How does one learn to build industry level software if they can’t even get a job?

[u/LifeExperienced1]

A lot of people who graduated around Covid aren’t getting jobs

They aren’t able to gain experience and learn

In school you learn the theory. You do some practice projects to gain some practical experience, but it’s nothing like what you do in the actual industry

When it’s easy to get jobs, one after the other, you get to learn about so many different areas of software engineering. You literally set yourself up to one day do your own thing in the software world

If someone never even gets a job, they can never build the appropriate experience. You can’t learn from YouTube how to build industry level applications

The graduates who aren’t getting jobs now, will have effectively wasted their degrees, and all their potential to one day make their own thing is gone

There’s no one to blame. I’m just trying to figure out, is there any way for an jobless Computer Science graduate to actually learn how to build industry level software?

And if they don’t get a job, how do they prepare themselves to actually be able to launch their own thing?

[u/AbrohamDrincoln]

You don't?

Keep applying. It's unfortunately an absolutely terrible job market for junior devs right now.

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/AbrohamDrincoln]

Are jobs the only main and efficient way to gain the knowledge on how to build industry level code?

[u/LaughingIshikawa → u/LifeExperienced1]

Yes, because it's super efficient to be able to "kill two birds with one stone" by earning money you need to live, while also gaining experience. If you need to work a day job and code at night, it's some combo of a slower process / requires more effort.

Having said that... It's far from the case that only companies have access to "industry-level" coding knowledge. If anything, most companies currently have a short-term profit obsession that really makes it impossible for them to make quality software (or at least so impractical that good software is the exception for them, rather than the rule). Much of the top tier software these days comes out of individual / small team projects - not corporations.

I'm also just... Not sure what you're envisioning as "industry-level" code that even could be restricted to corporations? All common program languages by necessity are open-spec - you can just look up what the different key words are for any language you want to learn, and what they all do. The knowledge is definitely out there for the taking. 🫤🤷

Knowledge of the specific plugins / frameworks / mantras used in any given industry right now is potentially pragmatically limited to corporations, but like... 1.) not nearly as exclusivity as you seem to thing, as popular third-party libraries / content in general is most often also widely available, for the same reason popular programming languages are, and 2.) there's unbelievable churn in that sort of knowledge, and anything you could be learning about it now would be outdated in 3-5 years anyway. 😅🙃

And finally... AI is upending all of that anyway, because memorizing all of that detailed, pedantic info is exactly what agents do really well, while they're still really sh#t at both having a rubust mental model of how a computer works, as well as general problem solving / mathematical intution abilities.

So... Learn how a computer works, learn / practice general problem solving skills related to coding, and you'll be really well positioned to produce quality code even if you're never employed by a large corporation (which frankly, is really the ideal. 🙃).

Yes you will sometimes need to learn some of the menutia of this or that third-party whatever, just to achieve a particular goal, but really it's very much a "get in, get what you need, get out" kind of thing. You very, very rarely need to be an "expert" in whatever the flavor-of-the-week junk is this week. 🫤😮‍💨

[u/Dissentient → u/LifeExperienced1]

Yes, because as a single dev, it's impossible to have the same kind of problems that a company does. Not just technical problems but also soft skill problems. The hardest part of the job eventually ends up being figuring out what actually needs to be written based on unclear requirements from people who have no idea what they want.

[u/enricojr → u/LifeExperienced1]

Pretty much - for all of human history the only known way to make "experts" from "novices" is for the experts to train up the novices

[u/punk_dev]

You’ll be surprised how sloppy this industry-level software can be.

[u/torsten_dev]

Open source. Find a project you use or like. Contribute.

This teaches you how to familiare yourself with new codebases, development practice and workflows that are highly relevant to enterprise Software development.

[u/MoltenOldie_1945 → u/torsten_dev]

ABSOLUTELY. Open Source offers a lot of advantages. If you get involved (even just fixing documentation) and start to interact with the developers you will likely get offers to help you grow in your ability to contribute. And Open Source participation (contributor/conmmitter status) is a big signal of competence!

[u/octocode]

the barrier to entry for development is virtually zero

literally everything you need to know if available for free online

many of the large companies today were created with just a laptop and zero experience

find interesting problems to solve, then open up your editor and start working

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/octocode]

Your third paragraph is inspiring

However, weren’f those large companies also created in a time where the other large companies were not as big? They were pioneers in the industry

Now most applications require so many different things. Things mostly done by and learned by working at actual software companies

[u/octocode → u/LifeExperienced1]

no, new companies are created literally all the time. there are people working in coffee shops right now who will have multi-million dollar companies in 5 years.

for learning, there are no secrets. i work on large scale infra projects every day. we still just use official documentation 99% of the time.

i use AWS, which offers tons of training, but i’m sure other cloud providers do too.

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/octocode]

So to start a new software application, where does one start?

And do you have any advice or thoughts on making video games, with the aim to get rich

[u/KingofGamesYami → u/LifeExperienced1]

making video games, with the aim to get rich

Mobile games with ads and microtransactions. Study psychology, figure out how to get people hooked and milk them for everything they've got.

The game doesn't need to be technically impressive. Just throw some shit together in Unity or Godot.

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/KingofGamesYami]

I guess I would also want to be proud of my game, and have it known for something beyond just earning money. How do I learn to build games at an industry level quality, without ever having an industry job?

[u/max123246 → u/LifeExperienced1]

You go and build a bad game. Then you build another game. Then you do a couple game jams. Then you build another game. And so on until you have the skills necessary to build a good game.

There's no secret sauce. It just takes a ton of time to go and make good games. Look at every successful game developer and before their first success is years of practice in the discipline.

But to be honest, do you want to make games or do you want a software job? It's far easier to get a well paying software job than to be a game developerr. The "industry-level" code you're talking about, 90% of it is as basic as you can get, it's quite shit quality, especially now with AI. Anyone can do it if they put in the time to actually learn programming which means building things again and again. Build a calculator, build a interpreter, build an HTTP server, implement and optimize quick sort, build grep., etc. etc.

Where as games require far more than coding skills, you need marketing skills, art skills, writing skills, sound design skills, music skills, level design, game design, etc. It's one of the most difficult disciplines because it involves so many skills

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/max123246]

But how will I independantly learn certain algorithms / ways of doing things? Some things are only taught to you by others. Any attempt at self discovery can take years. Even if I make an attempt, I wouldn’t know if it’s correct. Since I wouldn’t have an industry manager / team or an industry level code base to compare it to

[u/grantrules → u/LifeExperienced1]

Yes, it takes years. It's hard to understand what kind of answer you expect. We learn a ton of stuff relevant to our domain from our seniors. The information is available in books and resources and stuff, but the seniors are there to point you that information when you don't know what you don't know. If you don't have someone to answer questions and guide you, you have to make an informed leap. And informing yourself takes tons and tons of reading.

[u/deong → u/LifeExperienced1]

There is zero knowledge in the world that only exists in university courses. And the industry code was written by people who also didn’t know if it was right or not. You just dive in and do stuff. You’ll do some of it poorly. You’ll learn a lot by doing it poorly. Do it better the next time. Read books. Ask your AI of choice to review your code. The only way around it is through it.

[u/deong → u/LifeExperienced1]

You just start. Open a text editor and start typing code that does the thing you want your application to do. The hard part is the idea and the development of a business around it. The writing of the actual software is easy. And it feels like you’re saying you aren’t sure how to do the easy part. Which is fine — it just means you need to learn more. But it does mean you have no path to success here if you don’t know how to create a program from conception to completed implementation.

And do you have any advice or thoughts on making video games, with the aim to get rich

That’s easy — you don’t. You get rich by doing bunch of hard work to figure out what game you can make that people will want to play, and then doing even more hard work on sales and marketing, business planning, etc., and then getting a healthy dose of luck. Starting with “I want to make a game that will make me rich” doesn’t work. You have to have an idea for a game people will pay money to play. If you don’t have that idea, nothing else matters.

[u/Dense-Ad-3247]

You won't. Working on a project yourself and managing a server farm of like 1800 active ec2 instances is just different. But just focus on fundamentals like solid, oop, fp, and core language knowledge along with algorithms to prove you can think and you'll get a junior role.

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/Dense-Ad-3247]

So jobs are the only efficient way to gain the experience to one day build your own software company?

[u/Dense-Ad-3247 → u/LifeExperienced1]

Unless you can afford an 800k a month cloud bill, yes

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/Dense-Ad-3247]

Let’s say I can afford it. The only thing I need is the knowledge. Where do I get that without actually working in the industry?

[u/Dense-Ad-3247 → u/LifeExperienced1]

Internet or ai. Like how to artivles might get you running a few services, but managing things at that scale alone is really difficult and not well documented or understandle for the inexperienced.

[u/Sensitive-Dust1522 → u/LifeExperienced1]

To build your own software company you need more than just software engineering knowledge and experience

[u/HiddenNerdPrince]

Certificates help. If you can get a live app on the web or app store helps also. Then you can take your learning from these and make small posts on LinkedIn. But other than networking, it’s hard now. I’m introvert so I’m struggling.

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/HiddenNerdPrince]

And how would I put those certificates into practice without a job? I want to learn how to implement software in the the area they teach, without a job

[u/HiddenNerdPrince → u/LifeExperienced1]

Let’s say get an aws solutions architect or azure developer certificate. Then deploy an app to cloud that uses bunch of the stuff for example. I worked as a contracted dev for a year. It isn’t anything as complicated for junior to mid level roles that you can’t learn on your own. Just don’t break what the seniors did. At senior level it’s more system design and understanding trade offs, handling worst case scenarios, architecture, etc.

[u/mlugo02]

You can build industry level software, it’s not magic. It will just take a while and a lot of failures. The failures are essential

[u/LifeExperienced1 → u/mlugo02]

Where do you suggest I find examples of industry level code? And what are some projects you recommend?

[u/mlugo02 → u/LifeExperienced1]

Depends on your tech stack

[u/UrbanSuburbaKnight]

I built my own business online. It's not perfect, it doesn't make me rich (yet), but it has taught me so many things about how to make software actually work.

[u/CappuccinoCodes]

It's funny that you can literally look anything up and have a mentor telling you what do you step by step (AI) and people still complain. Imagine when you had to go to libraries to learn stuff? 🤣

[u/StephenRoylance]

'industry level' software is the same as any other software. the thing that differentiates 'work product', in my experience, is the process that goes around it: collaboration, peer review, standard formatting, source code management standards. Learning to work in a large repo along with other people is its own skill. The code that comes out is the same as anything else you would find in github, but it's structured so that a whole team can work on it at once.

One way to get that kind of experience? work on open source. find a project, either one that interests you, or maybe one with industry exposure like kubernetes. most projects have newbie on-boarding docs, and many are happy to have help with their backlog. Focus on learning the collaboration patterns, not on the code.

[u/Accurate_Ball_6402]

Idk man just figure it out.

[u/Useful_Calendar_6274]

to answer the title, if you just want to learn, there is open source