Being a programmer
 

Hey!
I was assigned in my programming class to interview a programmer...sadly i dont know any. Some questions I need answered.
What it is like to be a programmer or IT specialist?
What does a typical day look like?
What are the training/certifications required?
What are you currently working on?
and any other info is great

Thanks :D

Re: Being a programmer
 

I'm not a programmer - I work as a QA Engineer, but I do a significant amount of scripting and debugging of software. Not sure if this would help with your assignment, but figured it'd be a good of place as any to type out my "hello forum" speech :P

For me programming provides challenges and rewards - it's awesome seeing a piece of code grow from a 'print "Oh please work this time...";' to actually doing something. When one of my scripts actually becomes useful and gets integrated somewhere (and possibly even put into source control), it makes me feel justified in all those times I stare blankly at the screen wondering why I'm banging my head against the desk to work out this tiny little issue.

My typical day is in QA (making sure the software meets specifications and user expectations), but I know for the programmers it's mostly meetings about projects, haggling over specifications for the project, then spending an hour or so implementing the specification. The next day the spec changes, so then they have more meetings about the project. Not to sound disheartening, but a lot of the skill I see in programmers is being able to interpret someones ramblings into a functional application.

Training/Certificates vary greatly depending on what you are doing - sometimes a CS Degree is required, other times PHD's. I worked for one company that required a PHD and at least 10 years programming experience, though they were fortunate enough to be very popular and had the ability to be so demanding.

I'm currently working on Perl scripts for parsing log files and the like, which doesn't seem interesting, but I more see it as the building blocks to a larger application to let us correlate large amounts of data. I'm also learning C++ and Java (mostly Java, since we use that for a lot of in-house tools), and am trying to get a handle on Windows API. Back to the certifications, it's often that programmers specialize in specific areas - Networking, GUI, Scripting, Web Development, etc. Each of these require a different toolset and understanding of the underlying systems, but all follow the same general building blocks of programming.

Since I'm not an experienced programmer, take all these statements with a grain of salt. Hopefully someone with more experience posts with more info, but this should at least get you started.

Re: Being a programmer
 

I'm also quite lacking in experience, and I also work in QA, but my story's a little different. I'd consider it more of a "developer" than a "programmer", with no bad connotations directed to either one, simply noting that they actually tend to be quite different styles of working.

At my job, all of our testbed is in source control, and chunks of it run in automated labs on set schedules. Until recently, part of my responsibility consisted of checking the results for the tests I'm in charge of and either filing product bugs or fixing test bugs. It's also suggested that we spend a lot of time using the product ad-hoc; that is, just making random crap with it and trying to find any bugs that either aren't covered by our automation or can't easily be detected (globalization and localization scenarios come to mind).

I don't do as much coding as I'd expected, and what I do tends to be relatively short (they're just test cases, like a large unit test) and depend heavily on our testing framework. Sometimes there's a fix to be made to the framework, and that has much stricter restraints on coding style (all of our code changes are reviewed by peers, but framework changes have designated reviewers and a higher code quality bar).

A typical day varies greatly on where we are in the product cycle. Lately I've been doing a lot of paperwork, writing test plans, test contracts with other groups in the company, and sitting in a lot of meetings. Every now and then I have to coordinate test code changes with people from our remote offices who've been contracted to take care of some of our maintenance (like the small fixes I mentioned earlier). Soon we'll be doing large test passes over our product to try and flush out as many bugs as possible that we haven't caught already. That'll involve a lot of the automation again, and a lot of actually using the product.

There aren't really any certifications required at my job, although most everyone has a 4-year degree or better. We do have internal training requirements though, to help keep everyone up to date. For instance, everyone has to take at least one security related course per year (though there are online courses so it's pretty easy to fit one in). There's a bunch of other stuff for learning the technologies used across the company, or learning about other job roles (e.g. what a developer does vs. a tester).

I'm currently involved in two projects at work (though they're closely related): one is a software for designing web applications using the .NET framework, and the other is some tooling for a new technology for RIAs, also based on .NET (the 2nd one is an add-on to the first, but we treat it separate).

Re: Being a programmer
 

Wow what a coincidence, I've already written about being a web developer recently:

http://www.helium.com/tm/776206/arri...e-early-around

Re: Being a programmer
 

Looks like you have a good time Holly. Sounds a lot like what I'd first expected mine to be.

Oh, how I envy the free time before lunch... :P

[edit:] btw, you work in a .NET shop I take it?

Re: Being a programmer
 

Yes it is primarily a .NET shop. Mostly ASP.NET Intranet Applications. But we do occasional windows forms stuff and some PHP/MySql. It's taken me 7 years to get into a programming job that met my expectations. Where the set-up is fairly well organised. With proper project management and source control and iterative design, implement, test and release.

Re: Being a programmer
 

>What it is like to be a programmer or IT specialist?
If you're doing anything challenging, it's like being in a constant state of confusion. ;)

>What does a typical day look like?
It depends on where you work. My team comes in to work and has about an hour and a half to do whatever they want. I usually check my email, look at forums like PFO, check my voicemail, and take care of any leftover work from the day before (because I prefer not to stay late to finish things up if I can avoid it).

Then we have a 30 minute meeting to synchronize and coordinate our tasks, talk about what got done and what didn't get done, and raise any issues. Immediately after we spend about 30 more minutes just chatting. I like to run a laid back team, it's more productive that way. More fun too.

After the meeting we get to our daily tasks which vary greatly day to day. A group of us typically gets together for lunch, which ranges from 45 minutes to 2 hours depending on how much talking we do, and I encourage everyone to go home before 6pm.

>What are the training/certifications required?
Required? None. But you look better to recruiters if you have certifications and education.

>What are you currently working on?
I'm working on updating our internationalization libraries, which are severely out of date given the latest standards.