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Comment by jlebrech | Hacker News Reader

don't go into web.

try embedded or game development, the caveat to learning any code is that someone will offer you money to do web.

Hmmm... for a guy without CS background, I guess going embeded is the most complex thing he can possibly do. Sure, there is a whole lot of money there, but is a niche thing; and in my opinion, it's a market for "ture hackers", not someone who is starting programming to see how it goes. Writing assembly or plain C code (in some cases, without using the std lib) is way harder than writing ruby/python/JS, etc....

Really? Do you have any data supporting your claim?

I thought that web programming (e.g. ruby/python/php + JS + html/css/etc.) had way higher ROI because the learning curve is much lower and the market is way larger.

no, it's only advice.

I oh-so-vigorously disagree. Building web sites is the fastest way to get a return on your learning investment. Plus there's tons of mature tech out there to learn, and plenty of educational material.

really? i often see people warning others to stay away from game development, as i often hear that it favors college grads and churns through they by pushing the boundaries of burnout and high expectations.

I do think that its partially because game dev is probably one of the more fun types of programming, and because of this the market has become flooded with people wanting to develop games.

As for embedded, is that something that someone with little funds is capable of doing on their own? are we talking about doing some arduino projects and then getting a junior embedded dev role? or what does that path look like?

With games its pretty straightforward at least, a single person could reasonably make a small game, and thats probably a reasonable basis on which hiring decisions could be influenced, but im not sure what the path for an embedded developer would be

Thanks for your input!

I'd learn VHDL or C, golang or rust.

I think something with an easy learning curve like web, gets harder before it get's interesting.

A real language starts hard and stays that way.

and there's always fresh blood nipping at your heels in web, and you'll get frustrated at frameworks and not being able to upgrade the latest or greatest.

if you design for embedded or a game (something indie) you can start a fresh with new libraries and new outlook.

in web you'll encounter technical debt more quickly.

If you want to do web anyway, I suggest coding with other stuff in your spare time.

I dont think web is the best way to go for most people either, its certainly not what i would do, though it does seem easy on the surface, i suspect getting a junior webdev role involves more than knowing how to write a header and title in html and maybe a few css stylesheets.

What do you think about backend dev, or devops type roles? would you expect them to start in frontend and move towards backend as they get experience, or should they start out from scratch and jump into SQL and python/java/ruby?

Or would mobile development be the way to go? learn swift or java and jump into creating some popular app clones in your github?

try ios or android, there's less cruft and actual code.

you won't have to context switch as much and you can focus on what you're learning.

do you want to code or tweak markup and push pixels to the left then be my guest.

I dont mean to disagree i was hoping you would expand a bit on how specifically to get into an embedded career

learn VHDL and get an FPGA kit, think of a use case and create something.

or find VHDL code on github and contribute to their code.

I see your point, CSS and HTML seems very easy and childish after you played with RTL and FPGA.

but finding a job in FPGA is very hard, the entry level job position doesn't exist! I with a MS in Computer Engineering and a very complex project (image processing on FPGA) couldn't find a job in industry and switched to web!

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