Ask HN: Inexperienced developer trying to get into serious development

Re:Ask HN: Inexperienced developer trying to get into seriou... by ammmir on Thursday February 03, 2011 @06:22PM (#2177462)

programming is all about learning. when i was in high school, i started my first open-source project, an smtp server, and put it up on sourceforge. it was the crappiest C i've ever written, and even djb (of qmail fame) sent me a mail about security bugs in it. it's been a talking point ever since.

if i was hiring, i'd want to see proof that the candidate built something. it doesn't need to be a huge open-source project. even some code that only you find a use for, is better than not having any code out there.

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Re:Ask HN: Inexperienced developer trying to get into seriou... by ICanDoMore on Thursday February 03, 2011 @06:52PM (#2177583)

I put something on Sourceforge while at uni and it pulled in thousands of downloads. It works but it looks a bit naff now, should I have a really polished product in my portfolio?

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Re:Ask HN: Inexperienced developer trying to get into seriou... by ammmir on Thursday February 03, 2011 @10:38PM (#2178247)

good. don't worry about polish, just make it easy to find. i use github for this since it's very code-centric. doing stuff like this (it might not even need to be OSS) can be a bullet point or URL on a resume. you'll be ahead of many candidates.

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Re:Ask HN: Inexperienced developer trying to get into seriou... by rst on Thursday February 03, 2011 @06:55PM (#2177597)

So polish it!

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