Forum Home
PC World Chat
Thread ID: 137106	2014-05-23 00:54:00	Have any PC techs ever thought of moving to become software developers..?	Webdevguy (17166)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1375572	2014-05-23 00:54:00	While AT&T in (www.computerworld.co.nz) the US is looking to open source developers for cool apps banks like Westpac (www.westpac.co.nz) and ANZ have recently put out the call to mobile phone app developers here to create the next cool app. Has anyone on this forum ever considered at having a crack at building an app or teaming up with a bunch of developers for a share of the challenge?	Webdevguy (17166)
1375573	2014-05-23 03:50:00	Yep. Didn't interest me :p I know enough HTML / PHP / SQL to be dangerous but not enough to code tidily. I've churned out Forum software, ticket tracking software for a helpdesk, an online song-lyrics presentation system, and a few others, but it never really tickled my fancy. Besides, I can get better money doing something else, that I love doing even more :)	Chilling_Silence (9)
1375574	2014-05-23 03:55:00	I would barely know code if it hit me in the face. :p Seriously though, no. Doesn't interest me in the slightest. I'd rather be under a car than trying to code.	wratterus (105)
1375575	2014-05-23 04:07:00	Having to have travel that very path my self, I would say it was unexpected . I think pc techs are generally very hands-on type of people, so moving into an area where it is less hands-on and more troubleshooting by 'simulation', it is a difficult shift . Of course there are plenty of software devs that were ex-pc techs or ex-network engineers . But I think it is also the way that programming are taught, often those who are teaching the course/subject lacks the charisma and inspiration to get across the idea and fundamentals of arrays, matrix arrays, for loops & while loops . No matter how many excerises or repeat of the material, if one lacks inspiration, all that said would have fallen on deaf ears . As well, how many hardware problems have you every came across where you needed an array for storage (excluding raid) or a loop method to diagnose your graphic card has malfunctioned . Pc troubleshooting is often just pure input and output, while programming, is input, process and output . And its that process part that trips most techs and often the least explained, and the most assumed by these professors, teachers and lecturers . I personally found that, a person that have no experience in IT, often will learn app development a lot quicker than an experienced hardware techy . Of course all this is just my 2c . So to answer your answer in a few words, yes I for one have moved into application development and have moved away from hardware diagnostics . Though still do odd tech jobs here and there . Forgot to add, for those who are experienced pc hardwares, knowing programming really opens up new options and exploration . Modification of hardware performance via code is becoming more popular . For example utilizing CUDA cores on Nvidia cards, the performance gained by utilizing CUDA cores instead of CPU cores is just mind boggling O_O	CCF (6760)
1375576	2014-05-23 04:20:00	Yep. Didn't interest me :p I know enough HTML / PHP / SQL to be dangerous but not enough to code tidily. I've churned out Forum software, ticket tracking software for a helpdesk, an online song-lyrics presentation system, and a few others, but it never really tickled my fancy. Besides, I can get better money doing something else, that I love doing even more :) So what do you do that pays better than been a software app developer?	Webdevguy (17166)
1375577	2014-05-23 04:21:00	I would barely know code if it hit me in the face. :p Seriously though, no. Doesn't interest me in the slightest. I'd rather be under a car than trying to code. Fair enough. I just read the article and was interested to see what forum members thoughts were. :)	Webdevguy (17166)
1375578	2014-05-23 04:37:00	Having to have travel that very path my self, I would say it was unexpected Forgot to add, for those who are experienced pc hardwares, knowing programming really opens up new options and exploration. Modification of hardware performance via code is becoming more popular. For example utilizing CUDA cores on Nvidia cards, the performance gained by utilizing CUDA cores instead of CPU cores is just mind boggling O_O Would agree with your last comment. My take on programming is that it is all about how find a solution for a problem and how to make it work and look appealing and easy to use or how to expand on an idea that someone has proposed to you. While loops and arrays (lists of objects) may not have much appeal by themselves, when you look at them in context they become a whole lot more relevant and a bit easier to visualise and work with. Like a list of words by itself is relatively meaningless (picture a basic list of text), but looping through an array to be displayed as a list of songs containing song name, artist name, your song rating, song genre all queried from a SQL database suddenly starts to look a whole lot more interesting when viewed on your music player or phone.	Webdevguy (17166)
1375579	2014-05-23 05:29:00	TL;DR - I tried when I was young and gave up - now I just do hardware I had delusions of programming skill when I was younger, never went far enough or made good choices about languages to have made it very far though. It's depressing for example to have spent a week perfecting several pages of code for a music database (one of the few programs I actually finished) and after using it for a while and being impressed with yourself discovering excel for the first time... Most of my early programmes can be done much better with any spreadsheet program these days :( I learnt (self taught): Logo - just an instructional language and no actual use Basic - old school with the line numbers - could write basic programs well enough but that's about it STOS - Atari specific version of Basic for writing games. I wrote two games and got them functional enough to realise they were going to be complete rubbish and abandoned my game developing dreams GW basic (and a couple other similar ones) - played with learning these and lost interest C++ - decided I need to learn something more useful and started learning this - gave up pretty quick. I just don't have the patience I once had for this stuff.	dugimodo (138)
1375580	2014-05-23 06:50:00	I don't have the talent for coding, it is an art too. I could code badly if I so desired, but nah....better to stick with the bits I am good at.	pctek (84)
1375581	2014-05-23 07:51:00	I don't have the talent for coding, it is an art too. I could code badly if I so desired, but nah....better to stick with the bits I am good at. It is an art of sorts but like all forms of art it can be learned in stages :thumbs:	Webdevguy (17166)
1 2 3