Son starting out in programming

University should not be a tryout place.
It just doesn't work like that in reality and most institutions understand this. People don't always even always take up professions based on their degrees.

The space earned is earned on that student's merit (unless we're talking about certain policies).


My son who is almost 20 wants to get started in development as a career. He's dabbled a bit in minor roblox games, but I think game development is such a niche market that getting in there is a long shot, so I'm looking for suggestions as to what courses/certifications he should be looking at to at least have a change of getting started?
I'm completely unaware of Roblox other than the 'oof' sound. A quick google shows me it's similar to unreal editor but much friendlier and has a scripting side in lua. I'd agree game dev is especially niche here, also I find the industry quite unstable.

What is he currently doing for work/education? That can impact how easy it is to switch careers.

The real question is how much does he enjoy the scripting part? I'm going to assume a degree is not an option. In that case the best scenario is to build a portfolio of /applications/ made. While doing this you may want to consider other entry points into development like Software Testing. It's good to look at job boards and see what junior/graduate positions are often available as you'll need to fit market demand.
 
A CS degree is going to make a big difference. The industry is changing fast and a degree is becoming more and more a requirement.

Spend a few minutes browsing glassdoor.com for software dev jobs and you'll see what I mean.

The days of cowboy coders getting in through the door are fast drawing to a close.
 
A CS degree is going to make a big difference. The industry is changing fast and a degree is becoming more and more a requirement.

Spend a few minutes browsing glassdoor.com for software dev jobs and you'll see what I mean.

The days of cowboy coders getting in through the door are fast drawing to a close.
I never considered that people who are self-taught are cowboys, And yet, I've seen the shyte that some graduates write
 
I never considered that people who are self-taught are cowboys, And yet, I've seen the shyte that some graduates write
I agree that self-taught developers do not have to be cowboy developers. Universities do often put an emphasis on team work though, so a lot of interpersonal and technical aspects are taught (and to some extent those who do not internalize it are filtered out to some extent). For most devs I would say that their early working experiences are more likely to set them on a cowboy vs non-cowboy path. Specifically, how their team is managed (if at all), or if they even work in a team.

To @Solarion’s point, companies are becoming more risk adverse - they’re taking fewer hires, so they’re being more picky. Issues such as (lack of) degrees and job-hopping are counting against people more than they did 5 years ago.

To your point on shyte grad code, that does happen sometimes, but the fact that you are exposed to both grad code and non-grad code implies a strong selection bias in the data you have.
 
I agree that self-taught developers do not have to be cowboy developers. Universities do often put an emphasis on team work though, so a lot of interpersonal and technical aspects are taught (and to some extent those who do not internalize it are filtered out to some extent). For most devs I would say that their early working experiences are more likely to set them on a cowboy vs non-cowboy path. Specifically, how their team is managed (if at all), or if they even work in a team.

To @Solarion’s point, companies are becoming more risk adverse - they’re taking fewer hires, so they’re being more picky. Issues such as (lack of) degrees and job-hopping are counting against people more than they did 5 years ago.

To your point on shyte grad code, that does happen sometimes, but the fact that you are exposed to both grad code and non-grad code implies a strong selection bias in the data you have.
By far, right now the thing counting against us more experienced things is AGE, secondly job hopping as you put it.
 
By far, right now the thing counting against us more experienced things is AGE, secondly job hopping as you put it.
Yeah, good point. Less specific to the general population, but as the amount of open roles narrow, age has definitely become something a lot of companies see as high risk, and are adverse to making these hires. There still are companies that highly value that technical experience, but for many there's little difference between what they would expect from someone with 5 years experience as they would someone with 30 years experience.
 
I would suggest psychometric testing and career guidance and advice before commiting to a career choice.
This is not a bad idea.

Its not going to tell him what will make him a millionare, but it will tell him what won't.

We hosted a few young guns at our office a while back, to see how people fresh off campus would adapt to working in a high pressure environment. (Surveys, q&a sessions etc)

Out of the 18 people, 5 could be actual developers.

1 was on the spectrum, 1 was permanently higher than giraffe ears, and the other 3 could code, but i don't know if they could handle "feedback".

One girl stripped her moer after we told her that she couldn't use pandas on the frontend, and that she needed to use d3.

Moral of the story, not everyone is a da Vinci, we need Medici and Einsteins too.
 
Yeah age is a definite factor. I am starting a CS degree next year which I am hoping will act as a balance against my age.

One thing though, if it is one of these young, slick development factories where they have a high turnover of projects and staff, forget it. They won't take you as a developer. As a manager yes. You don't want to work there as a dev anyway. These younger guys are all dick and ego and it's a shark tank. I know. I've tried.

If you can find big company who's dev team is this older crew who have been there for 20-30 years then your chances of getting in are higher.

This is just my experience from doing a fair share of job hunting with many successes and failures along the path.
 
I would suggest psychometric testing and career guidance and advice before commiting to a career choice.
Not a bad idea, but I do suggest treating these with some skepticism. I did one of these in matric (which was circa 1990, so admittedly tech wasn't as prominent). IIRC, they suggested that I become a book/newspaper editor or a teacher. I put this down to a lot of questions, such as "What do you prefer, a well written novel, or a sportscar?", the latter meaning that you're more "technically minded", and the former meaning that you're "artsy". I happen to like literature, and have little to no interest in cars (especially then). It was really just a simple scoring system based on very loose generalizations.

I would imagine that there are better ones out now, with more awareness of the technical space out there. I still suggest caution, since even many IT professionals don't really know how a degree vs masters vs phd vs diploma vs bootcamp vs certificate vs self-taught affects ones careers, and who is suitable for which.
 
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Yeah age is a definite factor. I am starting a CS degree next year which I am hoping will act as a balance against my age.

One thing though, if it is one of these young, slick development factories where they have a high turnover of projects and staff, forget it. They won't take you as a developer. As a manager yes. You don't want to work there as a dev anyway. These younger guys are all dick and ego and it's a shark tank. I know. I've tried.

If you can find big company who's dev team is this older crew who have been there for 20-30 years then your chances of getting in are higher.

This is just my experience from doing a fair share of job hunting with many successes and failures along the path.
This, absolutely this
 
Programming will be dead within the next 5 years, probably sooner.

Rather lean into the AI storm and use AI to write the code, while he provides the direction. Prompt engineering will eventually be replaced by structured inputs of some kind, but at least learning how these tools work will keep him relevant.
Been hearing that since the 1980s when expert systems were set to replace programmers .... I am still here ....
 
Hi. Just implemented CodeProject AI server into a retail industry solution for customer footfall analysis and employee HR functionality.
AI is just a tool, programmers or rather software developers, will always be in demand, but like the previous poster said, you need to keep up - or get left behind.
 
As someone who's recruited many developers over the years I can tell you that a degree or qualification is meaningless. All we are interested in when recruiting developers is your experience and capabilities. I'll take a talented developer with a few years experience and no qualifications over someone fresh out of university and no experience any day of the year.

Being a software developer is a calling, even a way of life. It's not something that you just dabble in. If your heart and soul are not in it then you are wasting your time. The best developers are the ones who have been playing around with computers since they were little kids. It's not something you just decide to become in your 20's.
 
Hi. Just implemented CodeProject AI server into a retail industry solution for customer footfall analysis and employee HR functionality.
AI is just a tool, programmers or rather software developers, will always be in demand, but like the previous poster said, you need to keep up - or get left behind.

100%. We use machine learning for all sorts of data analysis tasks (specifically ML.NET), and using ChatGPT our developers are able to complete development tasks that used to take weeks in a matter of days. Far from costing developers their jobs, AI is actually increasing the productivity of developers to such an extent that companies have even more budget to hire more developers.
 
The developer market in 2025 and beyond is looking absolutely brutal for bootcamp and cert grads. There's close to 0 chance of landing a proper role if you are just scraping through a bootcamp.

Even a degree nowadays doesn't mean you're an instant hire.
 
The developer market in 2025 and beyond is looking absolutely brutal for bootcamp and cert grads. There's close to 0 chance of landing a proper role if you are just scraping through a bootcamp.

Even a degree nowadays doesn't mean your an instant hire.

Controversial opinion, but if you even need to go to a bootcamp in the first place you're probably not developer material.
 
Controversial opinion, but if you even need to go to a bootcamp in the first place you're probably not developer material.
Yes, I think this is more fact then fiction. Even the quality of CS grads seems to be decreasing.

There are many videos on YT of senior CS students failing to answer incredibly simple CS and algorithm questions. Granted this is mostly outside the US which has a more rigorous and standardised program from what I have heard.

Cheating on assignments using AI tools is also becoming a problem.
 
As someone who's recruited many developers over the years I can tell you that a degree or qualification is meaningless. All we are interested in when recruiting developers is your experience and capabilities. I'll take a talented developer with a few years experience and no qualifications over someone fresh out of university and no experience any day of the year.
That may be true where you work, but does not apply in general. As someone who has hired hundreds of top-end developers, I can say that you are only seeing a tiny part of the picture. The type of experience you can get when you have a degree is vastly different to the type of experience you typically get without it. E.g., It doesn't matter how many years of JavaScript you have, you're not going to get hired to write a tightly coupled distributed numerical solver.

To preempt the common reply to the above: Yes, there are far more jobs for JavaScript programmers, which I agree, I would rather hire based on experience than a certificate for. The reason you want to do the jobs that require (the knowledge/skills of) degrees though are that they: 1) tend to be more technically interesting, 2) tend to pay a lot better, 3) tend to provide more opportunities to work overseas, 4) tend to offer more job security and better working conditions.

As per my prior comment in this thread - a degree is best, all other things being equal. It's not for everyone though, and you can still make a good living without it.

Being a software developer is a calling, even a way of life. It's not something that you just dabble in. If your heart and soul are not in it then you are wasting your time. The best developers are the ones who have been playing around with computers since they were little kids. It's not something you just decide to become in your 20's.
I've been coding since I was 6 or 7, and had similar thoughts (until my early 20's at least), and while I agree that having that early start gives a unique perspective, and a leg up, I have met enough incredibly talented developers who only learned programming later in life to know that there are plenty of people who discover their calling later.
 
Yes, I think this is more fact then fiction. Even the quality of CS grads seems to be decreasing.

There are many videos on YT of senior CS students failing to answer incredibly simple CS and algorithm questions. Granted this is mostly outside the US which has a more rigorous and standardised program from what I have heard.

Cheating on assignments using AI tools is also becoming a problem.
It was a problem even before AI, and one of the reasons why one should always give in depth technical interviews regardless of whether someone has a degree or not. Having a second major (maths, app maths, physics, etc.), tends to provide an even better filter, since firstly it's harder material, but secondly it's harder to cheat, due to the relatively low emphasis on project work in comparison to CS.
 
It was a problem even before AI, and one of the reasons why one should always give in depth technical interviews regardless of whether someone has a degree or not. Having a second major (maths, app maths, physics, etc.), tends to provide an even better filter, since firstly it's harder material, but secondly it's harder to cheat, due to the relatively low emphasis on project work in comparison to CS.
Agreed and I think It's a problem across the STEM field. Great posts as usual cguy :thumbsup:
 
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