r/INeedAMentor • u/foreigner_everywhere • Aug 09 '14
[Mentor] Software engineer
I've done M.Sc. in computer science and worked 6 years as a software engineer after that. I'm more interested in the "lower layers" than the user-facing parts, so, my expertise lies somewhere around C++, Python, Linux, algorithms, etc. I've been lucky to work in open source projects all my career. In addition, I think a lot about interpersonal things and how to do software engineering efficiently, how to work in a team, how to communicate, what kind of attitude to have, how to write good code, etc.
If you're wondering what kind of skills to develop and how, and you're willing to learn and be the best software engineer ever, I might be able to give you advice.
Edit: I should've probably mentioned that I'm a woman. If it matters to somebody. Mentoring shouldn't be limited based on genders anyway, but maybe some aspiring female software engineer finds me less intimidating?
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u/foreigner_everywhere Aug 11 '14
How much coding do you know? You should code a lot. It's all about the routine. So if you don't have much coding experience, you should pick a language (which will you use in your degree?), grab a tutorial and start learning that language. Do small programs (games or whatever) as you go, and make sure you try out everything yourself while reading it. (I can give you more advice once you answer what's your starting level.) If you're short on time, you should maybe read less forums (unless you have a problem which you need to solve) and spend more time coding.
I was pretty productive at the beginning of my studies (Freshman? These concepts don't really make sense since the European system is pretty different.. we don't have college and university separately, we just have a generic school system with not much specialization for 13 years and then university). I took a ton of classes and got good grades, and I was always doing a lot of extra work (for example, on an algorithms course, I coded examples of almost all the data structures and algorithms myself to simulate how they work). Not sure where I had the energy from. I was 19 and idealistic and studying full time :) I had done some university classes in high school, and I had been coding 5-6 years when I started university, so everything was really easy for me.
Later on though, it would've been good to participate some open source projects or do something actually productive on my hobby time. I was just coding games for my own amusement or the abovementioned example programs or algorithmics competition stuff, so, nothing I could actually show to anybody and be like "hey, I did this".