It's finished!

Dossier

• Who: Dmitry Kirsanov
• Worked as: regional representative (sales manager) in an IT company
• Age at the start of training: 30
• Place of residence: Lviv, Ukraine
• First job as a programmer: 8 months after the start of training
• Original success story

You can’t pull a fish out of a pond without difficulty... This is the first thing that comes to mind whenever I remember myself, standing at the beginning of an interesting journey into the world of a developer.

Studies

It all started at the end of March 2014 . I just turned 30 . Then I worked as a regional representative for an IT services company . The work was mainly related to hardware. I had never encountered programming in my life before. The deteriorating economic situation in the country, hatred of the work of a “ sales person ” and the understanding that, if not now, then never again, all this served as a powerful kick in the ass. I started my training with a big mistake: for some reason I tried to understand something in Donald Knuth’s Magnum opus , namely, in the first volume of the book “The Art of Programming.” I don’t want to offend anyone, the book is really titled and all that, but it is not intended for “average” minds. So I moved on. Why did I choose Java ? To be honest, I have no idea! Apparently, insight came from somewhere. After I decided, a long search began on which Internet resource to draw knowledge from, until I came across this unique project! Here, more than anywhere else, the balance that is necessary for true self-education is maintained. On other projects that I met during my studies, where you can see similar “ tricks ” with practical tasks and instant checks, I did not have the feeling that I was straining too much to solve the problem.

“Here, every replenishment of black matter was accompanied by wild delight and the desire to continue.”

I only completed 20 levels . This was enough for me to get better at it and not be afraid to start writing code for new tasks. From the end of May to the beginning of August, I diligently began to study theoretical material. I almost read Eckel’s “Philosophy of Java” and subscribed to a bunch of different video lessons.

Sending out resumes and interviews

Resumes should be sent to all companies where possible. As for the questions, during the interview they can ask you anything from the corresponding section of Java Rush (LINK) . They may also ask how to write some kind of elementary select query for the database. There is a lot in the “ translations ” section info.javarush.ru/blog/translation/ . But articles on Java 8 have never been useful; for some reason I didn’t hear a single question on this topic during interviews. But for general development you can read it. There are questions that overlap with the topics of version 8 ( for example, the question of multiple inheritance, etc. ) - this is where you can earn extra points by showing the interviewer that you keep up with the times and know the nuances associated with interfaces in Java 8. I also highly recommend an excellent resource for preparing for interviews: www.quizful.net/interview/java

Courses and success

Many large IT companies provide free courses for beginner programmers. However, for them you need to have a certain ( and rather large ) knowledge base. At a certain point, I already decided that I would try to qualify for these courses in the group of Java developers. And here again it was impossible to do without Java Rush !

“Articles about interview questions and similar educational collections helped me a lot (see point above). In short, I passed the selection. This was my first big victory! My God, how happy I was then!”

The main thing at such moments is not to let yourself relax! By the way, I think it’s important to mention that out of 10 people in the group there were two more guys who started learning Java with Java Rush . At the courses, a thick bouquet of new technologies unknown to me was waiting for me, such as Spring , Hibernate , JavaScript , relational databases and much more. My knowledge base grew exponentially. It was an amazing 3 months . Well, happy ending ... Today is the second week that I have been working as a Java developer in one of the largest IT companies in the country. I wish everyone success! Never give up!

PS:

It’s difficult in the IT field without English ; you need to know it at least at the pre-intermediate level. Although, some companies, if you show good technical knowledge and seem promising to them, are ready to invest their resources in you and improve your level. I don’t know, though, whether it’s free or with some kind of discount... In our group, 3 people took English classes at the same time.