u/ilovecocteauetwins

Many rookies are put off by C ++, and this is unfortunate, because it is one of the best languages ​​to start with, even if you don't plan to be a C ++ programmer

Your understanding of what is going on at the machine level will allow you to write better programs in any language you choose. You will see that in languages ​​such as JavaScript or Python, memory management is handled for you, which means that you have to think about it less. However, the understanding of how things work will help you write better and more optimized code. It can be a steep learning curve, but once you've mastered it, you'll find that all other languages ​​are much easier to learn.

For a long time, I thought that moving up or changing career paths should only happen when I felt completely prepared. I kept waiting for the right moment to make my move, and I convinced myself that I needed more experience, additional qualifications, or even just another six months of hard work before applying or asking for what I wanted.

It took me a while to realize that waiting for 100% readiness was holding me back. Most often, it was while doing the work that I felt most prepared, and I knew I had the necessary skills and knowledge to make a move. The confidence to take action was a result of taking action, not the other way around.

Of course, preparation and experience are important, but at some point, they become an excuse to procrastinate and avoid discomfort. Waiting to feel ready will only delay your progress, and expecting to feel confident before taking on a new challenge will keep you stuck for much longer than you anticipate.

When you're younger, you feel like you know how your career is going to go based on the people around you, or the things you hear. You can be given sound career advice that seems boring or cautious, and you reject it because it's not what you want to hear

A few years later you can find yourself realizing that the person who gave you that uninteresting advice was correct, and that you needed it.

It could be something about budgeting, connections, having a good job, learning new skills, not selling your soul to a company for the prestige, or something as simple as just not basing your life around a single career path.

Was there any career advice you took in as a younger person, and realized as you got older, that they were right to tell you that? And what happened that led you to that conclusion?

Do people remain consistently fulfilled by their careers, or do most people tend to care and not care about their jobs throughout their lifetimes?

I wonder this because I've seen many people talk about having periods of time where they were genuinely interested in what they did for work, and were happy they got to do it, to where they just wanted to lay down and die from their utter and complete disdain for their jobs;

Now I know that sometimes it isn't the job's fault,

however it is possible to have a "good" job,

but feel somewhat empty from within despite having a good income, good relationships within your workplace, having good work ethic, and having a good life outside of work.

For software specifically,

I feel like being in this field for so long, working on the same type of projects, having to deal with all the politics in the workplace, trying to grow within the company, having to go through the long and tedious process of upping your resume, going through interviews, and just putting in the work day in and day out eventually breaks anyone's spirit and makes them dread going into work.

I believe that this is what a lot of people are like by the time they've had their careers for more than 10 years.

I want to ask these people,

"do you still enjoy what you do for work?", "was there a point in time where you dreaded your profession and eventually moved on from it?", and if so, "what changed for you?"

One of the hardest things about leaving corporate life is undoing the mindset that everything is urgent.

Any Slack message that arrives after hours feels like a dire emergency. Any time that someone doesn't reply to your email within a day, you assume the worst. The report that was late and the metric that only slightly missed its target and the deadline that only slipped by a day somehow all conspire together to create a sense of impending doom.

When you are immersed in this environment of false urgency, it's easy to be overcome with anxiety.

It's only later when you distance yourself from the situation that you recognize this panic was misplaced.

Nothing was actually urgent. The universe would not have ended if that email hadn't been opened at 8 PM. No one's livelihood was threatened by the slightly deficient report. That meeting could have easily waited until the next day.

I think what many people come to understand as they grow older is that there's a big difference between being calm and feeling lazy. They come to accept that some things are merely urgent, while other things are truly important.

For those who managed to escape the corporate prison of false urgency, what was your eureka moment?

Was there a specific instance when you first realized that many things that seemed important were not that important after all?

This might be a stupid question, but you see, I always heard (from years and years ago) that writing code was only a small part of what a SW Engineer did.

The rest was understanding requirements, design, reviews, debugging, collaboration, dealing with legacy code, documentation, project planning, figuring out what the hell was to be built, etc.

So, since AI coding assistants will handle much bigger chunks of the actual coding than before, I want to know how much time actually gets saved on each job, or if the majority of work was in other areas anyway, making AI coding assistants mostly a time waster.

Or, rather, maybe the coding part used to be a bigger chunk than what we think, hence why coding assistants are so useful for SW Engineers these days.

So I am interested to hear from experienced dev's.

What was your daily (or weekly) routine like before coding assistants, and how much of a difference do they really make?

One piece of advice I have heard over the years is that you should "invest in yourself."

Get your degree, take classes, get certified, build a portfolio, get a lower paying job in your field so you can afford to build experience on your resume. It all eventually will pay off.

I think I understand the sentiment, but it does feel like everything wants me to have to make that big time investment in my job before I can really enjoy the rewards financially.

Whether it's software development, healthcare, legal fields, accounting, skilled trades, or whatever else I'm interested in, I can't imagine the amount of time I would have to invest ahead of seeing a real return and being able to afford to not have to worry about paying for everything myself.

The thing is, I don't know if it's normal for it to feel like you're always working towards something in your job, or if you eventually get to a point where you're just happy with what you're making and aren't always thinking about what you could make if you took more risks and invested more time.

So to you people out there that are a little more established in your careers, was there ever a point where you thought to yourself, "You know, this is enough," or was it always, "I need to make more, invest in myself, and be prepared for something new"?

One thing I've realized so far is that AI does not diminish the value of technical depth, if anything, it enhances it.

Being able to produce working code is getting easier, being able to reason if said code is correct, maintainable, secure and applicable to a given domain is an entirely different matter.

I think I've seen firsthand how AI serves as an excellent tool to get to a first iteration of a solution, but it is up to the developer to reason about edge cases, assumptions, technical debt, tradeoffs, and if the implementation is fit for purpose.

That is why I think now is an excellent time to solidify your fundamentals.

A fundamental understanding of algorithms, data structures, networking, databases, operating systems principles, system design, debugging, and general programming concepts will carry much further than trying to keep up with the latest frameworks and tools that appear and then disappear every few years.

The tools and technologies may change, but the fundamentals hold true across different domains and programming languages.

I don't think AI diminishes the need for technical depth; if anything, it makes the divide grow between developers that are able to understand and reason with AI generated code and those that just consume it without question.

Curious to hear what other people think.

Has AI diminished the value of technical depth or enhanced it?

One thing that's always bothered me is how differently people approach their work beyond work hours,

as if someone's entire existence revolves around their occupation or, in contrast, they leave everything related to their job at the office door when clocking out. Some people are always checking emails when they're not working, working late into the night when they "should" be sleeping, or even being generally engaged with their workplace beyond the regular 40 hours. Others, meanwhile, are like, "I'm done here," and then forget about their job until the next morning.

Now, there's certainly nothing wrong with either approach, as I believe it's completely valid to be really deeply committed to one's work, but I've always felt the need to establish that boundary between my professional and personal life.

I think it's great to be ambitious and engaged at work but not to the point that you feel as if your occupation defines your life. You can be a big fan of your line of work without checking your work emails at 10 p.m. or becoming overly socially involved with your colleagues on the outside. Speaking of which, I think it's healthy to have friends at work, but not necessarily to the point that your entire social circle is defined by the people you work with. After all, people tend to change workplaces often, and, for the sake of preserving your social life, I'd advise against relying exclusively on your teammates and coworkers for your non-professional interactions. At the same time, however, I think it's completely valid for someone to be incredibly committed to their work environment and career. Perhaps they genuinely enjoy the nature of their work, or maybe it's just a large part of their identity that they don't want to separate from their personal life. So, I think it all boils down to individual preference and what someone becomes comfortable with as they grow more and more established in their profession.

I'm really interested in hearing people's views on this topic as well. As you become more career-savvy and established in your field, do you find yourself becoming more intensely involved in your workplace environment or more protective of your personal life?

If you spend enough time recently on sites such as Reddit, you might get the impression that the tech industry is dying. There are posts about hundreds of applications with no job, months of unemployment, getting fired, or simply struggling to get a first job.

On the other hand, there are always people complaining about a lack of people with particular skills.

What is the real situation like?

In my opinion, the situation is not so simple, as some present it to be. Most likely, it depends largely on the specific case, the place of work, your experience, and so on. Perhaps there are not that many job opportunities for inexperienced developers, or for people who are starting to seek employment now. On the other hand, there are people with many years of experience in a particular field, or in a particular area (networking, information security, databases, embedded systems, and so on). These people may have much more opportunities than some entry-level developers.

At the same time, there is most likely a selection bias on such resources as Reddit. Those people who were laid off or could not find a job are naturally more inclined to discuss these issues and post their questions. On the other hand, people who found a job and went further are less likely to tell about their positive experiences.

Does this mean that there is no crisis? Naturally, the constant wave of job applications and a small number of applicants for particular jobs are real issues. People who are relatively new to the industry may have a relatively hard time finding a job in this competitive arena. On the other hand, there are people who are already experienced and work in in-demand areas. Are these people able to find work relatively easily?

I would like to ask these people to tell about their experiences and current job opportunities in their fields. Is the situation as bad as it is presented in the media, or is there some kind of misunderstanding because of different situations that people face?

one thing I've noticed about workplaces is that preventing problems doesn't always get the same recognition as fixing them after they've already become visible.

If you're the person who stays calm with difficult clients, catches mistakes before they become bigger issues, helps resolve conflicts quietly, or keeps projects moving without making a big deal about it, people might start seeing that as "just how you are" instead of recognizing it as a valuable skill.

Meanwhile, someone who constantly announces every problem, sends a bunch of messages about it, and then solves it can sometimes get more visibility simply because everyone watched it happen.

i don't think the answer is to become loud or create unnecessary drama. but I do think there's a difference between being quiet and making your impact invisible.

If you regularly prevent problems, it might be worth documenting what you prevented. If you solve something that saves the team time or money, mention it. if you help a project succeed behind the scenes, make sure the people who need to know are aware of your contribution.

being calm is a strength. But career growth often depends on whether other people can actually see the value you're creating.

Maybe the goal isn't to become louder. Maybe it's just learning how to communicate your impact without feeling like you're bragging.

How do you make sure your work gets recognized when most of your value comes from problems that never happened?

i've been thinking about how much the economics of software development might change because of AI.

For a long time, if you wanted to build something serious, you needed a lot of people and a lot of money. Big engineering teams, expensive infrastructure, years of development, etc. That obviously gave larger companies a huge advantage.

But now you can have a relatively small team using AI tools to handle a lot of the work that used to take significantly more time. I'm not saying AI can just replace an entire engineering team. The tools still make mistakes, you still have to understand the code, and once a system gets complicated, someone needs to actually know what they're doing.

But the difference in productivity is still pretty interesting.

It makes me wonder if we're going to see more small teams building things that previously would've required a much bigger company. Not because the small team has some magical technology, but because they're able to spend less time on repetitive work and coordination.

i also don't think this necessarily means programmers are going away. If anything, I think it could make fundamentals more important. There's a big difference between asking an AI to generate something and actually knowing whether what it generated is a good solution, how it fits into the rest of the system, and what problems it's going to cause six months from now.

This is also why I don't think the conversation around CS degrees and bootcamps is as simple as "One is good and one is bad." The industry is changing so quickly that the ability to keep learning might matter more than whatever specific tools you learned at the beginning.

Maybe the bigger shift isn't AI replacing programmers. Maybe it's that a small group of capable people can now do work that used to require a much larger organization.

I wonder if other people are seeing this in their own work, or if we're still too early to know how much of an impact this will actually have.

lately, I've started wondering if it's the other way around. We spend so much time trying to figure out the "right" path before taking a single step. But how are you supposed to know whether you'd enjoy a job you've never done? Or whether you'd like an industry you've never talked to anyone in? i've noticed that a lot of clarity seems to come after doing something, not before.

Taking a short course. Building a small project. having a conversation with someone in the field. even applying for a role just to see what kind of response you get. None of those decisions lock you into a career. They just give you better information than you had yesterday. Maybe that's why so many people feel stuck. they're waiting for certainty when what they really need is a small experiment.

Has anyone else found that they figured out what they wanted by trying things, rather than by thinking about them?

i get what they're trying to say, but I don't think it's entirely true. typing code isn't the difficult part. Deciding what to write usually is. Every feature comes with dozens of small decisions. How should this be structured? What should this function return? What happens when something fails? is this flexible enough for future changes, or am I overengineering it? Where does this logic actually belong? Those aren't just implementation details. They're part of software engineering.

ai has made it much faster to generate code, and I use it myself. But generating code isn't the same thing as making good engineering decisions. The more I learn, the more I realize that coding isn't just translating ideas into syntax. A lot of it is making trade-offs with incomplete information. I'm curious where other developers stand on this. Has ai mostly reduced the amount of code you write, or has it changed the way you make engineering decisions?

People leave companies all the time.

Managers move somewhere else.

Coworkers join different teams.

Clients become hiring managers.

the person you worked with two years ago might be the one reaching out with your next opportunity. i think that's why being professional matters even when there's nothing immediate to gain. Not in a fake networking kind of way. Just treating people well.

Following through on what you said you'd do. Leaving on good terms when it's time to move on. a resume gets you noticed. But a recommendation from someone who's worked with you carries a different kind of weight. i've noticed that a lot of career opportunities don't come from meeting brand new people.

They come from crossing paths with people you've already built trust with.

it's about realizing you finally have a process. The first time you learn to program, everything feels new. syntax. debugging. Reading documentation. Building projects. You have no idea what you should learn next.

But after a while, I noticed that people who pick up new languages quickly don't necessarily have better memories. They just follow a system. Learn enough syntax to be dangerous. read real code to see how people actually use the language. build something small.

Get stuck.

Fix it.

Repeat.

The language changes, but the learning process barely does. i wonder if that's why experienced developers can jump between languages much faster than beginners. They're not starting from zero every time. They're reusing the same learning framework they've built over the years.

Maybe one of the most valuable skills isn't mastering a language.

Maybe it's learning how to learn the next one.

For me, it's how often we turn good advice into absolute rules.

"stay at every job for at least a year."

"always say yes to every opportunity."

"follow your passion."

"never leave without another offer."

None of those are bad pieces of advice. The problem is they're usually missing the words "it depends." Leaving a job after three months because you found a much better fit isn't the same as quitting every time work gets difficult. saying yes to opportunities can open doors, but saying yes to everything is also how people end up burned out.

i guess that's what I've started appreciating about career advice as I've read more stories from different people. The advice itself usually isn't wrong. It's the context that matters. The best career decisions seem to come from understanding why a piece of advice exists before deciding whether it actually applies to your situation.

curious what advice other people used to believe... until experience changed your mind.

the idea was simple.

build something.

then delete it.

Wait a little while and try to build it again from scratch. No notes. No tutorial open. No copying. At first it sounded kind of painful, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. when you're following a tutorial, it's really easy to mistake recognition for understanding. You see the code and think, "yeah, i get it." Starting from a blank editor is a completely different test.

you immediately find the parts you actually understand... and the parts you only remembered because they were on the screen five minutes ago. I also liked that getting stuck isn't treated as failure. It's feedback. Every time you have to stop and look something up, you've just identified the next thing you should learn.

Feels like a much more intentional way to practice than watching another three-hour course and hoping it sticks. Curious if anyone here has tried something similar, or if you have another way of checking whether you've actually learned something instead of just recognizing it.

whenever people talk about career growth, the conversation usually jumps straight to changing jobs. but one thing I've noticed is that many companies already have budgets set aside for employee development, and they often go unused.

Things like:

• Professional certifications
• Conferences
• Online courses
• Books
• Tuition reimbursement
• Industry memberships

if your company offers any of those, they're part of your compensation just as much as your salary is. Another piece of advice that stuck with me is this: if your company sends you to a conference, don't just attend it. come back with notes. share what you learned. give a short presentation to your team if it makes sense.

Not only does everyone benefit, but it also makes it much easier for your manager to justify sending you again in the future. Career growth isn't always about finding the next opportunity.

Sometimes it's about taking full advantage of the one you're already in.

when you're learning, it's easy to think improvement comes from writing more. more tutorials. more projects. more features. That definitely helps, but I don't think it's the whole picture. At some point, you have to see how other people solve the same problems. Not tutorial code. real code. open-source projects. pull requests. code reviews. Even repos that aren't perfect.

That's where you start noticing things that nobody really teaches. How people name things. How they organize files. when they split a function into three smaller ones... and when they don't. you also realize something kind of humbling. There are usually ten different ways to solve the same problem, and experienced developers spend just as much time making code easier to understand as they do making it work.

Writing code teaches you syntax. Reading good code teaches you judgment.

I honestly think both are necessary if you want to level up.