All you programmers out there, please chime in.

Lots of good subjects in a BSc geography to make a programming career out of. What was your favourite?
 
BSc hons geography, with environmental science. Studied as a mature student in 2000s for personal development more than a career move.
Having worked in one field, studied another and then wanting to expand to coding in a proper language like Python will help you a lot.

I learned to code after my auditing articles. After having worked in finance for a few companies, I wrote a nice little cloud point of sale (should have called it point of purchase) for businesses that buy in small quantities and sell in bulk (not something one would think is needed but was an industry that expanded a lot at the time) and was able to charge R17k a month to the company that used it. This was pre covid and after the development I had to do very little maintenance for that. They used it for almost 3 years.

With geography some nice things are coming up where they are using AI to detect ruins previously undiscovered.

I currently play with xAI, it has integrations for Python: https://python.langchain.com/docs/integrations/providers/xai/

Enjoy your coding journey.
 
You need one to get a job to get paid to code. People actually working in IT are telling you this. You’re in Finance and “code” as a hobby
I guess I am just careful, we all make mistakes, and these so called educated coders seem to make the most. And then at the same time they say they aren't just coders. And then you point out the mess with most big corporate web apps and they take offense even when they have major downtime on a monthly basis.

And from personal experience, Ive had two opportunities to code full time - without a degree in computer science. I also know of a few people who are paid very well to code without any degrees at all. One also codes for a bank. Without a degree of any sort.

It seems these "people actually working in IT" is more gatekeeping than anything else. Why not be fully supportive right from the start?

The thing with a degree in computers, why? Things change so fast, the things you learned will again be so much different by the time you actually start working and the chances that you would use the same language or framework or host/server is very small. Things that were fundamentals a few years ago for some is now common knowledge for others.

Ive had much success in coding without a degree in it. It is my opinion. Others should have their own opinions, and that is great. They however confuse their opinion with fact because it is part of their experience. My experience is different than theirs as it should be. I personally find it sad that a person can only have experience in one field of study. And then their personal lives also revolve around that same field.

And it feels like there is confusion with coding Python, which this thread is about and just designing a website which anyone with Wix or WordPress can do for free and zero experience.

There's so much free material available on learning Python. Tons of free books and even more video guides. And a major community online for support.

Applying for a job in coding also isnt about sending CV's - and it hasnt been for over a decade now. You do not send CV's for a coding job. You build up a good score on Stackoverflow and apply for jobs listed on Stackoverflow. You have a resume/profile on Stackoverflow which they look at with your experience score. This is how you get jobs in coding. You can also fork some few hundred open source projects on your GitHub profile to make yourself look great.
 
I guess I am just careful, we all make mistakes, and these so called educated coders seem to make the most. And then at the same time they say they aren't just coders. And then you point out the mess with most big corporate web apps and they take offense even when they have major downtime on a monthly basis.

And from personal experience, Ive had two opportunities to code full time - without a degree in computer science. I also know of a few people who are paid very well to code without any degrees at all. One also codes for a bank. Without a degree of any sort.

It seems these "people actually working in IT" is more gatekeeping than anything else. Why not be fully supportive right from the start?

The thing with a degree in computers, why? Things change so fast, the things you learned will again be so much different by the time you actually start working and the chances that you would use the same language or framework or host/server is very small. Things that were fundamentals a few years ago for some is now common knowledge for others.

Ive had much success in coding without a degree in it. It is my opinion. Others should have their own opinions, and that is great. They however confuse their opinion with fact because it is part of their experience. My experience is different than theirs as it should be. I personally find it sad that a person can only have experience in one field of study. And then their personal lives also revolve around that same field.

And it feels like there is confusion with coding Python, which this thread is about and just designing a website which anyone with Wix or WordPress can do for free and zero experience.

There's so much free material available on learning Python. Tons of free books and even more video guides. And a major community online for support.

Applying for a job in coding also isnt about sending CV's - and it hasnt been for over a decade now. You do not send CV's for a coding job. You build up a good score on Stackoverflow and apply for jobs listed on Stackoverflow. You have a resume/profile on Stackoverflow which they look at with your experience score. This is how you get jobs in coding. You can also fork some few hundred open source projects on your GitHub profile to make yourself look great.

I got a job without a degree. It happens but it’s luck of the draw with a lot of other things needing to be in your favour.

A degree gets you a better change at longevity and career options outside of the people that took a chance on you.

I now have a degree because of the above and it does give a better understanding to a lot of concepts self study and LeetCode grinding won’t give you
 
I got a job without a degree. It happens but it’s luck of the draw with a lot of other things needing to be in your favour.

A degree gets you a better change at longevity and career options outside of the people that took a chance on you.

I now have a degree because of the above and it does give a better understanding to a lot of concepts self study and LeetCode grinding won’t give you
I agree with you on that, to get more opportunities, from outside employers, especially international - which I mentioned in one of my first responses - a degree is important. The thing with many companies, there will always be a company willing to take a chance on you even without a degree.

Then you get to another part of the process: external recruiters. Sometimes you have to deal with external recruiters and sometimes those recruiters are desperate because they earn commission, so they are actually easier to take a chance on you and place you so they can get paid.

Getting a job in general is more politics (the way I like to phrase it) than anything else - which is also why I mentioned an existing social/business network in one of my original posts.

Our OP has a very good education, so he might even be eligible for internation employment as a coder, because a degree is mostly for visa applications for international employers want you to have a degree to make the visa application easier.

I know of someone who got a job in QC in Europe with a degree in counselling.
 
I guess I am just careful, we all make mistakes, and these so called educated coders seem to make the most. And then at the same time they say they aren't just coders. And then you point out the mess with most big corporate web apps and they take offense even when they have major downtime on a monthly basis.
Educated coders also wrote almost all the hard software in the world. From space travel, to defense, to radio-frequency telescopes, to MRI imaging, to operating systems, to semiconductor tooling, to compilers, to AI, to digital markets, to the massively scalable infrastructure the world's technology runs on today.

That you're even mentioning corporate web apps, really just indicates that you're a frog in a pond, who has never seen the ocean. As a heads up, software developers at the big banks do a lot more than write web apps.

And from personal experience, Ive had two opportunities to code full time - without a degree in computer science. I also know of a few people who are paid very well to code without any degrees at all. One also codes for a bank. Without a degree of any sort.
Plenty of people code without a degree. It's what they tend to code that differs, as well as how they are treated. Coding for a bank is also a "how long is a piece of string argument" - there's a difference between the Head of Quantitative Research, and the person who makes the lunch intranet page, but they both work at the bank.

It seems these "people actually working in IT" is more gatekeeping than anything else. Why not be fully supportive right from the start?
We are fully supportive - we're only objecting to your mistruths.

The thing with a degree in computers, why? Things change so fast, the things you learned will again be so much different by the time you actually start working and the chances that you would use the same language or framework or host/server is very small. Things that were fundamentals a few years ago for some is now common knowledge for others.
You don't seem to know what fundamentals are. Think of it more like reading, or being able to do addition or multiplication in your head. You're effectively arguing "You don't need to know how to read - I know people who have done well and don't read - I don't know how to read either, and I'm doing fine". Reading doesn't become obsolete, and without it, your ability to learn is severely hindered.

(Tagging @umamankandla because he mentioned fundamentals too). When I talk about fundamentals in the context of my degree, I am referring to things like: algorithms, complexity theory, complexity classes, compilers, computer architecture, operating system internals, finite state automata, distributed computing, concurrency, high performance computing, graphics rendering, computational geometry, object oriented programming, functional programming, logic programming, imperative programming, boolean logic, digital logic, relational algebra, machine learning, networking, databases, etc.

And as part of a CS degree one typically has to do other subjects. Some of what I did include: multivariate calculus, vector calculus, modelling with differential equations, partial differential equations, concrete mathematics, Fourier analysis, signal processing, graph theory, linear algebra, abstract algebra, topology, real analysis, complex analysis, formal and informal logic, convex optimization, statistics, probability theory, linear regressions, etc.

The key thing being, that very little of this has changed in decades (some, even centuries). Yes, I used an earlier version of Python and C++ than I use today, and I used UNIX instead of Linux, but those are the easy to keep up with details. The above lists are my version of "reading". Perhaps look them up, and see if they interest you, and what they're all about before making a knee-jerk response.

Ive had much success in coding without a degree in it. It is my opinion. Others should have their own opinions, and that is great. They however confuse their opinion with fact because it is part of their experience. My experience is different than theirs as it should be. I personally find it sad that a person can only have experience in one field of study. And then their personal lives also revolve around that same field.
The experience that one has over time in the field is absolutely necessary to have an informed opinion. You have an opinion, but it is not informed, and is in fact harmful. My opinion is derived from 30 years of observing people succeed and watching people fail at all levels, in multiple countries, in multiple industries, with multiple qualifications, and they number in the thousands. I do not have an opinion on accounting careers, because I do not know about accounting, even though I have in fact filed my own tax returns many times in the past.

And it feels like there is confusion with coding Python, which this thread is about and just designing a website which anyone with Wix or WordPress can do for free and zero experience.

There's so much free material available on learning Python. Tons of free books and even more video guides. And a major community online for support.

Applying for a job in coding also isnt about sending CV's - and it hasnt been for over a decade now. You do not send CV's for a coding job. You build up a good score on Stackoverflow and apply for jobs listed on Stackoverflow. You have a resume/profile on Stackoverflow which they look at with your experience score. This is how you get jobs in coding. You can also fork some few hundred open source projects on your GitHub profile to make yourself look great.
The above is nonsense. I had almost forgotten that StackOverflow was a thing. Employers aren't looking for an experience score, they're looking for relevant experience (they're also certainly not looking for someone who spends all their time on StackOverflow either - it's a well known red flag). This can be demonstrated by a portfolio, prior employment, or your qualifications.
 
Educated coders also wrote almost all the hard software in the world. From space travel, to defense, to radio-frequency telescopes, to MRI imaging, to operating systems, to semiconductor tooling, to compilers, to AI, to digital markets, to the massively scalable infrastructure the world's technology runs on today.

That you're even mentioning corporate web apps, really just indicates that you're a frog in a pond, who has never seen the ocean. As a heads up, software developers at the big banks do a lot more than write web apps.


Plenty of people code without a degree. It's what they tend to code that differs, as well as how they are treated. Coding for a bank is also a "how long is a piece of string argument" - there's a difference between the Head of Quantitative Research, and the person who makes the lunch intranet page, but they both work at the bank.


We are fully supportive - we're only objecting to your mistruths.


You don't seem to know what fundamentals are. Think of it more like reading, or being able to do addition or multiplication in your head. You're effectively arguing "You don't need to know how to read - I know people who have done well and don't read - I don't know how to read either, and I'm doing fine". Reading doesn't become obsolete, and without it, your ability to learn is severely hindered.

(Tagging @umamankandla because he mentioned fundamentals too). When I talk about fundamentals in the context of my degree, I am referring to things like: algorithms, complexity theory, complexity classes, compilers, computer architecture, operating system internals, finite state automata, distributed computing, concurrency, high performance computing, graphics rendering, computational geometry, object oriented programming, functional programming, logic programming, imperative programming, boolean logic, digital logic, relational algebra, machine learning, networking, databases, etc.

And as part of a CS degree one typically has to do other subjects. Some of what I did include: multivariate calculus, vector calculus, modelling with differential equations, partial differential equations, concrete mathematics, Fourier analysis, signal processing, graph theory, linear algebra, abstract algebra, topology, real analysis, complex analysis, formal and informal logic, convex optimization, statistics, probability theory, linear regressions, etc.

The key thing being, that very little of this has changed in decades (some, even centuries). Yes, I used an earlier version of Python and C++ than I use today, and I used UNIX instead of Linux, but those are the easy to keep up with details. The above lists are my version of "reading". Perhaps look them up, and see if they interest you, and what they're all about before making a knee-jerk response.


The experience that one has over time in the field is absolutely necessary to have an informed opinion. You have an opinion, but it is not informed, and is in fact harmful. My opinion is derived from 30 years of observing people succeed and watching people fail at all levels, in multiple countries, in multiple industries, with multiple qualifications, and they number in the thousands. I do not have an opinion on accounting careers, because I do not know about accounting, even though I have in fact filed my own tax returns many times in the past.


The above is nonsense. I had almost forgotten that StackOverflow was a thing. Employers aren't looking for an experience score, they're looking for relevant experience (they're also certainly not looking for someone who spends all their time on StackOverflow either - it's a well known red flag). This can be demonstrated by a portfolio, prior employment, or your qualifications.
The above is nonsense. OP never said he wants to code for NASA
 
@CW67 you have more than enough inspiration and resources, but here is another Computer Science graduate's story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson

He finished his degree (November 2005) after he wrote one of the top web application frameworks (Ruby on Rails in July 2004).

Go code, worry about the computer science degree later or not even at all
 
The above is nonsense. OP never said he wants to code for NASA
Sigh. You’re desperately trying to avoid learning anything aren’t you? The above addresses your mistruths about degrees. This is important, since whether or not the op wants to be more ambitious or not, those mistruths will remain on the forum, and search engines and are actively harmful for those seeking career advice.

The curriculum above is a standard South African degree curriculum - if you think that only NASA (or similar) needs these skills, you would be very very wrong.
 
Sigh. You’re desperately trying to avoid learning anything aren’t you? The above addresses your mistruths about degrees. This is important, since whether or not the op wants to be more ambitious or not, those mistruths will remain on the forum, and search engines and are actively harmful for those seeking career advice.

The curriculum above is a standard South African degree curriculum - if you think that only NASA (or similar) needs these skills, you would be very very wrong.
Lots of words, nothing to back up your claims.

And stop talking about NASA, this is not about NASA.

For all I know - you tell french ladies you are brad pitt
 
@CW67 you have more than enough inspiration and resources, but here is another Computer Science graduate's story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson

He finished his degree (November 2005) after he wrote one of the top web application frameworks (Ruby on Rails in July 2004).

Go code, worry about the computer science degree later or not even at all
You’re forgetting John Carmack, BTW. If you understood basic statistics or informal logic, you would recognize that you could list 1000 such people, and it would still be entirely irrelevant.
 
You’re forgetting John Carmack, BTW. If you understood basic statistics or informal logic, you would recognize that you could list 1000 such people, and it would still be entirely irrelevant.
Talking about irrelevant people - that is everyone on the internet. You are no exception to the rule no matter how much you say you did. You are a stranger who has provided nothing to back up your many claims.
 
Talking about irrelevant people - that is everyone on the internet. You are no exception to the rule no matter how much you say you did. You are a stranger who has provided nothing to back up your many claims.
Nope. Some of us are capable of making cogent arguments, and others are clearly not. You are the latter, and it’s more than just a little obvious.
 
Nope. Some of us are capable of making cogent arguments, and others are clearly not. You are the latter, and it’s more than just a little obvious.
Oh, no! An insult from someone on the internet... Has anyone ever experienced such a thing. lol.
 
Oh, no! An insult from someone on the internet... Has anyone ever experienced such a thing. lol.
I have been arguing in good faith, and you have not. That's all it really comes down to.

Also, it wasn't an insult - it's just why nobody will listen to you.
 
I have been arguing in good faith, and you have not. That's all it really comes down to.

Also, it wasn't an insult - it's just why nobody will listen to you.
I prefer to debate and give verifiable facts. You choose to argue. And therein lies the difference.

You do not hold a degree in computer science, you are a stranger on the internet sharing his/her/its opinion. You can be a bot for all we know. A very low quality one which cannot even reference external links.
 
I prefer to debate and give verifiable facts. You choose to argue. And therein lies the difference.

You do not hold a degree in computer science, you are a stranger on the internet sharing his/her/its opinion. You can be a bot for all we know. A very low quality one which cannot even reference external links.
I can see that I'm talking to the Dunning-Kruger wall. Good night.
 
I assume the part about building a stackoverflow score and forking hundreds of github repo's is/was a joke
 
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