it but I used the trial and was pretty impressed (I mainly used it for Django development).

It handled code complete really well and has refactoring too.

Any interest in having a seperate design (mostly OOP) thread that is not specific to a language?...can contain stuff like "should I use a linked list for that" or "I have an bject for this...how should I design an interface to interact with object Y" etc. pp

My gut would be that if something is interesting enough to ask a question about its probably good enough to stand on its own as a thread.

Yeah if we try to make official threads for every topic we're not going to get enough threads and activity to make the forum stick

http://www.codereddit.com/

just in case any of your bosses actually care what you are doing at work

That's a really slick interface. The only problem is I don't use C# at work.

I like the colors. i got used to them long, long ago when I diddled around with Visual C++ 2.0 I think it was, and still use them to this day, now in Vim of course.

I just wanted to come in and say how I regret choosing this profession. I'm a total geek at heart and feel that developing while you're still relatively young is fine but once you start getting older it's a pita.

It's so hard to keep up to date AND balance a life (not to mention that when I get home and have time to sit at computer, I want to grind). There's so much new stuff constantly coming out. You're not a hotshot just because you know ORM, Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control, etc. (funny thing is that half the candidates I interview for my team don't even know those things). Nowadays it's NOSQL, node.js and the ever expanding mobile spectrum.

Aside from the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded to us with this profession, I think it's a crap one for the long term. If you have a busy social life, family, wife|kids, poker, there simply isn't enough time to keep updating yourself. I love to read, it sucks ass that I actually feel guilty for reading my leisure novels when I have a stack of tech books on my "to read" list. We OOP[D] kids use to laugh at the Cobol programmers. Joke's on us, as boring as their job might be they are still getting paid good wages to do something that they learned +25yrs ago and haven't had to learn anything since. Meanwhile the Java/.Net generation will have to keep learning stuff or risk becoming that 'Powerbuilder/Delphi/Visual Basic' guy.

ok enough ranting for now, gotta get back to my RoR learning

But they're just like the 'Powerbuilder/Delphi/Visual Basic' guys you're degrading in the very next sentence!

guarantee you a Cobol programmer can find work today (and even coming years) easier than PB/VB

Those languages had no staying power. They served a purpose in an short period of computing where we were in transition to GUI's and GUI programming required you being a Wizard.

This is interesting - and maybe even worth its own thread. I've never really understood the people that talk about how this profession has so much to keep on top of. I actually feel like its pretty comparable to other professions - teaching, medicine, law, architecture, ... you name it and technology/research is quickly moving forward.

I've also never felt the need to stay on top of all of those things. I do enough reading to know what the newest fads are - but in terms of knowing how they work and being able to use them I trust that I'll be able to learn them once I really need to. In about 5 years of work I've found that I've completely switched development technologies/stacks about 4 times. Each time it took me a couple of days or weeks to get ramped up - but after that it was smooth sailing. I've also been lucky enough to work for companies that understand switching to new technologies/stacks requires some ramp up time so a lot of that time were paid work hours.

When recruiting new candidates we never cared about specific languages/technologies that they knew. It's just not that meaningful if you're looking to recruit good long term employees. I doubt we were the only company recruiting that way.

Cobol skills are very wanted, specifically in the banking industry. Lots of legacy code to be maintained (which kind of bothers me). Snobol's chance in hell I'd ever take such a job.

On a related note:
God Wrote in Lisp Code (Song)

I need to find one of these mythical tech companies that hires people without doing an auto-search for the appropriate abbreviations on their resumes. Everybody around here hires based on years of experience in their given technology stack. About 1 job ad in 50 that I see hints that actual ability, instead of job experience in their particular sandbox, matters.

How do people here stay up to date on the latest techfads etc (i.e. what sites do you read/what RSS feeds etc)

I basically just read these two these days:
http://www.osnews.com/
http://slashdot.org/

What a great addition to 2p2

Clowntable: I like http://www.theregister.co.uk and its sub-sites.

To be fair, I've only really had experience at one company which was a great company to work for. When I left it was to go work with previous co-workers so there was no formal interview process. So I acknowledge that I've been lucky.

http://news.ycombinator.com is like the only thing I look at nowadays

Hi nerds!

I'm a nerd. 5ish years employed as a analyst/programmer (mostly GIS orientated applications). Fairly even mix of Java and .net and their related web technologies. A bit of PL/SQL and shell scripting. Recently I've been playing with GWT.

My job is cool. I've basically got the freedom to chop and change between technologies as I see fit... Although "as I see fit" is usually just "what I feel like at the time".

Mod Edit: Yeah, no thanks to the last part of this post. :P