tl;dr I need to make a programming portfolio but I'm struggling with justifying it to my brain
Hey, so... there's a thing that's been bothering me for a long time. I've never been able to "fit in" at most jobs. I don't really have "a thing I'd enjoy working in" which, in my case, is a problem because I just can't give up more than a half of my time to something I don't care about, it really messes with my brain and I can't stay in that situation for long.
Programming caught my attention because it relies on stuff I'm quite good at. Solving problems, some creativity, more detailed work too. I have a few online courses done so I'm not totally clueless etc. I have an idea of how searching for a job looks now and other basics.
Now, for the main course: I'm trying so hard to find a field to stay in but for some reason it's weirdly difficult. I think it's because I'm not sure what this or that position really looks in day to day life. I was interested in C# and backend the most but I'm not sure anymore. Is it only working on web pages all day long? I can see it's usually commerce and I don't like that too much. I'm open to other languages too, that's not a problem.
On top of that everyone says "do a portfolio" and they're right because that's probably the only way to showcase the skills a person has but that's where things start to get tricky. My mind just refuses to do a project for the sake of doing it, straight up "nope" and it just doesn't want to cooperate. I tried to look into open source projects to help someone else but they're too advanced, I'm in that weird void between courses and real life applications. I tried to ask people in beginner groups if they'd like to make something together but no one answered, nobody I know needs an app for anything too so it's no use.
I think it's more neurodivergency related thing than strictly tech. Trouble with decision making, motivation, many people don't understand that.
My reasoning behind all this is that if I find a project that's needed by other people, I'd be able to complete it. I haven't found anyone with a similar issue yet though.
Initially I was going towards software, turns out WPF beat me, in a group project I had a portion that involved it and I just couldn't do it. Making the buttons and all that was okay, backend too, but making them cooperate? No way. Sadly the other members weren't very helpful and there's surprisingly few in depth resources about WPF so I dropped it.
I don't have any background in tech so everything I know, I learned by myself. I haven't touched hardware yet, I know it's in the program of "trade schools" which is an alternative to high school here so they'd have an advantage over me. There's a limit to how much one person can learn simultaneously so I don't know much about that for now. I'd like to reduce the even of "starting a million things and never finishing any of them" so I'm trying to limit myself a little.
I noticed that testers are in demand but it turns out that almost all offers require a ISTQB certificate, which costs quite a lot of money so it's not available for me now. I have a limited amount of information about the position itself, I'm not sure what a tester really does outside of "tests things". For some reason many people, not just testers, have a hard time describing in detail what they do. It's probably because they have many different tasks so I understand, but it makes it difficult for me to get an idea of what the job is like. It feels like trying to navigate an unknown place, through a fog so dense you can barely see the fingers of your outstretched hand. There's probably a solution to this but I'm not aware of it. Maybe AMA posts or something, I have no idea.
Ah sorry, I didn't so much mean to push for switching entirely from developing software to designing hardware. I was trying to suggest aiming for developing software for low level hardware, like embedded development. If you're comfortable with C#, it likely will be simpler to at least start reading C++. I went in the opposite direction there myself though.
I started learning programming by playing around with TI-Basic on Texas Instruments graphing calculators. Then I learned Z80 Assembly to get around a common bug with hitting left and up at the same time in writing games on the calculators. Then I got a different calculator that had a Motorola 68000 or something CPU in it instead of a Z80, so I attempted to learn that assembly, but noped out of it and learned C instead. Then naturally progressed into C++ before I ever took a programming course, which ended up being on Visual Basic.
It only took me a mere 9.5 years to graduate with my four year bachelors degree, so I started in tech support with no degree, then moved into Operations with no degree as an internal promotion. I'd been working in Operations helping with testing for years before I finally finished and got my degree, then just kept working there for several years more. So I think I get the self taught part pretty well at least. All of the things my degree tried to teach me, I had already learned either on my own directly, or by being pushed there for work.
I'm unfamiliar with that ISTQB certification, but if it is that expensive, they very well may be willing to pay for you to take the certification if you ask about it. Especially if they're having trouble finding people to hire.
I guess just to try and describe my own experience with "testing", although largely focused on testing hardware. The developer/engineer provided information on what the thing was supposed to do and how it should act. Sometimes they even had documentation instead of just a verbal discussion and a whiteboard. They would often provide a software tool or API to get into some portion of the hardware and allow access to various things to verify whether they were working. This often involved physically connecting various components to the device and trying to send data across. So there was a lot of send this thing, then try to read it back and see if it came through the same as a basic test that everything was connected. Then drivers/firmware would get installed/updated and we'd try some higher level functional usage of the device as best we were able. Depending on the purpose of the hardware, this wasn't always possible to test in actuality, so a lot of the time this would be running more things in a loopback mode that the drivers supported, even by customers in the field. We used Linux, bash, perl, python, and various other things to try and automate as much of this procedure as possible for the hardware. By the time we were done automating, testing most of the hardware was as simple as install it in the test fixture and connect it according to a diagram, then turn on the test fixture. The fixture would identify what was installed, load the correct test, and report whether the results were nominal. If they were not, it would at least outline the step that failed so the test operator knew what to inspect if possible.
As for more direct me testing, that would be the returned field failures. Much of our hardware ran in a regular PC, so there was a lot of regular PC troubleshooting steps to reproduce/verify a failure. Then I eventually learned soldering and was taught some PCB/hardware stuff to do deeper dives on the boards, but that was all taught/learned on the job.
I basically got the operations position because I had shown I was good at troubleshooting and problem solving in general, and that I was capable of learning a system enough to be considered the local "expert" on it. Then I was taught or learned anything else I needed to know after I got the position.
So, hopefully you haven't given up too much yet, and perhaps you can try out applying for some positions where you don't quite meet all the "requirements" for it. Then just describe situations that show your general capabilities, and that you can learn what they need after you get onboard. Hopefully your luck will turn soon and you can get on into something somewhere.
My bad, ISTQB is the International Software Testing Qualifications Board, a software testing certification board, not a certificate. One of the certifications is Certified Tester Foundation Level. I'm reading about it now and it seems the syllabus got an update in May and there also are some older comments from around 2016 that the certificate matters little because it's too easy to pass, I'm not sure how about the new one. The test costs more than 50% of a monthly minimal wage so I'll definitely stay away from it.
It may seem like I'm too dead set on the portfolio thing but in here, the junior market is really tough (as it probably is the case anywhere else) so I think I really have to come with something that works. The number of offers is limited so I want to use these rare opportunities as best as possible so my reasoning here is that I have to make something, even though I'm better at solving real life problems than making up stuff.
On a more positive note, it seems that the worst of my low mood/burnout is over, I can dust one or two ideas I had put away and maybe, just maybe, I'll get some progress in the upcoming days. Assuming I won't get overwhelmed by all the information attacking me from all sides at once /hj