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I was in my university's co-op program, but didn't apply for any jobs. A couple of weeks after the interview period ended, a representative from the school's c
by mrmekon 13y ago
I was in my university's co-op program, but didn't apply for any jobs. A couple of weeks after the interview period ended, a representative from the school's co-op program called me and said they had a company that was desperate for a co-op, didn't find any who were qualified during the interview process, and my résumé was the only one they could find that listed experience with C.
I took the job. Embedded systems, primarily extremely resource-limited microcontrollers. It was beyond anything they could teach a student on the job, so they really did need someone who already knew the language. That was apparently a difficult skill to find among students in 2003.
10 years and 5 positions later, all of my work has been in C, and I regret nothing. It's a practical career choice: the jobs are plentiful and the competition is not. Also, it's the best language :P
- atmosx 13y agoThe best language... to do what? ;-)
- z92 13y agoThe best language for micro-controller programming, for one.
- mrmekon 13y agoTo do anything, if you want to do that thing on a processor with Von Neumann architecture and guarantee efficient memory or CPU usage. Admittedly, this comes with a significant cost of development time.
- betterunix 13y ago"guarantee efficient memory or CPU usage" C does not guarantee either in sufficiently complex programs. Here is a classic counterexample: http://web.archive.org/web/20080624164217/http://weitz.de/cl-ppcre/#bench http://web.archive.org/web/20080624164217/http://weitz.de/cl...
- kenrose 13y agoCo-op job? Waterloo grad?
- mrmekon 13y agoGeorgia Tech. Quite a few American universities have co-op programs, though they aren't hugely popular.
- alanctgardner2 13y agoSeriously? In my experience (in Canada), the majority of engineering universities offer a co-op program. I get that Waterloo is the shit right now, but they don't produce the majority of the world's co-op students.
- rmrfrmrf 13y agoWow, really? I've been biding my time in a shitty marketing job because I've been trying to master all of these high level languages after assuming that that's what employers are looking for. I taught myself C, C++, and PHP growing up, but assumed that those were out of style. My college adviser (part-time grad school) even INSISTED that I learn Java because I wouldn't get anywhere without it.
- krapp 13y agoI just wish my one and only available semester of Java had including something about Android development. Two semesters of C++ and I can almost kind of do basic ADO in a console. I can't even tell if I'm learning anything relevant. I'm beginning to think my most marketable language is still going to end up being PHP, or VB/C#.
- wting 13y ago> My college adviser (part-time grad school) even INSISTED that I learn Java because I wouldn't get anywhere without it. To be fair that statement isn't without merit. I just went through a slew of interviews for new college grad positions this fall. I refused to apply for Java or .NET positions preferring Python / C / C++. This easily eliminated >90% of companies at the career fair. Fortunately, I was still able to interview at the big 3 (Google, Amazon, MS) and a slew of Bay Area companies. Amazon's onsite interview was a bit frustrating. All four interviewers ignored my resume and assumed Java expertise, asking the occasional question with Java terminology. When I answered the question reframed in Python / C++ terminology the conversation usually died off.