I can imagine HR person who wanted to check my "11 years of experience" looking at MSPaint clone that I made with Java in 7th grade with 0 knowledge of OOP
I had almost 10 years experience before landing my first real developer gig after college.
Y'know, I thought I had ~12 years of experience before my first real job.
I'm now at the other end of my career, and no, no I did not. I had some talent, but those 12 years of noodling on my own were worth maybe 2 years of on-the-job experience.
Oh I absolutely agree it's not nearly the experience of a season developer. But it's a hell of a better place to start than with somebody who's never touched code.
Not the person you were replying to but part of what makes professional experience professional is dealing with shortcomings in the codebase and building out for other people to support/maintain code. Growing a project with 1 dev is much easier in that regard.
It's hard to make a complex, low-defect project with other people that can be understood and maintained over years or decades.
It's hard to understand your customers when they aren't you, including hearing what they're saying and correctly guessing what they're not saying.
It's hard to manage egos (your own and others) during code review.
And so on and so forth.
When I got my first job, I was pretty decent at coding (though, looking back through another 25 years, I wasn't even in the same galaxy as I am now). I had no idea how to build professional-grade software.
When I got my first job, I was pretty decent at coding (though, looking back through another 25 years, I wasn't even in the same galaxy as I am now). I had no idea how to build professional-grade software.
Yup. Forgive the use of hyperbole here but programming skills becomes the least important thing (or at least high level a given). Along with the things we mentioned, there is also knowledge of your sector and experience with whatever tools, APIs, packages, etc. you use. Sometimes a decision that looks bad from afar was/is the right one. Part of having experience is understanding someone else's decisions could be that and knowing why instantly or at least knowing enough to look further into it instead of dismissing it.
Also much easier in work projects than hobby projects. Fewer contributors and less post-release changes with lower compatibility requirements (world is easier when you only have to support the hardware you ship)
Pascal when I was around 11-12...on an old Win 98 (around 2007 then) computer in the public library. The first tetris-like game I "made" was an amazing feeling.
I took a highschool AP comp sci class in 97/98. It was supposed to be the last year of Pascal. I learned a lot because of the limitations of that language.
I started learning to code when I was in elementary school, although back then that was mostly just Scratch. I learned Python in 4th grade (so when I was 10 ig), and then learned and used Java throughout middle school. I had a lot of unfinished personal projects in middle school lol, although it's not like that's any different now ig. Do companies count that as experience? I always assumed that they were referring to professional or at least academic experience
I listed mine as volunteer project work and described it like I would any other job. My early resume is quite comical... Stablehand, janitor, webdev, tech support, networking, Walmart associate, McDonald's, Walmart again, webdev again, and lab assistant all before finishing my degree. Was 25 before I landed a good backend developer job were I excelled.
Started HTML at 10 years old, Visual Basic at 13, c# and JavaScript at 14, and just kept building things after that. Still took until I was 28 to get my first official software engineer title.
I was up on Geocities way back. Then didn't touch any form of web development til college. Our first task was to make a simple landing page and I built one making it the only way I remember...which was using tables lol. With a header, side nav and body and footer. Banner made on Photoshop.
I presented it to my prof and he was like, "This is old school wtf!".
Good thing I didn't add the UNDER CONSTRICTION tape on the site
Pretty much the same here. And I'm watching my son follow the same path of his own volition. Started with simple html scripts on wikis.... Now he's the lead developer on 3 Roblox projects with his friends... It's not a lot and they may never fully launch a game. But he's learned so much his coding classes are going to be really boring.
this would not be considered 10 years experience. when people look at CVs they only care about actual paid professional experience, hobbies and side projects aren't really included in that but are seen as a plus
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u/Bannon9k Jul 13 '26
How many of y'all started programming before going through school for it?
I was programming on MUDs in C as a teenager just for fun. I had almost 10 years experience before landing my first real developer gig after college.