Like Kerry, I come from the world of Director (Adobe/Macromedia
Director), with 15+ year's experience there. I have a degree in
English but never had a problem landing a job, probably because back
in the early days of the 90's, good help was hard to find, and then
as I gained experience in Director, that made it easier.
Recently I've been learning AS3 and trying to get Flash gigs, and
I've had a few job interviews which have been illuminating. I don't
know if this is typical, but in both interviews there were some tests
I had to do. On one interview it was more casual, just a series of
OOP design questions on a whiteboard. The other interview however
they stuck me in a little room and gave me a few hours to program
Conway's Game of Life. This was a surprise (!) to me which I was not
prepared for. I was able to get it working, however my solution was
not optimal. I read about it later (Wikipedia has an entry on it) and
apparently I took the basic route of just using a multidimensional
array, which is not very scaleable. I heard later from someone else
that the Game of Life is often used in Comp Sci studies as an example
problem.
My point is that many years later now, in middle age, I am feeling
the effects of not having a degree in Comp Sci. Don't know if this is
a permanent drawback or just temporary while I try to reinvent myself
as an AS3 coder. I know I have a good programmer mindset, I've been
told I have good OOP design skills, and I've always been interested
in design patterns. However anything beyond basic math is a weak
point for me. I have a feeling I would have done better in both
interviews if I had more of a traditional Comp Sci background.
FWIW,
KMc
p.s. if anyone has any San Francisco/bay area gigs, I'm interested ;)
esp salaried
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