MYTHS ABOUT BEING IN THE IT FIELD

With the burgeoning population of IT professionals in the world currently, certain myths about being 

in the IT field was bound to arise. Some have died out with time and some of them continue to hold 

a place in people’s minds. We try to cover a few here, hoping to dispel such lack of clarity and…

1. You need to understand technology before entering the field. That is a total lie. IT is like any other career. Like doctors are taught how to be doctors once they start studying for it, the same stands for this field too.

2. A bachelor’s degree is the mandated requirement for an entry-level job opportunity. Again, no. There are professional certificate courses available for students to pursue which provide equal knowledge and skill related to IT.

3. Always choose the recruiting company that offers more pay. NOPE. Most techies know that a bigger salary does not always mean a better job profile.

4. The IT field is a boys’ club. It’s true that there are more men in the field than there are women. But, this does not mean that the reason for such an anomaly is that women are less knowledgeable and/or qualified than their male counterparts. A woman who is capable and possesses the required knowledge will be afforded the same treatment as any other IT professional.

5.  It’s all maths and science. No it’s not. Programming may require some algebra, but for other careers, even a passing acquaintance with mathematics should get you by with ease.

6. There is no people interaction involved in the field. The general perception is IT departments are all filled with pale, acne-faced, skinny people who have no social skills and don’t need them too. In reality, this career too, like any other, needs a balanced combination of skill and personality.

7. Working in the USA is better than working in Indian IT companies, With the IT doom of 2000 there is a very small pool of highly qualified professionals available in the US and they normally get better jobs than Indian consultants do.

8. IT means Java, C#, and nothing else. There is so much more to the software industry than just that. Programming is an art and not a straight-jacket formula applied in just one or two languages.

9. There are no outstanding entrepreneur opportunities such as Facebook, Google, Amazon.com, or Microsoft left in CS and IT. Actually, existing technologies continue to evolve and new technologies continue to appear at an incredible rate. And a major chunk of credit still goes to able entrepreneurs and start-

10. Tech careers are unstable and insecure. Of course, like any big part of the economy, some tech jobs do change. But the fact remains that for the past five years, unemployment among tech professionals was less than half that for overall workforce.

IS C STILL RELEVANT IN 2015?

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IS C STILL RELEVANT IN 2015?

Dennis Ritchie devised C as far back as 1972 and many programming languages have come and gone since then. But C, notwithstanding its three major revisions and the passage of time, has still stood ground. Large chunks of Windows and Linux were written in this language. It is still believed by many authorities to be a great language for back-end programming, in spite of more modern languages like C++, Java or even Erlang or Ruby. It’s raw performance and reliability is still applauded and even in this day and age, in the year 2015, C is considered one of the best computer languages ever devised for the following distinct reasons:

1. Easy to Learn

Once you have grasped the only advanced features of C i.e. pointers and function pointers, you have pretty much mastered the language. The rest will be a piece of cake. Further, higher-level languages like C++, Objective-C, Python, Java, C# and Perl use block syntax derived from C and coding in these will be easy to understand after an extensive C experience. 

2. Simplicity

C is very often called a ‘weak’ language, but this weakness is in fact its virtue. This statistically typed language has a very simple type system and the surface areas of its application programme interface are small. The lack of massive frameworks means a strong inclination to create small libraries that are light.

3. Tight Coding

In this age of low-cost processors with small amounts of RAM and ROM, C provides tight coding.

4. Expressiveness

It’s the expressiveness of the syntax and semantics of C that is extremely appealing to high-level algorithms and low-level hardware simultaneously. The powerful expressiveness and simplicity of C lets the programmer focus on more important aspects of the code, rather than taking a high cognitive load.

5. Internet Use

C-based applications are what is running the internet. Though most browsers are written in C++, C language is used for its infrastructure, DNS utilities, mail sending features, etc.It also makes the job of compiler-writers simple since they don’t have to create a code generation stage for each platform by generating C as an output stage.

6. Speed and Memory 

C is undoubtedly the fastest language for programming. It’s not only fast in runtime, but also efficient in terms of memory consumption and startup time. 

7. Painless Debugging 

Debugging can be a painful process, especially when an error was made days ago and you can’t figure out its exact position in the ridiculously long code that you have written. With its stacks, variables, arguments, thread locals, globals, and basically everything in memory placed for you to see, debugging is not as bad a process as it would be in a higher-level language.

8. Still in Use

Many software are available that are written in C, like Apache and NGINX Web servers, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Ingres database, GIMP, CPython, Perl 5, PHP, Mathematica, MATLAB and most device drivers. 

9. Fast Development Cycle

The development cycle is basically the ‘Build-Run-Debug’ cycle of a code and it’s critical for

this cycle to be fast for reasons of enhanced efficiency and productivity. C has the fastest development interactivity of any mainstream statistically typed language, making the cycle very fast.

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NINE COMMON MISTAKES THAT PROGRAMMERS MAKE

As a new programmer, every single aspect of this act may seem difficult. And we won’t lie, it

maybe is. However, many of your problems can be solved if you just avoid committing these 9

deadly sins that hold up your entire program from being executed. These common mistakes, if

avoided, can make programming for a beginner much easier.

1. Undeclared Variables

Probably the biggest mistake of new programmers is using a variable in your coding that

hasn’t been declared anywhere. If your compiler doesn’t know what x means, it is bound

to throw an error when it comes across this alien symbol.

2. Uninitialized Variables

Ensure that you have initialized every variable that you use, because in C++ no variable

is automatically initialized to zero. Hence, an uninitialized variable could be of any value

in the range of int.

3. Setting a Variable to an Uninitialized Value

C++ unfortunately has a very simple mind. Assignment of a variable (x) to equal the

result of an operation (like addition) on other variables does not mean that whenever

those variables change, the value of the variable x will also change. Rather, once you

assign a value to a variable, this value will remain in place until a new value is

reassigned. The solution is to set every variable to a value that has been initialized, and

not simply declared in the beginning.

4. Undeclared Functions

It’s super important to put in place either a prototype for the function that you need or the

entire definition of the function before the first time that it is used in the code. Otherwise,

the compiler won’t know what to do with the function menu() if it hasn’t been declared

earlier.

5. Using a single equal sign to check equality.

Doesn’t this happen every single time? All you need to have is a presence of mind while

programming. Make sure that you always use a double equal sign (==) to check equality.

Otherwise, what a single equal sign (=) does is that it assigns the value on the right side

of the expression to the variable on the left hand side.

For example, in a while loop, an x=y means that the value of x is now Y, while an x==y

means that the loop will check whether the value of x is equal to the value of Y or not and

proceed accordingly.

6. Extra Semicolons 

It’s easy to press the semicolon button twice by mistake at one place or end a line of code

with an unneeded semicolon at another. For example, in a while loop, your code may say

“while(x==y);” You must remember that there can’t be semicolons after if statements,

loops or function definitions.

7. Overstepping Array Boundaries

The rule about arrays is that they begin their indexing at 0 and end at length-1. A 10

element array will start at 0 and end at 9. New programmers may tend to forget this and

attempt to end their arrays with the length.

8. Forgetting to Put a Break in a Switch Statement

C++ doesn’t break out of a switch statement, unless a case is encountered. To avoid

errors put a break, to break out of the switch.

9. Integer Division

Most of the binary operations in C++ need both the operands to be of the same type. In

case the types are different, one operands is promoted to match the type of the other. This

can be an issue sometimes and the value of such operations may change as a result.

Using Hungarian Notation can help prevent the confusion for the programmer. A

//integer division or //floating point division can make life much simpler.

RESUME TIPS

This Is What A GOOD Resume should Look Like:

1

One Page Resume: Recruiters do not read your resume; they do a 15 - 30 second "spot check" of your resume. When your resume is too long, it just takes your best stuff - the stuff that would have made the "one page cut" - and dilutes it with more mediocre content. Lengthy resumes do not make you more impressive, and there are many other reasons to keep your resume short too. A good rule of thumb is to keep your resume to one page if you have less than 10 years of experience or at most two pages if you have more than 10 years of experience. And if you think you can't get your resume to just one page, trust me, you can! You just need to think about what is really important for a recruiter to see.

2

No Objectives: All an objective does is state, in a wordy way, what position you're interested in. The company already knows that because you applied for a particular position. At best, it'll just waste space. At worst, it'll limit you since it'll exclude other positions that might have been interesting to you.

3

Use a Resume Template with Columns: Unless you're great with design, you probably shouldn't be creating your own resume template. It'll most likely look sloppy. Use a template, and make sure it has multiple columns. Using three columns, for example, will allow you to put the company name, position, and date all on one line. This makes it easier to read and saves space.

4

Use Tables: If you're using Microsoft Word to create your resume (which you probably should), use Microsoft Word's "tables." Just make sure to hide the borders afterwards.

5

Short Bullets: Because resume screeners only spend 15 - 30 seconds on your resume, length bullets - anything that feels like a paragraph - just won't get read. Keep your bullets to one to two lines (with one line being better than two).

6

Accomplishment Oriented: Your bullets should focus on your accomplishments - that is, the impact you had - rather than your responsibilities. What did you build, create, design, optimize, lead, etc?

7

Quantify: Whenever possible, you should quantify your accomplishments. If you optimized something, by how much? If you won an award, out of how many people?

8

Resume: The general rule of thumb is to list your GPA if it's at least 3.0 or higher, but there are two important rules to know here: (1) You may choose to list your in-major GPA if it's higher than your overall GPA, but you need to specify that it's your in-major GPA. (2) If your school uses a different scale (such as a 10-point scale), you may want to convert your GPA to a 4.0-scale which will be more widely understood.

9

Projects: Most candidates should pick their top 3 - 5 projects to list on their resume. These can be academic required project or independent projects. They do not need to be completed or launched either. As long as you've done a "meaty" amount of work on them, that's good enough!

10

Additional Experience: You can put additional experience, like leadership activities or awards, in a section like this (changing the name of the section depending on what you list). Be careful here to focus on what really matters. If you're applying for a coding role, your role as an eagle scout in high school is probably not very important!

11

Languages and Technologies: It's a good idea to list your languages and technologies, but remember that anything you list here is "fair game" for the interviewer to test. If you want to list a language but you happen to be a bit rusty in it, consider listing it as something like: "C++ (Proficient), C# (Prior Experience), ..."

12

What did you NOT include?: Is there anything impressive / interesting that you've done that you left out? About 50% of candidates leave out an important project or other component of their experience because it wasn't finished / "official" / etc. If you've done it, and it's impressive enough to "make the cut" (you shouldn't just list everything you've ever done), then it belongs on your resume!