James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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Does anyone else struggle to keep up with the latest technologies?
I guess it depends on how passionate you are about development, I'm a .Net developer and I seem to find my skill set constantly out of date.
I'm doing some interview prep at the moment and I'm trying to learn LINQ which is a huge topic and unless you use it day in day out, you are likely to have only scratched the surface.
Then there's stuff like lambda expressions, which companies expect you to know inside out when in reality all it does is cut down the amount of code you write, which in turn makes the code less readable.
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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FYI - .Net developers, this article is good:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/47887/C-Delegates-Anonymous-Methods-and-Lambda-Expressio
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Nismo
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Registered: 12th Sep 02
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I don't think its just related to software, all aspects of IT.
Anything relating to web development and you have to constantly be ahead of the game.
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ed
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Registered: 10th Sep 03
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Trying to keep up with current web dev trends is a bit  - you constantly feel a bit dumb 
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Sam
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Registered: 24th Dec 99
Location: West Midlands
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I'm currently learning Objective-C for Mac and iOS development, in the short period of time I've been learning it I've had to learn at least two different (new) ways of doing certain things thanks to Apple.
As if learning Objective-C wasn't enough of a headfuck as it is.
Quote from Apple's website: "The Objective-C language is a simple computer language designed to enable sophisticated object-oriented programming." - simple my ass!
[Edited on 12-06-2012 by Sam]
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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How have you been earning those big bucks not knowing that stuff James?
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willay
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Organiser: South East, National Events
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Registered: 10th Nov 02
Location: Roydon, Essex
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^ Because you don't have to be a IT superstar to be in finance Paul. Not saying James is an idiot but I came across my fair share of IT monkeys that were smashing 40-50k because of the sector. In return you have to work your arse off, do extra hours, deal with cunts etc - and if you are lucky you can also get a fat bonus.
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DaveyLC
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Registered: 8th Oct 08
Location: Berkshire
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Best advice I could offer is keep your fingers the T-SQL pie.. Everyone loves a developer who is shit hot at SQL.
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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quote:
Originally posted by Paul_J
How have you been earning those big bucks not knowing that stuff James?
Blagging mostly. 
The thing is, it's not stuff you need to know to actually do development. LINQ for example, you don't need to use it, it just results in slightly neater code.
Also, most of my experience has been working on quite mature trading systems where most of the projects involve only writing a small amount of code.
In my experience, you only need to know stuff like LINQ, Lambda expressions, multi-threading etc for interviews. 9 times out of 10, you don't need to use it on the job.
Anyway I don't do dev anymore, I just interviewed for a dev role recently because I was desperate and it was a disaster 
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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quote:
Originally posted by willay
^ Because you don't have to be a IT superstar to be in finance Paul. Not saying James is an idiot but I came across my fair share of IT monkeys that were smashing 40-50k because of the sector. In return you have to work your arse off, do extra hours, deal with cunts etc - and if you are lucky you can also get a fat bonus.
I think that's changing. Banks are becoming more interested in high quality systems to give them a competitive edge. But it depends which area of banking you work in, some are a lot more competitive than others with regards to the kind of people they employ.
Top quality coders rarely come coupled with the kind of soft skills that allow them to work in a banking environment and gather requirements etc.
P.s. Most banking IT graduate schemes pay about £45k now
[Edited on 21-06-2012 by James]
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Ian
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Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
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See I read all that and wonder whether I could go there and do it.
On the one hand its all LINQ and delegates and Lambda and blah and on the other, have some documentation and soft skills - ie. not a cunt - and its fine.
No one would ever take me on though, over the hill and never had a real job. Sure I could do half the shit though right now, never mind when I've read a book for a few days.
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A2H GO
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Registered: 14th Sep 04
Location: Stoke
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Thats the thing, having worked in banking for 7 years and currently in IT, I've found there are two types of people, the developers who are shit hot coders but have zero people skills let alone the ability to gather requirements etc, then there's the people people who are highly organised, build project plans from the ground up, forecast resource, understand the full development life-cycle but can't write a line of code.
More often recently I'm seeing businesses looking for people who are experts at both, ie. Project Manager and a developer.
Lower down than that businesses also seem to be looking for non-developers with a specialist/advanced knowledge of Excel/Access/VBA/Sharepoint, given everyone nowadays has a fairly good understanding as standard. For example we've just made a load of people redundant and been left with a database that nobody can support as noone has a strong enough understanding of VBA or Access in order to maintain it or fix it if it breaks and this is a massive financial organisation.
[Edited on 21-06-2012 by A2H GO]
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James
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Registered: 1st Jun 02
Location: Surrey
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It's a really hard industry to break into, the market is already saturated with people with loads of banking experience.
The long hours is a bit of a myth too. There are probably a couple of banks where long hours are commonplace, but most just do 9 - 6 with extra hours required at critical times (most industries probably have that).
[Edited on 21-06-2012 by James]
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A2H GO
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Registered: 14th Sep 04
Location: Stoke
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Be lucky if any of the guys at our place do a full day
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