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15 Steps on how to get into Software Development

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Considering a career in Software Development? Read these 15 Steps which could help send you on your way to an exciting new career!

More people than ever before are entering Software Development from non-traditional backgrounds. The number of coding bootcamps is increasing, and there’s a broad push from the industry to attract more diverse developers. Many companies are no longer solely focused on hiring senior developers, and have realised that it may be smarter to train and upskill the next generation of senior developers instead.

Software Development pays well, the industry is booming, and compared to many other careers, software developers get treated very well. But the thing that draws most career-changers to software development, is the search for more rewarding work.

The career transition stage can be a big, scary, but exciting place to be. It can be one of the most challenging life-changes a person could make however, the finishing result could be a more fulfilling career.

If you’re considering a career change, there’s one question that you should ask yourself, above all others: if you make the switch to software development, will you like it? Getting to a level of skill where you are hireable is a lot of work, and you may be leaving behind a promising career in the process. The stakes are high.

If you don’t know whether you’re going to like it, build things with code. Create a Tic Tac Toe game. Start a small online business and do the development yourself. Contribute to open source. Make games. Complete programming challenges. Build a personal website and do all the design and development yourself. If you enjoy any of these things, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy working as a software developer.

Switching careers can be an epic, challenging journey – but it could just be one of the best things you’ve ever done.

There are a thousand ways to learn to program; the route you take will depend on how you learn best. You can take online courses, find a teacher or mentor, watch YouTube videos, read books, get a Computer Science degree, watch screencasts, or simply jump onto the command line and start experimenting, hitting up Stack Overflow as you go.

 

Here are 15 tips which could help you start your journey to becoming a Software Developer!

1. Have something you (passionately) want to make: Whether it’s a blog, a game, a website, a SaaS startup, an online dating website, or an app to manage your family’s finances, having a project that you’re motivated to build, will push you through the tough times when learning to program. A real-world use-case for your skills will accelerate your learning.

 

2. Attend a coding Bootcamp to get a taster and see if you feel it will work for you: A good coding bootcamp will give you a focused environment, help when you need it, and support when the journey gets tough. When you’re first learning to code, it can be really hard to know what you should focus on.

A good coding bootcamp will also assume no prior programming knowledge, and teach you the skills you need from the ground up, unlike many programming articles and videos, which will be written with professional programmers in mind.

 

3. Connect with other people learning to program: Learning to code can be difficult at times. Having a network of other people going through the same challenges can be hugely important. If you don’t know anyone making the transition, attend local meetups and talk to people there, especially if you’re focused on languages popular among junior developers (Ruby and JavaScript in particular). If you’re lucky, your local programming meetup may even host a ‘Newbies’ night now and again. Make sure to go!

 

4. Find a mentor who works in the industry: A friendship or mentorship with a working software developer can also be immensely helpful in your journey. They will know what the interview culture is in your local industry, will be able to give you advice when you get stuck, help you focus on the most important skills to learn, and give feedback on your code. If you’re lucky enough to find a software developer generous with their time in this way, make sure to give back somehow, even if it’s just buying lunch when you meet. Once again, meetups are a great way to meet potential mentors.

 

5. Focus your learning:If you’re hoping to do backend programming primarily (the engine of most apps, not the visual presentation), focus on learning one language and one web framework as well as you can. Also aim to be somewhat familiar with JavaScript, HTML and CSS, as many roles will have you working with both the frontend and backend of an application. If you’re aiming for a front-end role, focus on JavaScript, HTML and CSS. You might also focus on a popular JavaScript MVC framework like React or AngularJS.

 

6. Be prepared to invest in your career change:You can spend a lot on the transition; books, courses, classes, and screencast subscriptions can add up to hundreds of pounds a month, and many boot camps are over £6,000. Despite the hype around programmer salaries, you can expect to make between £20k and £30k as a junior developer. At first, it might seem like you’ve invested a lot in this career change without much financial reward. Over the long term though, this investment should pay off as you rise to a senior developer level with the potential to earn between £50K and £70K.

 

7. Don’t worry if your journey isn’t linear:Learning to program is tough; it takes time. If you’re juggling a pre-existing career and other commitments, it may be difficult to focus on it for more than a few hours a week. You may have doubts, you may get distracted, and you may stop progressing for days, weeks, or months. Trust that if software development is truly what you want to do you’ll find your way eventually, even if you end up taking the scenic route.

 

8. Create an account on GitHub, build your profile, be selective about what you show: GitHub is an online hosting service for git repositories, best described as version-controlled programming projects. When a repository is public on GitHub, anyone can read through your code. Many hiring managers will check the GitHub profile of applicants, to get an idea of how they write code when nobody is watching. When evaluating junior applicants, the hiring managers may not be looking for amazing code, but instead looking for enthusiasm, work done on multiple projects, willingness to try out new things, and a sense of play. Your GitHub profile is a great way to show this, but keep in mind that hiring managers may only have a few spare minutes to review your profile. For this reason, it’s a good idea to make only substantial or interesting projects public. For projects which you were just using to learn, it might be worth making them private to give your best stuff the limelight.

 

9. It’s hard sometimes:Self-doubt is a common trap for junior developers, especially those from groups who are underrepresented in the software industry. If something feels hard, it’s not necessarily because you’re not cut out for this. It might be because you have more to learn, or perhaps, because the thing you’re working on is actually hard. You may also be concerned when something you find challenging seems easy to someone else, especially when that someone else has a similar level of experience. But stick with that person long enough and you’ll likely encounter something they struggle with, that you find really easy. We’re all different, we bring different pre-existing skills to the table, and we all practice differently. Programming is like any skill: you can become good at it if you persist long enough and care about getting better. Avi Flombaum, co-founder of the Flatiron School, says “I absolutely believe that anybody can learn how to program in the same way that we know anyone can learn how to read and write.”

 

10. Be aware of your blind spots:By all accounts, career-changers have been making waves in the development community. They’re self-starters who’ve sacrificed an existing career, and sometimes a higher salary, in order to become software developers. However, we do have blind spots. The inner-workings of computers and the internet are mind-bendingly complex, especially to anyone from a non-technical background. Mastering one programming language, one web framework, JavaScript, HTML and CSS might take up all your available time. However, when you’re starting out as a junior developer, you probably won’t realize that these things are just a small slice of the technologies you work with every day.

Think about the answers to some of the following questions:
How does your code get run?
How does your language’s interpreter or compiler know when it encounters a syntax error?
How does typing a URL into your browser toolbar result in a web page being rendered on your screen?
How does a web server work?
How do you stay logged into websites even after you close and reopen your browser?
How does your app run on a web server?
Your project is hosted on Heroku or AWS, but what do they use under the hood?
When people say an object is ‘in memory’, what does that mean?
How do you SSH onto a server?
How do you set up and use a build pipeline?
How does your operating system run on your computer?

Of course, this list could be much longer. There’s so much to learn that it can feel overwhelming. The good news is that you don’t need to know the answers to all these questions in order to be hired as a junior software developer, but you should try to learn them as you go further in your career. You can’t get really good at software development unless you have a working understanding of the tools that you work with every day. Increasing your understanding will empower you to make better choices, become better at debugging, and make better design decisions.

 

11. When you’re struggling, take time to appreciate the unique skills you have that computer science graduates may not have yet:If you’ve attended or scheduled a work meeting, been given tricky feedback at work, been through a performance review, or led a team, you already have valuable skills that recent computer science graduates may not have. You may be more at ease talking with stakeholders, better at meetings, planning and organization, simply through having more experience. Most importantly, you may have better perspective. After all, if you’ve previously worked as a nurse in an operating theatre, a bug in production might not seem so overwhelming. After all, nobody is going to get (physically) hurt!

 

12. Get experience with pairing:Pairing is the practice of having two developers share one computer and work on the code together. One developer will write code, while the other watches and does some of the following things: makes suggestions, asks questions, catches errors, and thinks more broadly about how the code being written, fits into the larger program. Since both roles are fatiguing, they will usually swap anywhere from 15 minutes to every few hours.

Pairing is a common practice in the industry and even more common in the coding interview process. You don’t need to be an expert, but pairing for the first time can be a little intimidating, especially when pairing with a senior developer. Despite this, pairing can actually be really fun, and is a fantastic way to learn. If you can, get some practice with pairing before you begin doing coding interviews. If you have a mentor, pair with them. Otherwise, you can find opportunities to pair at hackathons and hack nights in your local area.

 

13. Set up a mock programming interview:Programming interviews are likely to be quite different to the interviews you took to get a job in your current career. They often involve coding challenges, writing pseudocode on a whiteboard, pair programming, and feedback on your code. Learn as much as possible about coding interviews by researching them online. Then practice them with a friend. Find a whiteboard and solve simple problems by writing your code on it. Get your friend to ask you common programming interview questions. It doesn’t matter if your friend is non-technical. The experience will really help when it is time for your real coding interview, as they can be a little intimidating at first!

 

14. Before test-driven development, practice error-driven development:Errors will be your constant companion when learning to code. You’ll be breaking stuff all the time, and will be face a lot of error messages. As once non-technical people, error messages can be scary. Before learning to code, they may have meant that you wrecked your computer while installing a game, or bricked a phone while trying to unlock it. An important mindset when programming, however, is to see error messages as helpful.

When many developers encounter an error message, they react a little like they’ve been slapped on the hand, quickly navigating away from the browser or shell window and peering at the code they  just wrote, trying to figure out what might have made the computer so angry. In most cases, the computer is already telling us, via the error message it just printed, but we need to slow down and read it before we can reap the benefits.

Jeff Cohen, an instructor at my coding bootcamp, encouraged us to practise error-driven development. This method goes beyond slowing down to read error messages, and instead, lets a succession of errors guide you forward in your development. Call a method that doesn’t exist, see a ‘no method’ error, and then write the code to bring that method into existence. Reference a view that doesn’t exist, see a ‘no view’ error, and then create the view. Errors are not to be feared, in fact, they can guide you and help you build your skill as a software developer. Just try to avoid errors in the final product!

 

15. Learn about and practice test-driven development (at least a little bit): Once you’re comfortable with error-driven development, test-driven development is the next step in your learning. Test-driven development is a sought after skill in the industry, and familiarity with it is a requirement to get hired at some software companies. It’s the practice of writing code to ‘test’ how your program behaves, and to drive out a better design for your program. If you’ve ever added some functionality to a program, only to have it break something else that was previously working, this is one of the things that test-driven development (often abbreviated as TDD) can help with!

Few programming resources for beginners focus on TDD, mainly because it can be a difficult concept to teach. When you aren’t sure how to write good tests, it can feel more difficult than writing code. You may encounter a situation where you know exactly how to write the code that will solve a problem, but designing a test around it takes an hour because you’re not sure of the appropriate way to exercise the code with a test. Learning TDD will slow you down at first, but you’ll be repaid with confidence – confidence that your programs work, and confidence that if you break something, you’ll know immediately. Tests are an incredibly useful safety net for junior developers.

You don’t need to be an expert at testing, but some familiarity with TDD will put you ahead of many other junior applicants, especially those coming from traditional Computer Science backgrounds where test-driven development is still not always taught. Bonus points if you can eventually articulate the difference between a mock and a stub.

We hope you have found these tips useful and will have hopefully broadened your knowledge on ways of becoming a software developer. Apply yourself! You don’t need to be a genius to get into software development. Just make sure you remain consistent with your practice and studies. Remember that you will hit barriers and most importantly remember to push through them and never give up. As previously mentioned, becoming a software developer is a challenging career path, but the resulting future prospects can be outstanding. You could find choosing to become a software developer might end up being one of the best decisions of your life. Good Luck!

If you considering a career in Software Development and would like to know more, be sure to get in contact with us here!

If you already have experience in Software Development and you are seeking new opportunities, make sure you check out our latest job role by clicking here!

-Natasha Postolovski

Considering an IT Career?

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Whether you are looking for your first job or are in need a career change, many people are opting to start an IT Career.

There are so many different IT Career routes you can explore, from software design right through to game testing. It helps that IT jobs are also currently high in demand, especially IT contractors and freelancers.

Careers in IT deal with the design, creation, management and maintenance of the varied components of the system, including software, hardware, networks, systems integration and multimedia. Broadly, information technology can be divided into four central pathways: network systems, information support and services, programming and software development, and Web and digital communication. Down each career avenue exist a huge amount of occupational opportunities, ranging from database administrator to computer systems engineer, digital media specialist to systems analyst.

Here is a list of starting pointers if you are new to the IT Industry and wondering how you can get onto the IT Career ladder.

  1. List the IT work you would be interested in.It is important to find a career you are passionate about. There are a large number of IT jobs available, so you should narrow down your choice in order to give yourself a specific focus.
  2. Network and apprenticeships.Get to know IT professionals in your area and learn how they have managed to establish themselves in the industry. You can also set up apprenticeships in order to gain valuable advice and guidance during your career move.
  3. Gain IT qualifications.Have a look in your local area for any educational opportunities that could give you an opportunity to achieve essential skills for your future career. Any professional certifications will highlight your knowledge and capabilities to future employers.
  4. Experience and internships.Of course, if you don’t want to go into education, you can gain your experience and skills from entry level positions or internships. A portfolio or CV demonstrating previous employment in the industry will also show your competence in the field, similar to IT qualifications.
  5. Constructing your CV.Your CV is often your first chance to show organisations your capability. Therefore, you should clearly pinpoint your relevant experience, skills and experience, and also highlight your enthusiasm for your chosen profession.

 

Sources:

– ComputerScienceOnline

– Parasol

Why brands are applying the principles of psychology to design

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Why brands are applying the principles of psychology to design

Marketers are increasingly tapping into the power of psychology to improve the impact of design and give their brands the cutting edge.

 

There is more to design than meets the eye. In order to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace, brands including Heinz, Oxo RAF & even our own brand Graffiti Recruitment are applying the principles of psychology and using neuroscience techniques to create designs that resonate with consumers in both an immediate and lasting way.

Psychological principles – concerning behaviour, attitudes, aspirations and motivations – can help brands understand how their logos or packaging make consumers react. All visuals create a pattern of attention, which is why it is so important for brands to give designs a clear focus, as humans have limited attention spans, explains psychologist Nathalie Nahaï.

“It’s also important to think about the principle of cognitive load, which relates to the energy it takes to process a task,” she adds. “Good design reduces the mental effort and makes it easier to take the desired action like buying the product you want,” explains Nahaï.

A sans serif font, for example, requires less effort to read, while some colours evoke an immediate feeling, such as red for feelings of love or anger and blue, which is associated with trust and calmness and green is associated renewal, balance, energy harmony and growth.

Designing for global appeal

With an estimated global audience of 400 million, the Premier League had to ensure that its 2016/2017 season rebrand, which was unveiled in February, could translate worldwide across social media, events branding, television, online and an app.

The redesign was a departure from its headline sponsorship model with former partner Barclays, giving the Premier League full ownership of all branding.

The result of a decade-long research project, including in-depth interviews and discussions with a 15,000-strong fan panel, the rebrand also represented an opportunity to communicate the Premier League’s “inclusive and inspirational” values in the wake of last year’s FIFA corruption scandal, says head of marketing – Craig Edmondson.

“Being modern was at the forefront of our thinking and how to talk to an audience of millennials. We had to think how our new logo would fit with the other brands they commonly consume such as Spotify, Airbnb and YouTube,” he explains. “We moved away from our upper case serif font because we want to have a conversation with fans and it felt like we were shouting. Also, the standing lion looked slightly confrontational, which is not what we’re about.”

To give a feeling of informality the Premier League opted for a bespoke sans serif font. Although the lion remains, it has been simplified to a chunky representation of the animal’s head. The team consulted a professor of animal studies to understand how the lion translates across different cultures, discovering a general association with pride and strength, as well as  a distinctive hunting style involving playing in positions, like footballers.

The use of vivid pink, green, acid yellow and cyan, combined with the purple of the logo – a less corporate alternative to the traditional navy – is intended to speak to a diverse audience of men, women and children.

Instinctive and rational

Neuroscience – the monitoring of brain activity using technology such as MRI scans – can also be used to help marketers better understand why people remember certain designs over others.

According to professor of marketing at Warwick Business School Nick Lee the more references you can connect to a brand, the higher the likelihood the memory will be retained and recalled, especially if you can create a positive emotional connection.

Coca-Cola’s new design, for example, which features the same logo but ties all variants together with a red circle ‘brand code’ allows consumers to quickly identify the brand across all touchpoints thanks to the unified design.

Vice-president for global design James Sommerville called this new approach “a global design language that utilises a historical brand icon to present the range of Coca-Cola products available today in a contemporary and simple way.”

To understand what makes consumers immediately connect with a brand, but also what engages them in the long term, marketers are increasingly applying the concept of System 1 and System 2 thinking to their design strategy.

System 1 is instinctive thinking, processed instantly on a non-conscious level, thereby lowering the cognitive load. By contrast, System 2 is a rationalisation stage involving cognitive processing, for example when consumers consider what they think of a brand and the reasons to buy it.

If marketers can tap into System 1 thinking when working on their design strategy, they can make the purchase decision or call to action seamless for consumers, encouraging them to transact.

Working with agency Coley Porter Bell, the RAF used a process called ‘visual planning’, which involves using visceral System 1 thinking during the strategic planning process by distilling the brand vision into five words and translating them into images. This is especially important as 90% of System 1 thinking is visual.

“By doing so, we were more likely to ‘bake in’ the right visual triggers to communicate the right things from the start,” explains RAF head of media and communications Nigel Bradshaw. “We used these intuitively selected images as the blueprint for the design work.”

The result is RAF 100, a new campaign to celebrate the organisation’s centenary year in 2018. It is designed to honour the past while at the same time looking to the future and challenging traditional perceptions of the RAF.

The organisation wanted the campaign to appeal to millennials whose lives are heavily influenced by social media and therefore took inspiration from reference points such as Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. Based on its planning, the RAF opted for a graphic, simple and bold concept, designed to gain traction on mobile and apps (see image, top).

“The bold, block letter forms stem directly from the RAF logo, yet by filling in the [negative space within letters] it creates a bold and contemporary look,” suggests Bradshaw. “The type also acts as a window on to the past and we can use this layering to juxtapose historical RAF achievements alongside modern representations.”

The RAF opted for a vibrant colour palette of pinks and oranges, chosen to challenge traditional perceptions of the organisation and to help it appear credible alongside the lifestyle brands popular with millennials.

Virtual reality

The consistency of a bold typeface, strong colours and design simplicity also play an important role for stock cube brand Oxo. Despite going through a number of permutations the brand has built up a high level of recognition on supermarket shelves for more than 100 years. The overall design has evolved to include food messages, recipe ideas and icons of a knife and fork, all linking back to food imagery.

Premier Foods category marketing director for flavours and seasonings Helen Touchais explains: “We want to convey the fact that people can use our products to make their food taste delicious, so it is important that the visual cues link to food.”

With consumers spending an average of eight to 10 seconds looking at a fixture in the supermarket, it is crucial to grab their attention. For this reason Oxo has invested in a virtual reality suite to test packaging in a simulated physical environment, using cognitive eye tracking. Consumers wear special glasses through which they see a picture of the shelf laid out in front of them.

To test the best colour and messaging Oxo asked consumers to find the beef stock cubes using three different packaging variations, tracking where their eyes travelled. The tests found the red packaging with the classic Oxo typeface was 40% faster than other options to find on the shelf.

“The bold, curvaceous typeface has a jovial appearance and being a palindrome it stands out really well on the shelves,” says Touchais. “The simplicity of the design equates to the simplicity of use, while the colours and typeface suggest a sense of dynamism and the fact Oxo helps liven up food.”

Brand recognition

Having a timeless, confident design that is easily recognisable is also key for Heinz, which looks to play on System 1 thinking to create products customers instinctively want to pick up.

“We are building a shortcut for the brain through the packaging and the design credibility we have built up over decades,” explains Colin Haddley, director of strategy, insight and capability.

“We use lots of research techniques, such as talking to consumers in focus groups and carrying out implicit research. For example, we test the recognition of design by timing how long it takes a shopper to find a new design on a shelf. We also create a heat map of sentiment, overlaying the rational results with the emotional.”

Heinz packaging is designed to convey brand values of confidence, timelessness, accessibility, warmth, comfort and quality. This is communicated through specific food cues, such as the drip of juice on a tin of baked beans or steam rising from a bowl of soup.

For the launch of its Seriously Good Mayonnaise in February, Heinz used visual cues to emphasise the quality of the stripped back recipe, ranging from a large spoon bearing a big dollop of mayonnaise to a picture of a chicken to signal the use of free-range eggs.

Integrating psychology into the design process early on is giving brands the ability to tailor their message to the instinctive, System 1 processes that rule our unconscious decision making, using visual cues, vibrant colours and a distinctive aesthetic as unmistakable calls to action.

– Charlotte Rogers

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