![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
I've not done any serious programming work in close to 10 years. I graduated university, had a job while I was in college I didn't feel like I got much out of. And when I left that place without an offer I was told I "relied too much on existing software/programs instead of developing my own." But considering I was assigned to at least three different bosses in my time there, I was......less than impressed with how they handed under-grad coops. It was kind of willy-nilly whoever needed help, and not for the benefit of the student unless by blind luck they got a series of good learning experiences.
This one dampened my interest in programming, because the core work was handled by full time employees and they didn't have much else on the plate besides their one product and FDA issues being a medical software place.
Next job was a medical billing place, I was pointed to it by a friend. They were wanting to get into electronic billing and I was basically told they were going to be hiring on a team over time. Then that team basically became me, with the possibility of more once the project started "making money". Guy was trying to get this put in hospitals after it'd only been used at really small doctor offices as beta sites, and one of those was having fairly big issues due to miscommunication and overselling IMO. I enjoyed being able to solve issues the sites were having and get feedback on future additions or changes, but it was like the owner of the company was determined to have a full product ready to scale up and down user bases in just a few months time with just me working it. So I was there for about 6 months and finally told him that he either hires at least one more person to help or I quit. He refused, so I quit. This place did primarily Visual Basic with some Perl scripting to tie things together.
Now I'll say my inexperience and wanting to go along with the flow probably really hurt me more than the jobs themselves...putting myself into or not realizing I wasn't really gaining what I should be from the positions.
So those are the two things that pretty much killed my interest in programming. I still like solving puzzles and having little thought projects on stuff, I just don't do it with programming anymore. And I'd like to change that and modernize my languages, toolsets, etc.
To give you some "positive" experiences with programming. I taught myself C so I could work on text based multi-user dungeons (MUDs) and spent probably two years adding new bits and pieces to one I played on. Worked a summer job where they built upon that and did some translation of menu systems from Dibol to C++ for an architecture overhaul with some other summer help. While it wasn't the most exciting thing, it was interesting to do the translation for awhile. Had a quarter of COBOL language at the local community college while I was in high school...plus some unix/linux and logic classes (flowcharts etc).
So Im not too horrible at picking up languages. Im maybe weaker than I should be at object oriented programming because I self taught myself C, so I had some bad habits...it doesn't come naturally. And Im probably weak on database usage. Definitely weak on visual programming (I consider this to be buttons, graphical front ends, etc), although I know a lot of the IDEs handle quite a bit of that. It's really hard to judge since I've been out and I have a habit of undervaluing stuff I do versus what other people do...but friends who are in the field said I was pretty talented at programming and never could understand why I couldn't find jobs worth a shit back then.
I know it's probably unlikely Ill find a project that isn't a "waste of time" learning project that'll be thrown away. But ideally it'd be nice to have something that I continue to build on while polishing up on unused languages/processes while picking up some new ones.
And maybe some recommended IDEs and versioning stuff that is free and fairly relevant would be good.
Ideally I'd like to get some back-end/server-end with database experience to go along with a user end graphical interface that is a little showy/fancy just to get some experience with more visual stuff programming can do.
And maybe like a list of Top 3 or Top 5 most marketable skills if nothing else comes out of it...with a list of useful IDEs/tools for each.
This one dampened my interest in programming, because the core work was handled by full time employees and they didn't have much else on the plate besides their one product and FDA issues being a medical software place.
Next job was a medical billing place, I was pointed to it by a friend. They were wanting to get into electronic billing and I was basically told they were going to be hiring on a team over time. Then that team basically became me, with the possibility of more once the project started "making money". Guy was trying to get this put in hospitals after it'd only been used at really small doctor offices as beta sites, and one of those was having fairly big issues due to miscommunication and overselling IMO. I enjoyed being able to solve issues the sites were having and get feedback on future additions or changes, but it was like the owner of the company was determined to have a full product ready to scale up and down user bases in just a few months time with just me working it. So I was there for about 6 months and finally told him that he either hires at least one more person to help or I quit. He refused, so I quit. This place did primarily Visual Basic with some Perl scripting to tie things together.
Now I'll say my inexperience and wanting to go along with the flow probably really hurt me more than the jobs themselves...putting myself into or not realizing I wasn't really gaining what I should be from the positions.
So those are the two things that pretty much killed my interest in programming. I still like solving puzzles and having little thought projects on stuff, I just don't do it with programming anymore. And I'd like to change that and modernize my languages, toolsets, etc.
To give you some "positive" experiences with programming. I taught myself C so I could work on text based multi-user dungeons (MUDs) and spent probably two years adding new bits and pieces to one I played on. Worked a summer job where they built upon that and did some translation of menu systems from Dibol to C++ for an architecture overhaul with some other summer help. While it wasn't the most exciting thing, it was interesting to do the translation for awhile. Had a quarter of COBOL language at the local community college while I was in high school...plus some unix/linux and logic classes (flowcharts etc).
So Im not too horrible at picking up languages. Im maybe weaker than I should be at object oriented programming because I self taught myself C, so I had some bad habits...it doesn't come naturally. And Im probably weak on database usage. Definitely weak on visual programming (I consider this to be buttons, graphical front ends, etc), although I know a lot of the IDEs handle quite a bit of that. It's really hard to judge since I've been out and I have a habit of undervaluing stuff I do versus what other people do...but friends who are in the field said I was pretty talented at programming and never could understand why I couldn't find jobs worth a shit back then.
I know it's probably unlikely Ill find a project that isn't a "waste of time" learning project that'll be thrown away. But ideally it'd be nice to have something that I continue to build on while polishing up on unused languages/processes while picking up some new ones.
And maybe some recommended IDEs and versioning stuff that is free and fairly relevant would be good.
Ideally I'd like to get some back-end/server-end with database experience to go along with a user end graphical interface that is a little showy/fancy just to get some experience with more visual stuff programming can do.
And maybe like a list of Top 3 or Top 5 most marketable skills if nothing else comes out of it...with a list of useful IDEs/tools for each.
