February 2, 2013 at 14:40One and a half years of life under the sign of IT. As a manager to manager
Three years of work in a telecommunications company as an analyst brought me closer to a computer than ever. Co strict "you" we switched to "you". Every day, we had to expand the tools with which we needed to create more sophisticated and subtle analytical reports. A mobile operator is a company, the basis of which is subscribers and their calls, and, consequently, money. Analytical studies demanded an increasingly serious approach, ready-made reports and samples prepared by the IT service ceased to satisfy interests and cover inquiries. The beginnings of VBA, SPSS, MS Access with simple self-mastered SQL queries came to the rescue. By the end of the third year of work, communication with IT completely ceased to frighten, on the contrary, it began to attract - they spoke and did clearly and accurately, without blurring in the lyrics, magical actions took place on their monitors,
For the first time in four years since graduation, I wanted to study. The choice fell on the paid annual courses of the comprehensive program "Software Development" at the Institute of Information Technology, created and flourishing under the wing of a local very large IT company. Friends, acquaintances, colleagues twisted a finger at the temple, seeing my preparation for training - for admission it was necessary to pass an English test at least at the level of everyday conversation. Well, my French didn’t fit into this condition and had to sit down for a training manual on the basis of communication, open on the open spaces of the network. Colleagues escorted the whole world to the exam - no one had any illusions and everyone secretly hoped that I would change my mind and not hang an annual yoke around my neck.
However, English was successfully passed with just one mistake, the application for transferring work time was written and study began 3-5 times a week from 18 to 21. The first subject was language C. It must be said that some students refused to study immediately after the first lecture . I will not deny that among people with programming skills who came to pump their skills, several newcomers from scratch felt extremely uncomfortable. A woman teacher, an excellent person, a programmer and a teacher, worked wonders: she talked about C, showed wonderful presentations, and immediately in Visual Studio she drew enchanting lists of numbers and an ASCII code conversion program. After the first lecture, Visual Studio was soon installed on the laptop at home, and the first “Hello, World!” Was written with trembling hands.
I will never forget these mystical lines of code:
What started later was something creepy and unimaginable - the thick books of Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie settled in the house, the words “array”, “memory”, “cell”, “discharge” were filled with new meaning, and homework firmly settled a laptop on which in their free time the tasks of falling and signaling a bomb, sorting, pizza boxes and placing people in the theater hall were solved, giving out endless error and warning after compilation. The work almost did not leave time for classes and successes were modest, however, the desire did not go anywhere and all the New Year holidays from January 1 to 10 were spent on solving problems and reading books on language C, which was successfully passed in mid-January. But, as it turned out, feeling God was clearly early.
The architecture of PCs and networks, Assembler, design fundamentals dragged deeper and deeper, revealing new knowledge and plunging into a world that is not like the world of an economist and analyst. And then Unix began ... Frightening and incomprehensible during the first two classes, he became a true friend and assistant for almost the whole year: the pseudo-terminal, command line, a bit of Bash became native and familiar interfaces. Now the computer is no longer a machine - it has become a friend. At that moment, it was still impossible to know how tightly I would make friends with the command line. Then there was Java (alas, they gave it a bit weak for objective reasons, however), UML and patterns, English, C ++, Python and Shell. Then the time came for sharing in the library of Straustrup and Schildt, subsequently thoroughly ground. If C ++ scared, repelled and made you wake up at night,
By the time of comprehension, Python and C ++ had to leave the work of the analyst - the world has changed, the company has changed. The search for work, kind people and chance led me to the very organization where my training center was, as a testing engineer. It was then that it became clear why they had studied the previous 7 months. Neither the black-and-white terminal, nor virtual machines, nor Python scripts, nor vim, nor the OSI protocol stack scared - the work was difficult, but very understandable. Six months after the tester’s keyboard, they flew by like one day, the skills were pumped, and the training came to an end. The diploma was written heavily, under Unix and in C ++ - with the help of a friend-programmer, Habr, books and hundreds of forums of programmers. The program for sending SMS from a USB modem was created and successfully protected in English. A proud certificate now adorns my apartment.
The ending of the story is sad. Having left the position of an engineer for a number of reasons not related to the work itself, I managed to find a new, interesting and very attractive job for me in the field of advertising, marketing and commerce, but again in the IT company that produces interesting products.
Of course, it is impossible to become a programmer in a year, especially when this profession is not to your liking. But the years 2011-2012 became for me the moment when the understanding of important things came. Here, on Habré, there are many managers, businessmen and other "non-technical" specialists close to the IT sphere. And I want to tell them about the conclusions made:
Let your life change in something and it will answer you with pleasant surprises and perspectives. Do not spare time and money, do not spare yourself - time will pass and you will see that it has not been wasted. Well, otherwise - fatal exception error.
For the first time in four years since graduation, I wanted to study. The choice fell on the paid annual courses of the comprehensive program "Software Development" at the Institute of Information Technology, created and flourishing under the wing of a local very large IT company. Friends, acquaintances, colleagues twisted a finger at the temple, seeing my preparation for training - for admission it was necessary to pass an English test at least at the level of everyday conversation. Well, my French didn’t fit into this condition and had to sit down for a training manual on the basis of communication, open on the open spaces of the network. Colleagues escorted the whole world to the exam - no one had any illusions and everyone secretly hoped that I would change my mind and not hang an annual yoke around my neck.
However, English was successfully passed with just one mistake, the application for transferring work time was written and study began 3-5 times a week from 18 to 21. The first subject was language C. It must be said that some students refused to study immediately after the first lecture . I will not deny that among people with programming skills who came to pump their skills, several newcomers from scratch felt extremely uncomfortable. A woman teacher, an excellent person, a programmer and a teacher, worked wonders: she talked about C, showed wonderful presentations, and immediately in Visual Studio she drew enchanting lists of numbers and an ASCII code conversion program. After the first lecture, Visual Studio was soon installed on the laptop at home, and the first “Hello, World!” Was written with trembling hands.
I will never forget these mystical lines of code:
#include
int main ()
{
printf ("Hello, World!\n");
return 0;
}
What started later was something creepy and unimaginable - the thick books of Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie settled in the house, the words “array”, “memory”, “cell”, “discharge” were filled with new meaning, and homework firmly settled a laptop on which in their free time the tasks of falling and signaling a bomb, sorting, pizza boxes and placing people in the theater hall were solved, giving out endless error and warning after compilation. The work almost did not leave time for classes and successes were modest, however, the desire did not go anywhere and all the New Year holidays from January 1 to 10 were spent on solving problems and reading books on language C, which was successfully passed in mid-January. But, as it turned out, feeling God was clearly early.
The architecture of PCs and networks, Assembler, design fundamentals dragged deeper and deeper, revealing new knowledge and plunging into a world that is not like the world of an economist and analyst. And then Unix began ... Frightening and incomprehensible during the first two classes, he became a true friend and assistant for almost the whole year: the pseudo-terminal, command line, a bit of Bash became native and familiar interfaces. Now the computer is no longer a machine - it has become a friend. At that moment, it was still impossible to know how tightly I would make friends with the command line. Then there was Java (alas, they gave it a bit weak for objective reasons, however), UML and patterns, English, C ++, Python and Shell. Then the time came for sharing in the library of Straustrup and Schildt, subsequently thoroughly ground. If C ++ scared, repelled and made you wake up at night,
By the time of comprehension, Python and C ++ had to leave the work of the analyst - the world has changed, the company has changed. The search for work, kind people and chance led me to the very organization where my training center was, as a testing engineer. It was then that it became clear why they had studied the previous 7 months. Neither the black-and-white terminal, nor virtual machines, nor Python scripts, nor vim, nor the OSI protocol stack scared - the work was difficult, but very understandable. Six months after the tester’s keyboard, they flew by like one day, the skills were pumped, and the training came to an end. The diploma was written heavily, under Unix and in C ++ - with the help of a friend-programmer, Habr, books and hundreds of forums of programmers. The program for sending SMS from a USB modem was created and successfully protected in English. A proud certificate now adorns my apartment.
The ending of the story is sad. Having left the position of an engineer for a number of reasons not related to the work itself, I managed to find a new, interesting and very attractive job for me in the field of advertising, marketing and commerce, but again in the IT company that produces interesting products.
Of course, it is impossible to become a programmer in a year, especially when this profession is not to your liking. But the years 2011-2012 became for me the moment when the understanding of important things came. Here, on Habré, there are many managers, businessmen and other "non-technical" specialists close to the IT sphere. And I want to tell them about the conclusions made:
- No need to be afraid to learn. Never. And it's never too late. Any training, especially with the elements of self-learning, is a tremendous growth, moral and intellectual, and for someone, career growth.
- No need to look at IT specialists / system administrators / programmers as crazy geeks. These people create what you sell or manage, they ensure that networks and devices work, develop ideas and drive progress. It is they.
- You cannot become a programmer in a year, but you can learn to think differently. The software / hardware with which you work will cease to be for you primitive frightening magical things and you will no longer think that “glitches” and “features” arise because the program lives on its own.
- Selling and managing is easier when you know the item. When you look at software / hardware from the point of view of an IT specialist, you yourself, to your surprise, find such competitive advantages that will turn gray, sorry for taftology, your competitors. You just understand what you are working with. This is cool, believe me.
- Do not think that you will learn everything online. Yes, there are such nuggets, but you should not be presumptuous - live communication with a teacher who is ready to endlessly approach you and rule your own crooked code with your own hands cannot be replaced with anything. This is an experience.
- Sooner or later, you will still write a tiny script to facilitate your work. Or maybe create something new and open your own business?
- Learn English if you have not already.
Let your life change in something and it will answer you with pleasant surprises and perspectives. Do not spare time and money, do not spare yourself - time will pass and you will see that it has not been wasted. Well, otherwise - fatal exception error.