What is it like in the field?

[kabuki]

First off, I'm new to C++. So I want to know what is it like to be in the actual field? Is it writing codes all day long? I also heard that companies are more willing to hire someone that knows how to design. Is it true?

[ToniAz]

Not only dedicated programmers use C++... So what field are you talking about exactly? Or are you asking about using C++?

[Zephilinox]

He's probably asking about C++ used in a professional capacity, i.e coding programs for an employer.

[alexmk92]

I too am quite interested in this as a question.

I'm 19 and I'm just about to undergo a Computer Science BsC Degree at university in September - over the course I'll be primarily focused into C++ programming and hope to secure a job as a software developer once I finish.

I have a very good understanding of design, although I assume this would give me a better foundation for jobs available to me, I don't think it would directly impact my employability as a C++ programmer.

If there are any of you who have had or are currently employed within the software development industry I'd be greatly appreciative of any insight you could give me into what the working environment is like.

Regards

Alex.

[hanst99]

over the course I'll be primarily focused into C++ programming and hope to secure a job as a software developer once I finish.

A course saying it's focusing on a specific language or specific technologies that are in use right now is a red flag. Learning languages or specific technologies is something you can do in your free time or in supplementary courses, not what your studies should be focused on - the main part should be language agnostic (within reasonable limits, of course examples are necessary and those will usually be demonstrated in a language determined at the beginning of the course).

[Cubbi]

A lot depends on who your working for and who the users of your software are, depends on the release cycle, the size and aggressiveness of the company, the relationship between R&D and business, and on many other factors. C++ is huge and is used across many widely different fields. Pretty much any kind of software job you can think of, is done somewhere in C++.

Someone is coding all day, someone is debugging all day, someone is designing and prototyping, someone is QAing and testing, someone is doing everything at once, someone is doing everything one at a time. Someone is spending their days sifting through ancient code to find something that is wrong and became visible in the sea of the stuff that's wrong and ignored.

Anyone's experience would be different, so here's mine:

In my experience, the C++ jobs worth taking are high-stakes jobs, where the systems you've programmed are responsible for the day-to-day operations of banks, exchanges, airplanes, cars, hospitals, communications, city-wide infrastructures, factories, power plants, etc. I don't care for games or GUI.

So, my working environment has been:

Long design meetings (often involving travel to different offices), with every word undergoing intense scrutiny
Bursts of coding for maybe a month at a time, never more than half a year
Code reviews and unit test building
Endless testing, and not just unit/system tests, but sitting in the lab with a oscilloscope, travelling to facilities where I can run my stuff through different temperatures and vibrations for weeks at a time, spending nights at live testing with the clients
And through all that, phone calls in the middle of the night when something goes wrong in production, logging in from a vacation hotel at 4 am, grabbing a company car and driving through the night.. all part of the job.

I like this lifestyle, and it brings the most reward, but it's not something most C++ programmers do.

[ToniAz]

By design, you mean GUI? Or planning?

Long design meetings (often involving travel to different offices), with every word undergoing intense scrutiny
Bursts of coding for maybe a month at a time, never more than half a year
Code reviews and unit test building
Endless testing, and not just unit/system tests, but sitting in the lab with a oscilloscope, travelling to facilities where I can run my stuff through different temperatures and vibrations for weeks at a time, spending nights at live testing with the clients
And through all that, phone calls in the middle of the night when something goes wrong in production, logging in from a vacation hotel at 4 am, grabbing a company car and driving through the night.. all part of the job.

I like this lifestyle, and it brings the most reward, but it's not something most C++ programmers do.

Hey, how's your paycheck? Haha

[Cubbi]

By design I mean software design: class diagrams, statecharts, sequence diagrams, and other UML

[kabuki]

My professor told me that knowing how to design is much better than actually knowing a language because language comes and goes with time. Is this true?

[hanst99]

I don't think it's better. Being able to design something is pretty pointless if you don't have a language to express the design in (not to mention that a language can and will impose constraints on the design that you have to be aware of). That being said, knowing how a language works also is pretty pointless if you can't design anything with it.