Hi, everyone. This post is about how I went from non-professional to programmer, and it’s included in my new album, “Career Talk,” which will be followed by posts on careers and career development.
one
In the hot summer of 2013, millions of college entrance examination students rushed to their long-cherished college campuses. Students with excellent grades planned to show their talents in the new battlefield, while students with poor grades were glad that their helpless and painful days were finally liberated.
Choosing schools and majors is a difficult problem, especially my family “the first college students”, there is no a senior stepping on the colorful clouds to tell you, what schools to choose, choose what major.
I chose XX University of Finance and Economics, thinking that those who deal with money must not be bad enough, and those who engage in finance sound more awesome. How cent is not quite enough, can not enter the school the most cattle forced financial major. Then hit devious tactics, chose a “electronic commerce” major, be a computer and finance are reluctant to touch the hybrid major of the edge. So that later in the interview, the interviewer asked me suspiciously: Does your major have anything to do with computer major? I could only answer him weakly: “it is a computer related major…”
At first, LIKE most of my classmates, I was somewhat resistant to writing codes, especially in the big environment of The University of Finance and Economics, where everyone would think that learning financial knowledge is the most important, and computers are only used to assist our big finance.
I also didn’t like programming at that time, thinking: such a lot of English, dizzy, complicated and boring. What is the significance and value of learning Java as a freshman, typing code for a long time, printing out a “Hello world”, or calculating a few rabbits and chickens?
“Interest is the best teacher for a person.” Because I am not interested in computer, I did not do well in the few basic courses related to computer in university. Of course, most of my classmates were the same as me.
two
When I was a sophomore, I successively participated in some competitions of the university, many of which were entrepreneurship competitions. At this time reflects the importance of programming, several of the college’s more famous programming legs have been booked by other teams, Wolf meat less.
I thought, isn’t it programming? So put a gun on the horse, copy “Java language introduction” began to learn. “Programming is hard when you don’t know it. When you do, it’s harder than you think.”
Later, the competition did not do so well, but learned a little programming skills, became a programming leg, but also to write code this thing slowly some understanding.
The turning point came in the first semester of junior year. At that time, everyone was thinking about what to do after graduation, some chose to continue their studies, some chose employment. As a major of learning everything, what you choose to do after graduation is quite important.
At that time, BAT (then referring to Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) was in its heyday, and the ranking of programmers’ graduation salaries was also steadily rising. It was also at this time that I made up my mind to learn programming well and regard it as my future livelihood.
three
At that time, there was an elective course on programming, and the teacher who taught it was one of the teachers in the information Center who was responsible for making our school website. So after the first class, I went to the teacher and said, Can I come to the information center and help you build your website?
The teacher agreed to let me start from the front end, when there is no class. But I didn’t know anything about the front end, and it had nothing to do with Java. It was a whole other area. But the opportunity to exercise was rare, so I spent two days that weekend catching up on the basics of the front end by reading books, and began to learn as I went along.
Frankly, the front end is a lot friendlier than the back end, because you can see how your application works, and with a little bit of code, you can create a button, a table in the browser.
After doing this for a period of time, plus continuous learning, I have become more and more proficient in front-end writing. With HTML, CSS, JS, BootStrap and Jquery, I can basically create beautiful pages, and even “responsive” layouts depending on the size of the screen.
Later, I gradually found that programming is a very fulfilling thing. I gradually learned that all websites, apps and software are written by lines of code. The front end is responsible for rendering the interface, and the back end is responsible for processing the logic. It was during this process that I began to understand the importance of the back end and began to look at Java in a different way to understand Web services.
There were not many courses in my junior year. I had prepared well when I selected courses in the second semester of my sophomore year. The courses were all concentrated, so I had some time for a whole block. Later, I was lucky enough to find an internship opportunity in a small company. The boss promised me that I could only work 4 days a week, and I could leave early for 2 days because there were more classes at 6 PM.
It was a busy and fulfilling time. I had to get up at six o ‘clock in the morning, set off from the school gate at 6:30, took bus and subway, and got to the company for nearly two hours. If you have classes in the evening, come back just in time for them; If there is no class, the dormitory is basically around 10 o ‘clock. While taking the bus or subway, watching video lessons online on my phone, I feel like I’m learning something new and making progress every day.
At the beginning, I was still doing the front end, but I really started to contact with commercial projects, doing some foreign exchange related websites. At that time, the company did not have a professional front end, are back-end part-time, write JSP. Many of the back-end end do not like to write front-end, feel that the style adjustment is very troublesome, so the front-end writing work is basically handed over to us several interns.
My colleagues and boss all think that the front end is relatively simple, and the really important things are in the back end. Let me learn more about the back end. It was also because of this internship experience that I eventually became a back-end programmer instead of a front-end programmer.
Also during this period, I started to write the first version of my personal blog website, which was made by JSP and BootStrap. This personal website later gave me a lot of help in my job hunting and job-hopping, and became one of my personal highlights.
While learning the front-end, do their own work well, while not giving up the back-end learning, but this time is more about learning the use of the framework. Usually is to go to work, class; Weekends are spent in the library reading books and writing code. In this way, the internship ended soon, and it was the summer vacation of the junior year.
four
Instead of looking for another internship during my junior summer, I did two things.
I wanted to have an internship in an Internet company, but I did not pass the written test after applying for internships in several large Internet companies. I looked at it. Big companies pay more attention to the basics, like networks and algorithms. Feel their strength is not enough, did not continue to throw.
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Still in school students, must pay attention to the basic knowledge of computer, such as JVM, network, operating system, algorithm, this is very important!!
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The first thing I did was to go to a cooperative university in Thailand with my teachers and develop an APP for half a month. I was mainly responsible for the back end. About a dozen of my fellow students were all top students with excellent grades, and I was the only one chosen because OF my actual programming project experience…
The project went well, and I got what I wanted, a trip to Thailand, a good project experience, and a bunch of interesting student friends with good grades.
The second thing is that after I came back from Thailand, I rented a house near my school to catch up on basic computer knowledge and prepare for autumn admission. At that time, I was quite confident, after all, I had some practical project experience, and ALSO learned for a period of time, it should be easy to find a job.
But reality slapped me in the face. Reported ali and netease autumn recruit, still stopped at the written test. Found that the difficulty of the written test is higher than the practice of a file, especially programming that piece, can not write out. At that time, I felt very confused, who can join BAT talent ah, do they know these things??
In fact, calm down and think about it, they are all top computer students with excellent results, why can I learn a few months to be like them? But I also took some detours. No one told me what I should learn. No one told me that I should brush some interview questions and read some interviews.
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You can also practice your programming skills. Niuke.com and LeetCode are great platforms to practice your skills.
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Frustrated, I spent the first semester of my senior year looking for a job. As our university is a university of Finance and Economics, most of the job fairs held in our university are held by XX Bank or XX Securities Company. Other people want to recruit programmers, basically will not come to our school, and our school to learn programming is not much, the whole college after graduation to engage in programming, both hands count over.
So I have to pay attention to the recruitment of Sichuan University and University of Electronic Science and technology. I often go there by bus to hand in my resume and interview, which is more than an hour one-way. There are several offers, but they are not satisfied with them. I want to find an Internet company, but I find that the threshold is relatively high, and I am not a professional training, so people don’t look at it at all.
Looking for a job is really tired, but the investment company is not many, also more than ten bar.
five
In the end, there are not many choices, not many offers, even fewer in Chengdu. I had no choice but to sign a contract with a large outsourcing company and had an internship for about two months in winter vacation. The only three code writers in our class went together as a team, so it was a bit of an afterthought.
When I returned home for the Spring Festival, I was surprised to receive a phone call from a state-owned enterprise I had interviewed before, asking if I would consider going there for internship.
In fact, this state-owned enterprise has passed the interview before, but because the tripartite contract can only be signed once, and the previous outsourcing company is not willing to quit the tripartite, the withdrawal will have to wait until May; And at that time state-owned enterprise also is proud jiao, say must want tripartite ability to come to practice. It may be that later recruitment is not very smooth, so it said that we can go to the internship, after may make up the third party.
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Here advice has not graduated friends, do not so easy to sign three parties, can drag drag, because three parties to change up is very troublesome, the school side will have some resistance.
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It was like a beam of light! State-owned enterprises of course sweet ah, salary treatment and development prospects with outsourcing companies are not a level. So xiao resigned and transferred to a state-owned enterprise as an intern. After graduation, xiao successfully joined the company.
six
A few last words. Many friends who have never been in touch with programming, heard that programmer salary is ok, so blindly sign up for classes or self-study want to change careers.
What can I say? Being a programmer is tiring. Internet companies basically work overtime, and you have to find time to keep learning, and if you’re not interested in it, you can’t get far. Besides, any industry you have done a good job of it is great, programmers really not sweet!!
Today’s share is almost there, almost the university about learning programming experience is also summed up almost. In fact, the summary is finished, I still feel some regret, although I tried hard, but I did not find the company I really want to work for when I graduated.
But the good news is, time will see your efforts, and one day, it will return to you.
The next issue of this album to share “more than two years after graduation, from state-owned enterprises to Ali, what have I experienced?” Stay tuned ~
About the author
Wechat public number: made up a process
Personal website: https://yasinshaw.com
Pseudonym Yasin, a programmer with depth, attitude and warmth. After work to share programming technology and life, if you like my article, you can easily “follow” the public account, also welcome to “forward” to share with your friends ~
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