Hi all! My probationary period at my new job has ended, and now I can finally share my employment history. I am 22 years old, I have an economic education. Just a year ago (February - March) I did not have any programming skills, and I encountered Java only in games on old Siemens (in the form of a "powered by Java" welcome window when starting the game). A year ago I worked in the technical support department. I wouldn't say the work is bad or I don't like it, but it's not particularly interesting. And it turned out that at one point I thought - it would be nice to have a job that you didn’t go to with the feeling of “damn, I’m going to work again,” but that it brought pleasure. I thought - what would I do if I had, say, a year during which I didn’t necessarily have to earn money, and I could do whatever I wanted? The answer somehow came by itself - I would sit at home and learn to program. Then I decided that it was up to me. I understood that it would be difficult to learn programming from scratch, that this would be a temporary setback in my career (I had no doubt that the Junior Developer received less than I did at that job), but I took it as a step back in order to take two steps forward . OK. No sooner said than done. Since I had absolutely no understanding of programming languages, my first idea was to study the language that I had heard the most about (it was used to develop software in the company where I worked) - PHP. Okay, the girl talked me out of it. She suggested that in their company (developing mobile applications) androiders write in Java + their salary seems to be good. I googled and googled, thought about it and decided to learn Java. My first step was the traditional attempts to learn something new - arm yourself with books, master the theory, and go! This is how I got the book by Horstmann and Cornell - Java. Basics. It was March 2014. Generally speaking, all my life I have been desperately bad at studying things from books. This is probably due to which way of perception predominates in a person. I always really learned the material only after I had practically worked through it, consolidated it, and played with it. Therefore, my first attempts to learn JavaAccording to the book, they were doomed to failure. The book is good though. Somewhere in April I came across the JavaRush VKontakte group. Then everything went like it was on rails. Solving problems, lots of problems, accompanied by a little theory is clearly the optimal way to learn the material (at least for me). I sat at home, I sat at work and decided, decided, decided) It was then that I was further convinced that programming was interesting to me. I couldn't remember being so stuck on anything. Three months passed, during which I reached level 20. It seemed to me that further language learning would go much faster if you already got a job as a programmer - then you would be in this environment 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and you would develop extremely quickly. So in August I started sending out resumes. A couple of places sent me test assignments, as a result of which I did not receive any job offers - looking back, I am not surprised even once - I may have solved the task given, but what a bad coding style I had) B This, by the way, is a small minus of JavaRush - as long as the problem is solved and the tests are passed, the task is counted, although your code may leave much to be desired. It is enough to install the same Checkstyle plugin in Intellij IDEA, and the situation will be different - it will highlight “doubtful” points in the code, which will allow you to write not only working, but also beautiful, correct code. Be that as it may, in September I was called for the first interview. The vacancy contained approximately the following - a developer of any level, we will offer a salary corresponding to the skills. At this interview, the tasks were approximately as follows - a code fragment was given. Is it written correctly, and what problems might there be? I don't remember how many of them I got right. In general, it was necessary to remember about Null, almost all the questions were about it - that you should not access a method parameter without first checking it for (if param != null). Based on the results, I was offered to work for free for the first month (as an internship), then a salary that was lower (although not much) than at the place of work where I was. I understood well that I shouldn’t expect wonderful proposals, because I knew little theory, practiced only in JavaRush, zero experience, and so on. Therefore, I agreed that I would leave in 2 weeks (the right time to quit at my old place). At the same time, I submitted my resume to another company. This company offered the following:
2 months of Java EE training (2 times a week for 4 hours)
if you show good results (you successfully defend your project, which you have been writing for these two months), then you are offered a job.
The company is very good, foreign, well-known, and the working conditions are excellent - in short, I wanted to go there much more than the place where they had already made me an offer. Selection for training with her involved 3 stages:
Doing practical tasks at home.
If successful, you are invited to computer testing in the office.
If the test is successful, you will be interviewed on the same day.
I completed the practical tasks without any problems - many thanks to JavaRush and their problems, after which these tasks seemed quite simple. There were 3 tasks: on RegExp (Google helped, because I myself couldn’t stand them and didn’t remember), on algorithms (quite simple, more of a mental exercise) and on writing/reading from a file (there are a lot of these in the JavaRush course). I was invited to computer testing. I prepared for testing using the quizful website . These tests helped a lot, some questions even ended up intersecting. I passed the test successfully and they started interviewing me. I will probably never forget this interview in my life. All the person interviewing me wanted to hear from me was the basics of Java theory, such as:
what is the difference between checked exceptions and unchecked;
what methods does the Object class have and why are they needed;
what types of collections are there and why they are there;
and a little about multithreading.
JavaRush is an excellent course, it will teach you how to solve problems and program, but the theory (for interviews) needs to be learned separately, as I was convinced of by swimming in these issues like a fish in an aquarium. They wanted to wrap me up. I understand him - I couldn’t clearly answer almost anything, I tried to tell everything from the point of view of writing code, but he was interested in theory. But I knew for sure that I really wanted to get into this internship, and I knew that if they gave me time, I would catch up on all this and learn the unfortunate theory. I told him all this, and he met me halfway - he offered to meet again in a week, but for now he gave me a list of topics (approximately as I described above) and said where they can be learned - just an Oracle tutorial, it contains all: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/ Over the course of a week, I thoroughly studied this tutorial and went for a second interview the day before the day when I was expected at a new job. Apparently, the person who interviewed me was most impressed by my sense of purpose (I knew that if I accepted this internship, what happened next depended only on me - in two months I would have figured out everything I needed). Be that as it may, I accepted this internship and refused to go to work at the place where I was previously offered. Over the course of 2 months, we were introduced to many topics from Java EE, such as: Servlets, JSP, Hibernate JSF, Spring and much, much more - as a result of the internship, we were familiar (we had a rough idea) about the main stack of Java EE technologies. Also, during the internship, we wrote our own project, which at the end had to be successfully presented for employment. I just remember my first feelings when I was at the first lecture. I looked at the assignment for this project (it was given immediately at the very first lecture) and did not even understand where to start and how to do it. I also remember what it took me to successfully do it. These two months, almost all the thoughts in my head were that successful employment and the fulfillment of a dream were in my hands and nothing more. It didn’t depend on anyone else whether I could do it. Only from me. I had already quit my job, had almost no money, and it was really hard. I sat in the morning, sat during the day, sat in the evening, but never tired of rejoicing - I don’t remember when I devoted myself to something with such obsession. This time once again helped me realize how much I like programming and how much I would like to work in this field. At graduation I presented my project. I defended it really well, apparently much better than expected, and as an exception, I was hired not for the initial position, but immediately for the position of Middle Java Developer. It was December 9, 2014. I couldn't believe it, but the job offer was in front of me on my monitor. Software engineer. This happened. I went back to work on December 15th. Never once have I had the thought “damn, I don’t want to go to work.” Every day, leaving home in the morning, I know why I am going to work, what I will do, and how much I want it. This makes me incredibly happy. It is worth and was worth the price you had to pay to achieve your dream. I wish all of you who really want to be a programmer go ahead in achieving your goal. It is more than real, it is very close, but you have to pay for it. Pay with your wasted time and nerves, because learning something from scratch is really not the easiest step. JavaRush helped me take these first steps with ease, and I wasn't the one who turned away from programming at the very beginning because of the apparent complexity and abundance of theory. Thus, I was able to bring my rather crazy idea of a radical change in the field of professional activity (even in the absence of technical education) to the end. And you definitely can.
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