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But what about personal projects? For me, the best way for learning new programming languages, libraries, techniques, etc, is to build something with that lang

by evanspa 13y ago

But what about personal projects? For me, the best way for learning new programming languages, libraries, techniques, etc, is to build something with that language. Naturally, I put this type of work into a public repo on Github and slap an OSS license on it. It's a great way to learn, but also to showcase your work to potential employers (or fellow hackers, etc).

danielweber 13y ago
"Here is my very first project" seems like a horrible thing to show off to potential employers. My first projects in any language are full of hacks and "just-get-it-working" type stuff until I figure out the Right Way to do things. Putting up half-finished junk like that doesn't serve anybody's interest. At best it is ignored. At worst it is just pollution being dumped into the world in that any newbie seeing it would become actively dumber.
- evanspa 13y ago
  Maybe, maybe-not. Couple things: some of my "personal projects" are more than just learning some new things. Often the project is for scratching an itch, and is a useful thing to me. That's the type of stuff that I will "polish." This forces me to not only learn the new language, but to write code idiomatically, write unit tests, etc. For "junk projects" that are solely to play around with some new thing, I think it's okay to make that clear in the README of the project and still put it in a public repo. If I'm an employer, I'm going to like the fact that you're actively learning new things; if it's a "play" project, made clear in the README, I wouldn't hold against you writing crappy code. Instead, I'll be more impressed that you're actually learning new things. Just my $.02.
- LinXitoW 13y ago
  FizzBuzz is also extremely easy, yet somehow a lot of applicants seem to fail that. So, any running code would probably elevate you above people without any code.

by evanspa 13y ago

danielweber 13y ago

"Here is my very first project" seems like a horrible thing to show off to potential employers. My first projects in any language are full of hacks and "just-get-it-working" type stuff until I figure out the Right Way to do things. Putting up half-finished junk like that doesn't serve anybody's interest. At best it is ignored. At worst it is just pollution being dumped into the world in that any newbie seeing it would become actively dumber.

evanspa 13y ago
Maybe, maybe-not. Couple things: some of my "personal projects" are more than just learning some new things. Often the project is for scratching an itch, and is a useful thing to me. That's the type of stuff that I will "polish." This forces me to not only learn the new language, but to write code idiomatically, write unit tests, etc. For "junk projects" that are solely to play around with some new thing, I think it's okay to make that clear in the README of the project and still put it in a public repo. If I'm an employer, I'm going to like the fact that you're actively learning new things; if it's a "play" project, made clear in the README, I wouldn't hold against you writing crappy code. Instead, I'll be more impressed that you're actually learning new things. Just my $.02.
LinXitoW 13y ago
FizzBuzz is also extremely easy, yet somehow a lot of applicants seem to fail that. So, any running code would probably elevate you above people without any code.