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15 Steps on how to get into Software Development

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Considering a career in Software Development? Read these 15 Steps which could help send you on your way to an exciting new career!

More people than ever before are entering Software Development from non-traditional backgrounds. The number of coding bootcamps is increasing, and there’s a broad push from the industry to attract more diverse developers. Many companies are no longer solely focused on hiring senior developers, and have realised that it may be smarter to train and upskill the next generation of senior developers instead.

Software Development pays well, the industry is booming, and compared to many other careers, software developers get treated very well. But the thing that draws most career-changers to software development, is the search for more rewarding work.

The career transition stage can be a big, scary, but exciting place to be. It can be one of the most challenging life-changes a person could make however, the finishing result could be a more fulfilling career.

If you’re considering a career change, there’s one question that you should ask yourself, above all others: if you make the switch to software development, will you like it? Getting to a level of skill where you are hireable is a lot of work, and you may be leaving behind a promising career in the process. The stakes are high.

If you don’t know whether you’re going to like it, build things with code. Create a Tic Tac Toe game. Start a small online business and do the development yourself. Contribute to open source. Make games. Complete programming challenges. Build a personal website and do all the design and development yourself. If you enjoy any of these things, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy working as a software developer.

Switching careers can be an epic, challenging journey – but it could just be one of the best things you’ve ever done.

There are a thousand ways to learn to program; the route you take will depend on how you learn best. You can take online courses, find a teacher or mentor, watch YouTube videos, read books, get a Computer Science degree, watch screencasts, or simply jump onto the command line and start experimenting, hitting up Stack Overflow as you go.

 

Here are 15 tips which could help you start your journey to becoming a Software Developer!

1. Have something you (passionately) want to make: Whether it’s a blog, a game, a website, a SaaS startup, an online dating website, or an app to manage your family’s finances, having a project that you’re motivated to build, will push you through the tough times when learning to program. A real-world use-case for your skills will accelerate your learning.

 

2. Attend a coding Bootcamp to get a taster and see if you feel it will work for you: A good coding bootcamp will give you a focused environment, help when you need it, and support when the journey gets tough. When you’re first learning to code, it can be really hard to know what you should focus on.

A good coding bootcamp will also assume no prior programming knowledge, and teach you the skills you need from the ground up, unlike many programming articles and videos, which will be written with professional programmers in mind.

 

3. Connect with other people learning to program: Learning to code can be difficult at times. Having a network of other people going through the same challenges can be hugely important. If you don’t know anyone making the transition, attend local meetups and talk to people there, especially if you’re focused on languages popular among junior developers (Ruby and JavaScript in particular). If you’re lucky, your local programming meetup may even host a ‘Newbies’ night now and again. Make sure to go!

 

4. Find a mentor who works in the industry: A friendship or mentorship with a working software developer can also be immensely helpful in your journey. They will know what the interview culture is in your local industry, will be able to give you advice when you get stuck, help you focus on the most important skills to learn, and give feedback on your code. If you’re lucky enough to find a software developer generous with their time in this way, make sure to give back somehow, even if it’s just buying lunch when you meet. Once again, meetups are a great way to meet potential mentors.

 

5. Focus your learning:If you’re hoping to do backend programming primarily (the engine of most apps, not the visual presentation), focus on learning one language and one web framework as well as you can. Also aim to be somewhat familiar with JavaScript, HTML and CSS, as many roles will have you working with both the frontend and backend of an application. If you’re aiming for a front-end role, focus on JavaScript, HTML and CSS. You might also focus on a popular JavaScript MVC framework like React or AngularJS.

 

6. Be prepared to invest in your career change:You can spend a lot on the transition; books, courses, classes, and screencast subscriptions can add up to hundreds of pounds a month, and many boot camps are over £6,000. Despite the hype around programmer salaries, you can expect to make between £20k and £30k as a junior developer. At first, it might seem like you’ve invested a lot in this career change without much financial reward. Over the long term though, this investment should pay off as you rise to a senior developer level with the potential to earn between £50K and £70K.

 

7. Don’t worry if your journey isn’t linear:Learning to program is tough; it takes time. If you’re juggling a pre-existing career and other commitments, it may be difficult to focus on it for more than a few hours a week. You may have doubts, you may get distracted, and you may stop progressing for days, weeks, or months. Trust that if software development is truly what you want to do you’ll find your way eventually, even if you end up taking the scenic route.

 

8. Create an account on GitHub, build your profile, be selective about what you show: GitHub is an online hosting service for git repositories, best described as version-controlled programming projects. When a repository is public on GitHub, anyone can read through your code. Many hiring managers will check the GitHub profile of applicants, to get an idea of how they write code when nobody is watching. When evaluating junior applicants, the hiring managers may not be looking for amazing code, but instead looking for enthusiasm, work done on multiple projects, willingness to try out new things, and a sense of play. Your GitHub profile is a great way to show this, but keep in mind that hiring managers may only have a few spare minutes to review your profile. For this reason, it’s a good idea to make only substantial or interesting projects public. For projects which you were just using to learn, it might be worth making them private to give your best stuff the limelight.

 

9. It’s hard sometimes:Self-doubt is a common trap for junior developers, especially those from groups who are underrepresented in the software industry. If something feels hard, it’s not necessarily because you’re not cut out for this. It might be because you have more to learn, or perhaps, because the thing you’re working on is actually hard. You may also be concerned when something you find challenging seems easy to someone else, especially when that someone else has a similar level of experience. But stick with that person long enough and you’ll likely encounter something they struggle with, that you find really easy. We’re all different, we bring different pre-existing skills to the table, and we all practice differently. Programming is like any skill: you can become good at it if you persist long enough and care about getting better. Avi Flombaum, co-founder of the Flatiron School, says “I absolutely believe that anybody can learn how to program in the same way that we know anyone can learn how to read and write.”

 

10. Be aware of your blind spots:By all accounts, career-changers have been making waves in the development community. They’re self-starters who’ve sacrificed an existing career, and sometimes a higher salary, in order to become software developers. However, we do have blind spots. The inner-workings of computers and the internet are mind-bendingly complex, especially to anyone from a non-technical background. Mastering one programming language, one web framework, JavaScript, HTML and CSS might take up all your available time. However, when you’re starting out as a junior developer, you probably won’t realize that these things are just a small slice of the technologies you work with every day.

Think about the answers to some of the following questions:
How does your code get run?
How does your language’s interpreter or compiler know when it encounters a syntax error?
How does typing a URL into your browser toolbar result in a web page being rendered on your screen?
How does a web server work?
How do you stay logged into websites even after you close and reopen your browser?
How does your app run on a web server?
Your project is hosted on Heroku or AWS, but what do they use under the hood?
When people say an object is ‘in memory’, what does that mean?
How do you SSH onto a server?
How do you set up and use a build pipeline?
How does your operating system run on your computer?

Of course, this list could be much longer. There’s so much to learn that it can feel overwhelming. The good news is that you don’t need to know the answers to all these questions in order to be hired as a junior software developer, but you should try to learn them as you go further in your career. You can’t get really good at software development unless you have a working understanding of the tools that you work with every day. Increasing your understanding will empower you to make better choices, become better at debugging, and make better design decisions.

 

11. When you’re struggling, take time to appreciate the unique skills you have that computer science graduates may not have yet:If you’ve attended or scheduled a work meeting, been given tricky feedback at work, been through a performance review, or led a team, you already have valuable skills that recent computer science graduates may not have. You may be more at ease talking with stakeholders, better at meetings, planning and organization, simply through having more experience. Most importantly, you may have better perspective. After all, if you’ve previously worked as a nurse in an operating theatre, a bug in production might not seem so overwhelming. After all, nobody is going to get (physically) hurt!

 

12. Get experience with pairing:Pairing is the practice of having two developers share one computer and work on the code together. One developer will write code, while the other watches and does some of the following things: makes suggestions, asks questions, catches errors, and thinks more broadly about how the code being written, fits into the larger program. Since both roles are fatiguing, they will usually swap anywhere from 15 minutes to every few hours.

Pairing is a common practice in the industry and even more common in the coding interview process. You don’t need to be an expert, but pairing for the first time can be a little intimidating, especially when pairing with a senior developer. Despite this, pairing can actually be really fun, and is a fantastic way to learn. If you can, get some practice with pairing before you begin doing coding interviews. If you have a mentor, pair with them. Otherwise, you can find opportunities to pair at hackathons and hack nights in your local area.

 

13. Set up a mock programming interview:Programming interviews are likely to be quite different to the interviews you took to get a job in your current career. They often involve coding challenges, writing pseudocode on a whiteboard, pair programming, and feedback on your code. Learn as much as possible about coding interviews by researching them online. Then practice them with a friend. Find a whiteboard and solve simple problems by writing your code on it. Get your friend to ask you common programming interview questions. It doesn’t matter if your friend is non-technical. The experience will really help when it is time for your real coding interview, as they can be a little intimidating at first!

 

14. Before test-driven development, practice error-driven development:Errors will be your constant companion when learning to code. You’ll be breaking stuff all the time, and will be face a lot of error messages. As once non-technical people, error messages can be scary. Before learning to code, they may have meant that you wrecked your computer while installing a game, or bricked a phone while trying to unlock it. An important mindset when programming, however, is to see error messages as helpful.

When many developers encounter an error message, they react a little like they’ve been slapped on the hand, quickly navigating away from the browser or shell window and peering at the code they  just wrote, trying to figure out what might have made the computer so angry. In most cases, the computer is already telling us, via the error message it just printed, but we need to slow down and read it before we can reap the benefits.

Jeff Cohen, an instructor at my coding bootcamp, encouraged us to practise error-driven development. This method goes beyond slowing down to read error messages, and instead, lets a succession of errors guide you forward in your development. Call a method that doesn’t exist, see a ‘no method’ error, and then write the code to bring that method into existence. Reference a view that doesn’t exist, see a ‘no view’ error, and then create the view. Errors are not to be feared, in fact, they can guide you and help you build your skill as a software developer. Just try to avoid errors in the final product!

 

15. Learn about and practice test-driven development (at least a little bit): Once you’re comfortable with error-driven development, test-driven development is the next step in your learning. Test-driven development is a sought after skill in the industry, and familiarity with it is a requirement to get hired at some software companies. It’s the practice of writing code to ‘test’ how your program behaves, and to drive out a better design for your program. If you’ve ever added some functionality to a program, only to have it break something else that was previously working, this is one of the things that test-driven development (often abbreviated as TDD) can help with!

Few programming resources for beginners focus on TDD, mainly because it can be a difficult concept to teach. When you aren’t sure how to write good tests, it can feel more difficult than writing code. You may encounter a situation where you know exactly how to write the code that will solve a problem, but designing a test around it takes an hour because you’re not sure of the appropriate way to exercise the code with a test. Learning TDD will slow you down at first, but you’ll be repaid with confidence – confidence that your programs work, and confidence that if you break something, you’ll know immediately. Tests are an incredibly useful safety net for junior developers.

You don’t need to be an expert at testing, but some familiarity with TDD will put you ahead of many other junior applicants, especially those coming from traditional Computer Science backgrounds where test-driven development is still not always taught. Bonus points if you can eventually articulate the difference between a mock and a stub.

We hope you have found these tips useful and will have hopefully broadened your knowledge on ways of becoming a software developer. Apply yourself! You don’t need to be a genius to get into software development. Just make sure you remain consistent with your practice and studies. Remember that you will hit barriers and most importantly remember to push through them and never give up. As previously mentioned, becoming a software developer is a challenging career path, but the resulting future prospects can be outstanding. You could find choosing to become a software developer might end up being one of the best decisions of your life. Good Luck!

If you considering a career in Software Development and would like to know more, be sure to get in contact with us here!

If you already have experience in Software Development and you are seeking new opportunities, make sure you check out our latest job role by clicking here!

-Natasha Postolovski

Could more Shropshire Jobs be on the way?

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Could more Shropshire Jobs be on the way at the i54 site whilst mystery firm eyes development over Shropshire border?

Scores of new Shropshire Jobs could be on the way after a mystery hi-tech manufacturing company put in an offer for a new factory on the i54 development site, on the Shropshire border.

Talks are “at an advanced stage”, said Noel Muscutt of property agents Bulleys.

“We are hoping to make an announcement fairly shortly,” he said.

If a deal for the site was agreed it would be “very good news for the area indeed”, Mr Muscutt added.

Details are currently being kept confidential while talks continue, but it would involve an advanced manufacturing company from outside the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire area creating Shropshire jobs.

Mr Muscutt said there had been very strong interest in the 15.5-acre site, close to the growing Jaguar Land Rover engine factory, since it went on the market late last year.

The site is one of the last patches of development land left on the 239-acre South Staffordshire i54 site, which is also home of aerospace factory Moog, testing firm Eurofins and stamp printer ISP.

The site is jointly owned by Wolverhampton Council, South Staffordshire Council and Staffordshire County Council. Last year they called in Halesowen-based industrial estate operator A & J Mucklow to develop and find tenants or buyers for the remaining plots.

It is proposing three advanced manufacturing factories for the 15 acres, of 40,800 sq ft, 74,800 sq ft and 160,000 sq ft. Bulleys and Cushman & Wakefield are the joint letting agents.

Mr Muscutt, from Bulleys, said the proposals were “very much indicative of how the site could look”, rather than concrete plans.

The actual factories will be built to the specifications of the manufacturing companies that move on to the site.

When Mucklow was brought in by the councils last year the company chairman, Rupert Mucklow, said: “We won’t be involved in speculative development. We will hope to attract companies looking for high quality industrial space, something bespoke, and working with them to develop buildings that fit their needs.”

The i54 site is already seeing major development work as JLR expands its engine plant, turning it into a £1 billion factory. It already makes four cylinder Ingenium diesel engines and production of petrol engines is due to start later this year.

A further project is almost doubling the size of the factory, which will extend from the M54 to the north to the Wobaston Road to the south. Building work is expected to be completed by next summer.

  • Shropshirestar

 

Interested in jobs within the Information Technology Industry? Be sure to check out our latest job opportunities by clicking here!

Considering an IT Career?

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Whether you are looking for your first job or are in need a career change, many people are opting to start an IT Career.

There are so many different IT Career routes you can explore, from software design right through to game testing. It helps that IT jobs are also currently high in demand, especially IT contractors and freelancers.

Careers in IT deal with the design, creation, management and maintenance of the varied components of the system, including software, hardware, networks, systems integration and multimedia. Broadly, information technology can be divided into four central pathways: network systems, information support and services, programming and software development, and Web and digital communication. Down each career avenue exist a huge amount of occupational opportunities, ranging from database administrator to computer systems engineer, digital media specialist to systems analyst.

Here is a list of starting pointers if you are new to the IT Industry and wondering how you can get onto the IT Career ladder.

  1. List the IT work you would be interested in.It is important to find a career you are passionate about. There are a large number of IT jobs available, so you should narrow down your choice in order to give yourself a specific focus.
  2. Network and apprenticeships.Get to know IT professionals in your area and learn how they have managed to establish themselves in the industry. You can also set up apprenticeships in order to gain valuable advice and guidance during your career move.
  3. Gain IT qualifications.Have a look in your local area for any educational opportunities that could give you an opportunity to achieve essential skills for your future career. Any professional certifications will highlight your knowledge and capabilities to future employers.
  4. Experience and internships.Of course, if you don’t want to go into education, you can gain your experience and skills from entry level positions or internships. A portfolio or CV demonstrating previous employment in the industry will also show your competence in the field, similar to IT qualifications.
  5. Constructing your CV.Your CV is often your first chance to show organisations your capability. Therefore, you should clearly pinpoint your relevant experience, skills and experience, and also highlight your enthusiasm for your chosen profession.

 

Sources:

– ComputerScienceOnline

– Parasol

Ford’s Self-Driving Car to arrive in 2021

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Ford has said it will mass-produce a fully autonomous self-driving car without a steering wheel by 2021.

The bold ambition was outlined by the Ford’s 27th president, Mark Fields, at an event in Palo Alto, California.

Ford said it would double its investment in its research centre in the city, as well as making sizable investments in technology companies in the autonomy industry.

The firm said the car would be in use by customers by 2021.

It said this was most likely as part of an Uber-like ride-sharing service – but one that doesn’t require a human driver.

“As you can imagine, the experience inside a vehicle where you don’t have to take control changes everything,” said Mr Fields, in an interview with the BBC.

“Whether you want to do work, whether you want entertainment… those are the types of things we are thinking about as we design the experience for this type of autonomous vehicle.”

The announcement, described as “transformational” by Mr Fields, signalled an era when Ford sees itself, particularly in cities, as a company that provides an ad-hoc service rather than focusing solely on selling the cars to the general public.

“There will be a growing per cent of the industry that will be fully autonomous vehicles,” Mr Fields said.

“Our goal is not only to be an auto company, but an auto and mobility company.”

 

 Level up

In recent years Ford has described itself as a technology company rather than simply a car maker, and on Tuesday it genuinely started to sound like one.

In partnership with Chinese firm Baidu, Ford has made a joint investment of $150m (£115m) in Velodyne – a company that works on light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology. LiDAR is the system used for accurately detecting objects around the car.

Ford was also part of an investment round that raised $6.6m for Civil Maps – a digital mapping company – as well as money put towards neuroscience research.

Tellingly, there was no mention of Google or Apple in Ford’s announcement – a suggestion it has opted to compete against the Silicon Valley giants rather than try and work with them as some had originally anticipated.

But Google still leads the way in self-driving technology – its cars have been out on public roads clocking up miles for several years now. It too is developing a car without a steering wheel – but regulations so far prevent that car from venturing beyond private land.

Like Google, Ford said it would be focusing on “Level 4” autonomy in reference to the standards put in place by the US-based Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).

The levels represent the sophistication of self-driving technology. At Level four – “high automation” – the car is able to operate, unmonitored, in a particular use case. For Ford, the use case would be a city area. Level 5 would mean full autonomy in any driving condition.

The company said it was not interested in offering Level two or three driving. Level two means some level of automation that requires the driver to monitor the car at all times.

 

 

Isolated Tesla

Tesla’s Autopilot, which changes lanes and monitors traffic flow, is officially Level two – although critics say human nature means drivers are instinctively treating Autopilot as if it were in fact Level three automation. Level three is when constant monitoring is not required, but drivers should be ready to take control in emergencies. Tesla’s technology is under investigation by US road safety regulators after it was blamed for causing the death of a driver earlier this year.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk defended the roll-out of Autopilot in a recent blog post:

“When used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability,” he wrote.

At its announcement, Ford chief technical officer Raj Nair said the company wasn’t satisfied that drivers could safely take control from a level two or three vehicle at a moment’s notice.

“We don’t yet know how to manage hand over back to the driver and have him engage and have him situationally aware, and be able to do that in a safe aware manner,” he said.

This approach chimes with the views of Google which in the past has expressed concern about the safety implications of semi-autonomous driving. It leaves Tesla, with Autopliot, isolated among auto makers.

“Tesla is unique in that it’s allowing its users to be beta testers,” said Wayne Cunningham, managing editor of motoring news website Road Show.

“No other company thinks that way.”

On Ford’s 2021 pledge, Mr Cunningham told the BBC it was a feasible goal but one that was intentionally narrow.

“It’s not as an aggressive step as it sounds,” he said.

“This is really a car designed for very specific urban environments. It’s a car that’s going to take people at 20-30 mph through city centres.”

 

– Dave Lee

Shrewsbury Development will see 400 new Shropshire Jobs

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400 new Shropshire Jobs will be created following development plan by major food company ABP.

More than 400 Shropshire Jobs are to be created by food giant ABP, with a £20 million investment at its operation in Shrewsbury.

The redevelopment of its site in Harlescott is the company’s latest vote of confidence in Shropshire.

Last year ABP completed a £30 million overhaul of its site at Hordley near Ellesmere.

ABP is already one of the biggest private sector employers in Shropshire, with 732 staff at the Battlefield Enterprise Park in Shrewsbury and more than 725 at Ellesmere. The new additions would take its total workforce to almost 1,900 in Shropshire.

ABP said there will also be a significant number of construction jobs generated during the project.

Its county operations supply beef to major customers across the country, with Sainsbury’s a key contract for the company.

The latest proposal is for a new retail meat packing building that ABP said will improve the existing Shrewsbury plant.

The new building will also include a dry goods store, employee amenities, canteen facilities and administration and staff offices.

But director Seamus Banim sounded one note of caution over the impact of Brexit on farmers in the UK.

“The vast majority of cattle coming to ABP Shrewsbury is sourced from farms within a 50-mile radius and it is our hope that this supply of quality British cattle will not be impacted in a post Brexit non CAP era,” he said.

A planning application for the development is expected to be made public in the next few days.

Councillor Malcolm Price, Shropshire Council’s portfolio holder for housing, said: “The comments we have received so far have mostly been positive. When it is completed it will be one of the most modern and efficient packing plants in Europe. All the equipment will be brand new, state-of-the-art.

“The good thing about the company is all the meat that goes into the site comes from within 50 miles of Shrewsbury.

“This is a major investment for Shropshire. It is significant employment and economic investment.

“In 15 years of being a councillor I have never heard a complaint against ABP. They are a very professional and well-run company. They have a great reputation.”

– Shropshirestar

 

For more information on Shropshire Jobs, check out our latest job vacancies on our website by clicking here!

HTC to launch its own Virtual Reality app store

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HTC is launching Viveport, an alternative to the Steam catalog of Vive virtual reality experiences, worldwide this autumn.

Viveport was announced earlier this year, and it launched in China — where Steam is a much less established platform — in the spring. Now, a global developer beta will launch soon, followed by a full rollout. Developers can register today on the Vive site.

The store is supposed to be a more general-interest alternative than the more gaming-focused Steam, and it will be available across multiple platforms: desktop; a mobile app; and an in-VR catalog connected to Vive Home, a virtual environment created by HTC. “We believe virtual reality is going to change the world,” says HTC Vive senior vice president Rikard Stelber, and Viveport is supposed to make it easier to find certain categories of VR that have broad appeal, like educational experiences, shopping, and creative tools.

Steam already offers a large non-gaming catalog. Besides general-purpose desktop software and traditional films, it offers a diverse range of VR titles, like the Tilt Brush painting program and an Apollo 11 educational experience. At the same time, the platform is overwhelmingly associated with games, and with thousands of VR and non-VR titles, it’s increasingly crowded. “We’re recommending developers to publish on all platforms,” says Stelber, including Steam. “We don’t necessarily want to compete with it, we basically want to add additional categories.” Viveport will offer a new, dedicated space to showcase VR experiences.

It’s less clear why consumers would go to Viveport instead of the extremely popular Steam, which they’ll already have to launch to use the Vive. HTC said in January that Viveport was “more of an option for people who can’t use Steam,” although Stelber says it’s since seen a lot of interest that justifies a larger release. The best argument for Viveport may be that Steam is confusingly overstuffed with products and features already, and a dedicated VR store would make the Vive easier to navigate — which, for a powerful but often difficult platform, is a good thing.

– Adi Robertson

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