OT: Java or C++?

[RCinMempho]

Not if you can pass a background check for a government security clearance to work on defense projects.

This is true. Citizens with a clean background check can find a way in as a defense contractor. If you want to do this you need a degree, but you might get in with an Associates. If you really want to do this get a CompTIA Security+ certification. That is a requirement for many positions.

Having said that, I don't think which language you use is the key to professional contentment. I think WHAT you are programming is much more relevant to your personal satisfaction. If you find an industry that interests you, and you can make that better with programming, then you have a combination for some degree of personal fulfillment.

You can program in God's own source code, but if you don't want to write programs for dog food canning machinery, you still won't like it.

 

[telleutelleme]

If you are searching for a career that uses code consider GIS graphical information systems which are based on applications that call for Python, Java and other languages that enable process control and custom users apps supporting their use. There are literally thousands of jobs requiring knowledge of the underlying GIS tools and skills to add functionality through development. Look into some of the free information from ESRI, Blue Marble and open source QGIS. The geospatial community is rich and rewarding.

 

[raito]

Too many things to keep the quotes straight:

Re: Generic types, etc. in Java.

Of course, because all languages secretly want to be Lisp. C++ did it, too, along with lambdas. OK, a few want to be Forth.

Re: single board vs. single chip
When I started, you couldn't do it with a single chip.

Re: JVM and interpretation
I'd say that most Java these days is JIT, so no, it's no longer interpreted (except for various testing and compliance).

Re: C# .Net
Pointless vendor koolaid lockin. Besides that, I haven't found those jobs to solve interesting problems.

Re: Large libraries
Unfortunately, some languages (Java, Python) have enormous numbers of external libraries (as opposed to things like the C or C++ standard libraries). Too often, this leads to substandard minds cobbling together programs by stitching together someone else's code with dubious glue. There's a massive difference between "I can't write that" and "I have other things to write". Fortunately, I worked for places with the latter view who contributed back to the libraries they used.

Re: Android/Pi embedded
Sure that's a bunch of that, but the raw processor space, and Arduino, etc. just above that are thriving.

Re: full stack
All that means is that you're expected to solve someone else's problem that they stuck in a different level than where you usually work.

Re: Elegance
Grace Hopper said (sort of) that new languages just have bigger subroutines. C is not elegant at all. Python can only do certain things is a few lines of code.

Re: K&R
Forget it. It's all ANSI these days. And see Elegance.

Re: Perl
The write-only language. I've only known one person who could write readable Perl code. For most others, it might as well be APL with the special Selectric ball.

Re: C++ embedded
It isn't as common, and isn't necessary, really. Just do C++ without any of the class stuff and you're nearly there. It's much more about the design of the code than the language. At one job, most of the code was easily ported from C to C++ classes because it was designed well.

Re: Multiple languages
Learn 2 at once. Then you won't have the problem of trying to shoehorn your first language into the second. If you learn a so-called object-oriented language, learn more than one paradigm. C++ is single-dispatch, for example (which can be done in 8 lines of Lisp). Lisp is generic typing. Python is duck-typed.

Re: Cloud
The cloud is a mainframe without a sysop.

Re: Pleasant and well-paid.
Do IT. Solving the same boring business problems over and over again. For money. Because some bean-counting MBA heard about revenue stream instead of just solving the generic problem (like every SAP installation ever).

Re: Defense work
At my last job, we were supposed to call the DoD if my boss was late. One buy who moved had to quit because he couldn't work on our stuff in that country.

Re: what the problem is
That's definitely more f a key than the language. I'd rather solve an interesting problem in a language I despise than dull problems in a language I love.

Re: GIS
In college, I worked as an operator for the VAX cluster doing the local Tiger database stuff. So at my first job, when we had to integrate that data into our product, I was the guy. I once had some idea of using public GIS data to, in real-time, produce game maps.

Re: clean to cryptic
Not languages, really. Programs, certainly. It's called technical debt. Every time something is hacked in instead of refactored, you add to the debt, and future programming gets more difficult because you're working around the workaround. It's kicking the can down the road. Project-management-wise, it is a good decision when the can is kicked past the end of life of the project. But it never is.

This led at one job to being relieved that we could no longer source the hardware. 15 guys working on the program and making no progress because of technical debt. Then the idiots who caused the debt in the first place got to start the new project...

Re: Python WTF?
That's what you get when it's a single person's opinion as to what a language ought to be. Too many bad decisions and corner cases.

Re: Game studios and publishers
I know a number of people in that industry. It's like the attributed quote from Hunter S. Thompson on the music business. When I was in Austin, EA (formerly Origin Systems) hired a bunch of artists around Thanksgiving. Moved them to Austin. Laid them off about Christmas. That's only 1 story.

 

[BigDaddyLH]

^^^ Awesome! That's a lot laid down in one post.

 

[JamesAM]

I guess the thing I failed to mention is that I'm in my upper 40s now, so I might be disqualified from software development as a career. I might still enjoy it for fun though.

I can assure you that developers are in such high demand literally everywhere that you will not be disqualified. You might be placed in a junior role, but if you can code, you will get a job.

 

[cometazzi]

I can assure you that developers are in such high demand literally everywhere that you will not be disqualified. You might be placed in a junior role, but if you can code, you will get a job.

Junior role is fair enough. Everyone's got to earn their stripes.

 

[schoolie]

The correct answer is C

 

[BigDaddyLH]

The correct answer is C

Was c. All of the above?

 

[bgmacaw]

Re: C# .Net
Pointless vendor koolaid lockin. Besides that, I haven't found those jobs to solve interesting problems.

For me, it solves the interesting problem of putting food on the table, paying the mortgage and supplying me with guitars and such. I also don't consider this kind of corporate software development work boring or uninteresting. Well, unless bad management gets involved (see below).

Re: full stack
All that means is that you're expected to solve someone else's problem that they stuck in a different level than where you usually work.

It usually means an organization is too cheap to hire a web designer, a services developer, a DBA and a DevOps person and you're expected to do all these things by yourself.

Re: Pleasant and well-paid.
Do IT. Solving the same boring business problems over and over again. For money. Because some bean-counting MBA heard about revenue stream instead of just solving the generic problem (like every SAP installation ever).

I have enjoyed working more in the manufacturing and logistics industries in recent years instead of insurance and accounting where I worked previously.

Upper clueless management trying to shoehorn one-size-fits-all ERP solutions into a corporation has been a thorn in my side though. It's always seemed to be a good way to take millions in profits and hand them to do-nothing consultants while getting nothing but a few free lunches and long, useless, bladder busting, meetings in return.

This led at one job to being relieved that we could no longer source the hardware. 15 guys working on the program and making no progress because of technical debt. Then the idiots who caused the debt in the first place got to start the new project...

The last insurance related company I worked for got bought out and laid off the entire IT team in the Atlanta location in the typical "there's the door and we will ship you your personal stuff" fashion. Too bad they were so busy kicking us out that they didn't find out about the legacy automated billing system that had a bad habit of crashing. They found out about it 8 weeks later when their accountants realized their books were short about $33M in expected revenue.

 

[Nogoodnamesleft]

I work for a rather large IT consulting company. Primarily on government contracts. Java is overwhelmingly more popular than C++ in the areas I’ve seen. Things may be different elsewhere. Two technologies that stand out in application development/maintenance lately have been Java and .NET, with a lot of Python tying things together.

My days of Pascal, C, and assembly language are sadly long in the tooth.

 

[cometazzi]

This is true. Citizens with a clean background check can find a way in as a defense contractor. If you want to do this you need a degree, but you might get in with an Associates. If you really want to do this get a CompTIA Security+ certification. That is a requirement for many positions.

Having said that, I don't think which language you use is the key to professional contentment. I think WHAT you are programming is much more relevant to your personal satisfaction. If you find an industry that interests you, and you can make that better with programming, then you have a combination for some degree of personal fulfillment.

You can program in God's own source code, but if you don't want to write programs for dog food canning machinery, you still won't like it.

I can pass a background check.

I also might enjoy writing programs for dog food canning machinery.

 

[RCinMempho]

I can pass a background check.

I also might enjoy writing programs for dog food canning machinery.

Then you can get a job programming for military and police dog food factories !!!!

 

[rcole_sooner]

Hopin' I'm outta the background check days, but I did have to do a piss test for my current job.