After my first week of having a real job, this is what I’ve learned.

1. I am not the great programmer I thought I was. This isn’t at all a bad thing though. As it turns, I have a lot to learn. Getting an education is a nice touch and something to put on resumes, but it does little in the way of actually preparing you for work life. I have personally learned that there is a large chasm between developing small programs working with one algorithm at a time and being able to develop something that is marketable and an actual product. Even my own side projects that I’ve taken on over the years are small and simple in comparison to developing an actual product. I think it’s also important to note here that in a real production environmdent you’re working with more than one language at a time. So it might be nice to know the depth of Java, it’s also important to be able to pick up other languages quickly and be able to see how they integrate with what your working with.

2. Microsoft is a lot cooler than I’ve been told to believe. Yes, Windows 8 still sucks. Yes, Microsoft as a company doesn’t seem to have a real clear direction. But behind all of those things that Microsoft does wrong that you hear about most frequently, they do a lot of things right. Microsoft Visual Studio is cool, plain and simple. Sure it’s just an IDE but it’s literally one of the best for developing Microsoft programs, and a lot of companies, believe it or not, are developing Microsoft programs. ( On a side note, the other IDE that I really like is NetBeans which is great for developing almost anything with and Sublime Text, which sure is technically just a text editor, but it’s so damn slick looking ). C# is also a really nice language and easy to pick up if you already know a little Java or some other Class Object language.

3. The company you work for is important. It’s a rare environment where people can have fun and get work done at the same time, which I think is one of the biggest differences between working with a small company or a large corporation. Small companies are lean, which as a software developer is important, and can get away from all the corporate bullshit. Now I don’t know what being a software developer for a large corporation is like, but I know one thing and it’s that I am for sure not working for the man.

Word of the day:

effete

Quote of the day:

If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse

-credited to Henry Ford (on the usefulness of R&D)