I'm guilty of all the points you raised at the start of your article 😒 You have given some great advice that I intend to act on. Thank you!

A very interesting article on Compiling. Although you were generous with a 1Gb hard drive in “the early days” :-) My first hard drive was 5Mb and coming from Mag Tape this was luxury. In our computer room (the size of a modern entire office floor) we eventually had 67Mb drives that were the size of a washing machine and had to be locked down hard to the floor so they didn’t vibrate across the room when in operation. The fundamental nature of all computing is abstraction. There are literally thousands of layers of abstraction which separates us humans from increasingly levels of complexity as we delve deeper into what makes a computer tick. Having been a machine code and assembler programmer in my early career I can attest to the fact that it can warp your brain as I still remember the instructions for pushing and popping stacks and dealing with registers all these years later :-) It did however help my layman’s knowledge of digital electronics at the chip level which is another whole level of abstraction. Fortunately these days we are far far removed from these complexities and can focus on programming computers to do ever increasing sophisticated tasks without having to get down into the weeds of how it all works.

I’m surprised that there are not more comments on this post as it is very well written and insightful. Milecia has touched on a very important point and this is how important good communication is in your job role. Initially working in machine code and assembler on computers I was seen as the quintessential nerd however it was my growing knowledge and practice in the art of good communication that has really shaped my success not only in my work life but also in my personal life. Over time I will write a lot more on this topic on my blog for those that are interested.

I believe this is one of the best posts on the subject that I have read in a very long time! A lot of very practical advice and great tips for anyone starting the programming journey. It is very easy to get caught up with “fads” in software development and become increasingly dismayed and confused at the ever changing world of software development. Kudos to Milecia for giving well articulated reasons on what you should consider alternatives rather than just the latest fads or supposedly what is “the biggest” or “most popular” language.

I also think remote work is the way of the future and will increasingly become commonplace across all sorts of Industries. I’ve made a comment on Milica Maksimović blog post and rather than repeat the same comments here suggest you have a look.

I think for remote working to be a win/win from both a company and employee perspective it is incumbent on the company to have in place a good (and agile) project management system and a project management culture. This puts the focus on achieving the goals and timelines of the project rather than on individual tasks and where they are being performed. Unfortunately a lot of companies don’t do this and eventually suspicion can form on whether the employee is working from home effectively and productively. There is a famous example where a former icon of the computer industry (starts with a “Y”) had a great remote working culture which was then actively discouraged by the new incoming CEO. I suspects the inability to accurately show and measure results from a project perspective across the Enterprise was definitely a factor in this decision. Fortunately we have great remote working tools these days to help an employee feel connected to the team without physically being in the office. As Milica has said in her post there is a mindset involved in remote working plus getting your environmental factors right. I think it is inevitable that more and more people will be remote working in the future, across a wide range of different industries, so it’s important that we continue to get this right.

Mev-Rael I very much like your post and especially the last paragraph where you contrast being a Leader as opposed to a Manager. We all remember the great Leaders we have worked under and not so much our Managers. I will write a lot more about this topic and the difference between Leaders and Managers on my HashNode blog once I get into the swing of it.

I think all these questions are important but I would like to draw special attention to the "Induction Process" question. A company that can show you a good induction process, ready to go on the day you start, will often mean whether you are going to sink or swim in those very important first few weeks. This is especially important for any sort of sales or marketing role but applies to all roles in my opinion. If they are too busy to do this, or too disorganised, then you really need to evaluate do you really want to work for them.

Sandeep Panda Done!

We worked together at the Multi-National and he was keen to do his own thing. He quickly got more work than he could handle and asked me to join him as a Director and then within a few years as the Managing Director. He pursued other interests and I basically took the company and grew it to a good size before being head-hunted after 20 years out of my own company into another (which is a big story in itself ) :-) It was successfully sold about 12 months after I left and is still going strong today.