"Professional programmers" don't have to be so "professional."

" professional programmers" don't have to be so "professional. "

Editor's note: The author of this article Yu Yu, the first law in its public number "Yu Yu thought" (No.:
Yurii-says), Welcome to Exchange discussion, authorized 36 Krypton released.

When I was at work, I couldn't figure out why there was an "industry" option in the job-hunting information and
"Career" options, many times the "industry" and "occupation" or overlap, such as the industry is
"Software development", the profession is "software engineer", this is not the same thing? After a few years, the mystery
To really untie.

The funny thing is, I thought that only I did not know the problem, slowly found that it is not so. Hours of work
Long, many young friends and I talk about the work of the problem, I found a lot of people on their own career confusion,
are derived from the understanding of "industry" and "occupation". It seems worth writing an article about this question and talking about
My point of view.

• The so-called "industry", usually in terms of the company, refers to the area where the company's business is located. Like what
  "Transport", "retail", "e-commerce" and so on.

• The so-called "occupation", usually personal, refers to the specific work performed by an individual. Like what
  "Truck Driver", "Salesperson", "Graphic design" and so on.

The above example looks simple, but often confusion occurs in life. Because industry and occupation are neither mutually exclusive nor
does not overlap, everyone has his or her own profession, and the name of the profession and industry may not be
often similar. The industry has "software development", the occupation also has "software development", the two still have the difference. Such as
Fruit industry is "software development", often refers to the person's company is responsible for the development and sale of software products;
If the profession is "software development", it often means that the person himself is coding the development software. Extended to say that the soft
The company does not only develop software, but also testing, finance, administration, sales and other occupations. Do software
The development of the person is not necessarily in software companies, e-commerce, research and other industries such as the need for this profession.

By figuring out the general relationship between industry and occupation, you can talk about your career.

Basically, any job can give a person a fresh sense of not more than 6 months, and then simply repeat
Labor. From the company's point of view, this is a reasonable arrangement, the highest efficiency of skilled workers and most insured. From a personal point of view,
May not be satisfied, the conscientious will always think of self-improvement. But where is the strength to spend? Time Is there
Limit, who do not want to waste effort.

At this time, industry and occupation represent two directions of development. The choice of industry, it is necessary to expand their breadth of knowledge,
To reach out to the downstream people, understand the whole business, the whole chain is how to play. To choose a profession, you should deepen your self
Skills, look for people and materials that are more professional than yourself and learn from them.

Usually we say "learn from experts", but there is no clear direction, because experts have both industry experts,
There are also professional experts. Suppose you do program development in an online store, then your industry is e-commerce, career
is a programmer. Select the industry as the direction of development, you should focus on the following questions: E-commerce applications are
characteristics, in the system selection and use of what is fastidious, which problems are suitable to use what framework and middleware solutions
The decision to ... Choosing a career as a direction of development requires a focus on the following issues: existing programming languages and frameworks
What is the function, what characteristics, the system has what technical indicators each means, what the system will probably ask
How to solve the problem ...

Notice above I said "Focus", the combination of extreme "partial section" is no market. Just care about the industry
But can not do hands-on can only talk, only concerned about the occupation and do not understand the background and rules are also unable to move. So
Most occupations often have entry requirements for industry knowledge and professional skills. But how should an individual grow up
Many people may not be aware of the problem of choosing a direction, focusing on industry knowledge or professional ability.

To be sure, at least a considerable number of programmers choose to be "professional." No matter what the industry programmer,
We are willing to argue about what language is good, what framework is good and so on, positioning themselves as "neutral"
Technical staff, the so-called "neutral", refers to the "specific issues unrelated to the specific field".
This career choice, the United States is called "professional programmer."

But this "professional programmer" often has a lot of problems working. One of the typical performance is the business people
Often yell "How can you not even understand this, this should not want me to say ah", because they do "do not understand"
--I've seen a lot of programmers who develop storage systems who really don't understand the age of the library, and they don't understand the labels and inventory.
The difference between the "Getting Started problem", and the other is that I often meet in the interview from a completely different
The industry programmer, not understanding or doing homework for the industry to be applied for, see "programmers (development engineering
Teacher) "will be directly invested in the resume. You ask him, "What's the difference between NoSQL and SQL?" You can usually answer
Ask him "What are the characteristics of e-commerce and SNS that decide they want to use a lot of NoSQL", often can not answer
The If you ask him again, the typical question in the industry is what models in software science can be answered.
People are even less. But many "professional programmers" think it's not a problem, and they don't have to worry about it.
Problem.

The reality is that a large number of "professional" programmers are better suited to "pure" development, although this profession
Already "talented", and "industry" programmers are very scarce, in many industries have a large number of companies need to develop
"Do not seek high-tech, only stability can be used," the system is willing to pay a high salary to recruit enough industry knowledge, development
Programmers with relatively general skills have been without a long-term gain. I believe that many programmers abandon the "industry" and choose
"Occupation" is not a conscious choice, but the cost of the "unconscious" is sometimes so great that it sighs.

Why is that? I think there are two reasons.

On the one hand, software development itself is mature enough, for the pure software field of many classic problems, has been quite
Mature solutions, a variety of languages, frameworks, components have been quite reliable, not so dependable
Programmers can also use them directly. In other words, "pure" software development has already had quite a lot of accumulation, to
The threshold for success is already high.

On the other hand, the software how to solve a variety of practical problems, in fact, there has been no classic solution. Software is the first solution
The scientific calculation and the banking problem, go the way of theory first (remember Codd's classic paper),
Then the software began to try to solve other problems in various fields, and this is the only practice. These areas
Previous experience and specifications on how to migrate to the world of software, which are worth preserving and which
Need to be updated or abandoned, a large number of such problems are still groping (the rise of the mobile internet is even more so, because
Emerging scenarios and problems multiply).

In this case, the value of industry knowledge is not difficult to understand. If there are two programmers, a
More professional skills, with one months to improve the storage management system response speed of 100%, B's Industry
More knowledge, with one months to improve the warehouse management system accuracy rate of 40%, shipping speed increased
20%. For most companies in today's e-commerce industry, the value of who is higher is probably self-evident.
In fact, for this phenomenon, Weinberg gave a model in "becoming a technology leader": Don't count addition,
Count the multiplication. If you spend 90% of your energy on career, 10% of your energy in the industry, the total score is 0.09,
If the energy distribution is 60%:40%, the total score is 0.24. The values may not be accurate, but the overall trend is correct.

Some may say that the "industry" is risky, what if the industry is depressed? Still depends on the
"Occupation" of the hard ability to eat more emboldened. This fear is not necessary. The first choice of industry is not to
Luck, not a lifetime contract, and second choice of industry does not necessarily mean you have to completely abandon professional skills, you may
Just take the time to keep up with the latest technology to understand the industry's existing experience, and finally, if you
Technical skills and deep understanding of two or three industries, that is "domain experts", the field experts are more than
A "consultant" who can only talk is much more popular.

"Professional programmers" don't have to be so "professional."