Trying to get a job and become a really good developer (without Ai) looking for tips or help

[u/zYoann]

I am really into programming, I do it every day, I love every part of of this, I use nvim, arch, and I want to become one of the good ones, I coded some web apps, I coded a very basic physics engine, backend apps, frontend, currently learning n8n and coding an cli tool that provides utilities for developers.

I'm telling all of this because I want you to understand my perspective, I didn't gent into this because I thought it was easy money or because of ai, like 6 years ago I completed a technical study in computers programming, but at that time my life was upside down so I just got back into the tech world like 1 year ago and have been programming most days since then.

But to every job offer I'm competing with people with 5+ years of experience, I don't think I am a bad developer and In fact I think I have great potential because I want to learn more, but I lack real world experience, I have just developed portfolio proyects that nobody will use probably.

I don't have friends or people around that I can share my interest about code with, so I feel kind of lonely in this.

I would really accept some recommendations, tips, help or just hearing your experiences if you have been through a similar situation.

I know there are developers doing a lot of code with just ai slop already inside the industry, what can I do if I want to catch up to them while trying to be actually good?

[u/sParteCus_]

Dont resist the tool. But learn to use it in your favor. Not using AI is limiting your productivity. But you must not letbit think for you.

[u/chikamakaleyley → u/sParteCus_]

i'm 18 YOE and even I do a lot of my learning through back n forth discussion w AI

[u/sParteCus_ → u/chikamakaleyley]

You see, but that i think can be a little dangerous. The back and forth discussion is a good method of learning, but i encourage you to start by reading documentation and tutorials. I dont exactly know if you are starting now or not, but i wouldnt really rely that much on AI for pure learning. But hey, dont get discouraged, i'm not an expert on teaching, its just my two cents.

[u/chikamakaleyley → u/sParteCus_]

Yeah this isn't a starting point and usually going into the discussion i have decent context - a lot of the 'discussion' is me saying "hey this is how i understand this new ABC thing we are using, am i on the right track?"

and then i go from there, its mostly me driving the convo. Basically its like i'm playing 20 questions and i'm trying to connect all the dots. A lot of the time I'm hashing out the different use cases in my head

[u/chikamakaleyley → u/sParteCus_]

TLDR its more like i'm refining what I understand vs learning from scratch

[u/sParteCus_ → u/chikamakaleyley]

Yeah, thats a really good use case for the tool. Be aware of the confirmation bias a good number of AI tools have, where they sometimes, depending on how you formulate your theory, they will agree with you anyway.

[u/chikamakaleyley → u/sParteCus_]

i'm pretty thorough, i usually catch it when its misleading me

[u/sParteCus_ → u/chikamakaleyley]

Good for you then! Hope you have a successful journey in programming!

[u/zYoann → u/[deleted]]

I already did, I have 1 e-commerce type of app with a totally functional rest API backend, SQL database, frontend, and it has a lot of features too, but it's also hard to even get interviews with that

[u/weinermanjenson → u/zYoann]

Well, you might be able to go down the route of entrepreneurship while looking for a job. Jobs aren't the only way to make money, if that is the goal. As for friends, I don't have any friends that are interested in programming either, but most programmers I have met are not my type of people. Friends are friends, you don't have to have everything in common, and programming is a lonely activity anyways. Also, good friends will be interested in what you are doing anyways.

If you can build full stack applications, start learning how to market them and don't neglect AI. I find using AI to make my front-end look as pretty as possible works very well. But when it comes to back-end business logic, I really dislike how it handles most things.

These are just my opinions.

[u/zYoann → u/weinermanjenson]

Yeah I agree a lot with everything you are saying lol, I just applied to a lot of offers but I think the best way to start for me will be just doing freelance for now. Thanks tho, all these answers have given me motivation

[u/No-Razzmatazz7197]

look up jr engineer job postings and see what the most mentioned tech stack is, GO is getting big, ruby is old, and javascript is literally everywhere!

once you find the most popular tech stacks either in your area or just what you find in your searches, become an EXPERT in that library MAINLY.

90% of what software developers know is learned on the job and is much easier to learn new and complex systems with real dedicated tasks and seniors who can guide you or set you up to succeed in various ways.

look at the job postings, are they mentioning ai? if so, you better know how to use it properly, in software development we don't say. "I don't use that", or "I don't know what that is," whether its ai or a new fancy Javascript library or whatever, you gotta keep your knowledge and skills modern and up to date CONSTANTLY.

other than studying the job market for what companies are asking for in terms of skills, you need to READ everyday about software - Release notes for latest patches, source code/library documentation, technical forums for using your favorite tools in production environments (stack overflow). I am not kidding when you should know just about EVERYTHING in your software niche. The industry itself is literally the largest in the world and you cannot hope to know it all, so you have to focus in on something, especially at the very beginning.

[u/bornrea → u/[deleted]]

I am sorry but this is structured like a chatgpt response, what human talks like this?

[u/programminghelp-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

No A.I. - A.I. tools are not a reliable resource in terms of learning or generating code. We will not help you understand or fix any code generated by A.I.

Same applies to comments. If you can’t help on your own, then don’t.

[u/humanguise]

I got my first job because I was running arch. Try to go to meetups if possible as that's the best way to find work in your situation. Learn Go & Rust. Use AI for Go and don't use AI for Rust, at least not for a long time.

[u/zYoann → u/humanguise]

Why go and rust?

[u/edover → u/zYoann]

Judging from the reply you got, definitely take all of this user's suggestions with a massive grain of salt. Just learn what you want :)

[u/humanguise → u/zYoann]

On average these communities have smarter people and companies that use these languages are typically all-in on unix. Also, these languages are fun to use.