Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sAuronas 4454 days ago
This is a interesting post to me because I also started programming a year and two months ago. I took a much different approach because I wanted to be considered an engineer not just a "coder". I can say that I did not feel like one after three months of digging into Codecademy Code Year (yes, in three months). I didn't know how to build outside of their sandbox.

Then I dug deeper in Javascript, reading every book I could find until I knew all the pitfalls of the language firstclass functions, global namespacing, scopes, etc...Still did not feel like an engineer.

Dug into Objective-C (that's right...I skipped C) and struggled for three months to build my first app and launch it in the App Store (mostly because re-wrote it over and over not understanding the Core Data model issues I was having. Was I an engineer yet...NOT.

That's right, I skipped C. So, I went back and got into the C book and everything I could find on design patterns, etc.

One year in, trying to really build an app that does not suck and really get close to the metal with some assembly (yes, I know, I have been working backwards!) And do I consider myself an engineer now...? Kind of. Not a good one if I am (despite being a "hellava engineer" graduate from GaTech).

I may not consider myself one for the rest of the year. But that's me. I wish I had her feel for what she is. She posted to HN and I didn't so I give her props for that.

1 comments

I make software - I don't think it really matters what you call yourself, and I've certainly never seen anyone not get hired because they were looking for a software engineer and someone had "backend programmer" on their resume.