Programming

17326 readers

250 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

snowe@programming.dev

Ategon@programming.dev

MaungaHikoi@lemmy.nz

105

I need help getting back into development (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 2 months ago by jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org to c/programming@programming.dev

52 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A little background: Through my teens in the 90's I did a lot of the things you may expect. I was a script kiddie on mIRC, made a tank game in Unreal Engine, and did some Quake modding. From 2002-2004 I landed a job doing Java web dev, SQL, and overall database administration because my father's friend needed someone that could do that. I was ok at the job, but not great. Being young, my hobby that turned into a 9-5 made me want to stab my eyes out and I quit.

With that said, I can understand a lot of what's going on, but it doesn't "click" anymore. I spent 20 years as a career machinist, but I physically can't do that anymore. Here's the rub - my twin brother is a brittle diabetic and can't work (lots of other stuff going on as well), and our mother is getting old (father passed this year). The only reasonable way forward that I can see in order to be able to support my brother is trying to get back into development.

When I stopped, subversion was what we used. I'm trying to understand Git, but it's a giant conceptual leap. I guess, what I'd like to hear from you all is a way to jump back in as quickly as possible in such a way that it may be a career.

Thanks

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Deckweiss@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You can either decide by what is currently in demand in the industry and then pick a project that you can exercise that language with or you can think of a project you'd like to do and then go by what the best language is for a given project.

In the end, languages are just like different wrenches. First you have to learn how to use a wrench, size or features don't matter much at this point (unless you already know that you want to become an expert with one particular wrench).

I think starting a new project is way easier than contributing to an existing one.