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> I'm a long time hobbyist programmer (~20 years) with decent knowledge of a few languages > but have no portfolio or commercial track record A 20-year hobby,

> I'm a long time hobbyist programmer (~20 years) with decent knowledge of a few languages > but have no portfolio or commercial track record A 20-year hobby, dedicated enough to be "decent", but nothing to actually show? Not trying to take a jab or anything, it just more leaves me wondering maybe you're starting from a fairly low skill level. There's plenty more to software engineering than just languages. In which case, maybe a 3-6 month full-time course? I work with a guy who was a carpenter. He did a 3-6 month (can't quite remember) full-time coding course. It was very practical - Javascript, HTML, etc. He then took an internship at our company. I'm not sure of the salary, but it would have been fairly low. But just through hard-work he's now a terrific mid-level engineer, and he could move on to another company with a solid story to put on his resume. I suspect a lot of people might be against coding courses and more leaning to DIY self-learning. But not everyone can stay on track, it's hard to know exactly what to study, a good coding course can point you in the right direction with jobs, and it looks better on your CV. Just my 2c.

nimbleal 5y ago
> wondering maybe you're starting from a fairly low skill level It's a fair assumption but unfortunately I think I would lack in specifically the areas that online courses don't tend to address, i.e everything that's involved in working on a large codebase as part of team that's not algorithms, testing and language stuff. I don't know anything about deployment and management for e.g.
- tastysandwich 5y ago
  I think those are the sorts of things you learn on the job, especially if you get an internship or graduate position. It's more about getting that first foot in the door. I didn't know anything about CI or CD when I graduated. If you're interested: * Get familiar with Git (just the basics - clone, checkout, log, add, commit, diff). * Basic bash commands / GNU tools. Are you familiar with Ubuntu? You could try installing it and playing around in the terminal. Beyond that companies can have pretty different deployment processes with varying degrees of custom solutions. It's kind of expected you'll have to learn their way of deploying code. If they're into C#/Microsoft stuff, man that's like a black box to me and I have no clue haha. You could also read a bit about SCRUM and Kanban. They are, I don't know what you'd call them, "project/product management methodologies"? Both are pretty common. But I wouldn't fret too much - you can drive yourself mad thinking you need to know everything upfront. If you're honest about your skill level, they'll have honest expectations, and can help you learn anything you need to know along the way.
rich_sasha 5y ago
As well as a job, I too am a hobbyist programmer, and have nothing ready to show for it. Bunch of shell scripts, impressive idempotent .emacs, some half-baked ML projects galore. I don’t see why it is so surprising. Finishing and polishing something off is often 80% of the work and 20% of the fun, if you’re not paid for it then why bother if it’s a hobby?

nimbleal 5y ago

> wondering maybe you're starting from a fairly low skill level It's a fair assumption but unfortunately I think I would lack in specifically the areas that online courses don't tend to address, i.e everything that's involved in working on a large codebase as part of team that's not algorithms, testing and language stuff. I don't know anything about deployment and management for e.g.

tastysandwich 5y ago
I think those are the sorts of things you learn on the job, especially if you get an internship or graduate position. It's more about getting that first foot in the door. I didn't know anything about CI or CD when I graduated. If you're interested: * Get familiar with Git (just the basics - clone, checkout, log, add, commit, diff). * Basic bash commands / GNU tools. Are you familiar with Ubuntu? You could try installing it and playing around in the terminal. Beyond that companies can have pretty different deployment processes with varying degrees of custom solutions. It's kind of expected you'll have to learn their way of deploying code. If they're into C#/Microsoft stuff, man that's like a black box to me and I have no clue haha. You could also read a bit about SCRUM and Kanban. They are, I don't know what you'd call them, "project/product management methodologies"? Both are pretty common. But I wouldn't fret too much - you can drive yourself mad thinking you need to know everything upfront. If you're honest about your skill level, they'll have honest expectations, and can help you learn anything you need to know along the way.

rich_sasha 5y ago

As well as a job, I too am a hobbyist programmer, and have nothing ready to show for it. Bunch of shell scripts, impressive idempotent .emacs, some half-baked ML projects galore. I don’t see why it is so surprising. Finishing and polishing something off is often 80% of the work and 20% of the fun, if you’re not paid for it then why bother if it’s a hobby?