Even though more than 20 years have passed, I still remember wondering what it would be like to finish university and start working. Up until that point, I had pretty much spent my whole life in school, with only a few, non-programming summer jobs thrown in. My expectations of what it would be like to work as a software developer were mostly correct, but there were a few surprises in the first few years, and here are the top five:
5. People Interaction
Programming seemed like quite a solitary job – a feature needs to be done, so you sit down at your computer and code it up. The truth is there is quite a lot of interaction with other people. […]4. Writing Matters
It helps a lot to be able to write clearly in order to get your points across. To some extent, coding and writing are quite similar. In both cases you need to express your ideas clearly and unambiguously in a structured way. […]3. Software is Never Done
[…] Sure, you create new functionality, but it always has to fit in to what is already there. Therefore, a large part of creating a new feature is understanding the existing code in order for the new feature to fit in. This is something we never practiced at school.2. Few Clever Algorithms
[…] it was pretty much only linked lists or simpler.1. Complexity from Aggregation
[…] The complexity of the system comes from the aggregation of many simple parts, not from any complex parts.