If you like programming and like problem solving, then I'm safe in
assuming you are good at it, so you won't have any problems. Don't
be too scared by the fact that you don't understand stuff on
newsgroups -- any decent graduate recruitment program won't list
specific requirements such as "Must have Tomcat/J2ME/etc
experience" or "Must have experience with some obscure version of
Unix", for two reasons: firstly, they are going to train you in
this stuff if you are a recent graduate; and secondly, they often
like people that haven't been "tainted" by other organisations :-)
Having touched on different programming languages at uni is great,
but only because it will probably have opened your mind up a bit
-- good problem solving skills are more important for a graduate
than knowing how to use specific tools that will probably be
obsolete in 5-10 years anyway.

Not quite sure but most of the time, depending on what field of work
one choses, what he learned in schoold doesnt apply that well. One may
require to learn popular technologies/existing libraries being used in
certain domain he choses.

programming work?
If you are good in writing programs, register yourself in websites like
www.topocoder.com -
they conduct a lot of online competitions sponsored by various
organizations. Winners get employment chances.

My main experience is what they are looking for, first and foremost, are
people with good problem solving skills. On an administrative level: a
good work ethic and a team player. After that, they are looking for
someone with a decent technological foundation. The level of this
foundation depends on the companies view of itself. F.ex. guess what
talent google and opera are trying to attract compared to
SomeConsulting.com and SomeBusiness.com. So you need to look at the
company a bit to figure that out.

When it comes to the technological area, it depends on the business.
Innovative companies are typically looking for people with talent and a
general but good CS education. While a typical business company are
looking for anybody who can spell java or has this and that technology
on their CV. Some companies are in between and some work in specific
business domains requiring some special skills.

Programming wise you should consider the following, its usually more
important to get things finished on time than getting it perfect. With
time and experience you will build a bag of tools, techniques,
algorithms and approaches that will teach you to foresee the "perfect"
solution beforehand. A good developer knows the following: programming
is about managing the complexity of a software and minimising it, thus
creating low complexity and high maintainability software/source code.
Development is about choosing the right technology for the requirements
and building a software system that is able to handle the future bugs
and expansions of the system.

For this you need experience, so hunker down and learn the basics of the
technologies the next couple of years. Then you can move on, if thats
what you wish, to for example designer and architect roles. etc...

A last tip, there is usually a lot of politics in business, so learning
little about markets, sales, business economics and project management
along with all the technology, might be sensible unless you just want to
be a coding geek.

/tom

Unfortunately, university doesn't fully prepare you for the world of  
software development (some would say that that's a good thing and not what  
university is for anyway).  If your experience turns out anything like  
mine you will find that you learn a hell of a lot more about software  
development in the first few months of doing it for a living than you did  
in 3 or 4 years at university.

I'll let you into a secret, the people who teach the programming courses  
at universities usually aren't great developers.  They are intelligent  
people who know a lot about Computer Science, but have little, if any,  
development experience outside of academia.  They typically have other  
research interests, which is where their real expertise lies.

Add to that the fact that at university you only develop small,  
short-lived projects, there's a big difference when you get to the real  
world.  However, don't be put off.  If you have the good fortune to be  
working with one or two top-notch developers at your first job you will  
rapidly learn about developing good software.  It might be worthwhile to  
view your first job as an apprenticeship.

When you make the step up from academic problems to commercial ones  
there's a whole load of tools to use that you won't have needed before,  
like build tools, profilers, version control, etc.  Universities also  
don't give much emphasis to proper unit testing and regression testing.  
You will also have commercial considerations like minimising risk or  
meeting tight deadlines that may affect how you approach coding; and of  
course you will now be working in a team.

What university is good for is giving a taste of a broad array of topics  
in computer science and for introducing the theoretical stuff that is not  
always appreciated by software developers.  Even if the topics aren't  
always applicable in the commercial world it is beneficial to have had the  
experience.

As for Java in particular, don't worry if you don't follow everything.  
The Java universe is huge and there is not a person on this newsgroup (or  
anywhere else) who knows even half of it in detail.  You tend to learn  
stuff as it is required to solve new problems.

Good luck,

Dan.

It's another world. You have to deal with issues and people you didn't
meet in uni. I.e. you have to deal with beancounter, deadlines,
customers and general corporate stupidity. Do you know the Dilbert
comics? http://www.dilbert.com They are not jokes. More often than not
they are reality.

You also have to live with an uncertain future. More and more work is
outsourced to countries where programmers work for rates of $2/hour or
less. You can't compete with them, even if you are the best programmer
in the world. Quality work is often not required so companies turn to
them for cheap botch jobs.

You will find that many incompetent programmers make it in the real
world. And that A+ programmers don't make it, because they can't bent
over.

Ralph