It’s been referred to in the past as left brain vs. right brain, which may or may not be true depending on which research you buy into. I can say that, as a CS major, I am much more inclined to back end and database programming - I can see the logic and it makes sense to me. I’ve tried various artistic endeavors and found that’s just not my strength - I totally can’t do random when it comes to painting. Everything for me breaks down to a pattern and logical rules.
Others see the world more visually and artistically, and are willing to work with looser rules to get the end result they are looking for. Which is why I won’t say one is harder than the other - it really depends on how your brain is wired. There’s no right or wrong here - just that you will likely be happier working in a discipline that meshes with the way your brain is naturally wired. That’s why we often take on interns or contractors - it gives an opportunity to see what someone’s passion is, and determine how well they fit the job, before committing to taking someone on as a full-time employee. We want to hire people who are passionate about what they do.
Not sure if the OP is for real, but @simba9, I was the one advising about interviews, and just to be clear, I’m not saying that the OP or any candidate should focus on algorithms to the exclusion of other things. What I’m saying is that someone thinking about entering the software field should be aware of the split we’re discussing between the two types of programming, and they should keep their options open until they have a good idea of what they want to do.
For all we know, the OP has zero artistic ability and would make a horrible front-end developer. Yet the majority of the posts in this thread have basically encouraged him to head down that path, because it’s quicker and less expensive, and has the higher likelihood of resulting in a job(his reasons, not yours). I just think it’s bad to go along with that type of thinking.
I agree with you and @InigoMontoya, that the two types of programming are very different, and attract very different types of people. And that’s exactly why adults should encourage a young person who’s basing their decision on all the wrong things, to slow down and take a look at the big picture.
As you can probably guess, I’m the artistically challenged type I force myself to refresh my Web programming skills every few years because I feel like it’s dangerous to know nothing about it, but it hurts my brain.
I’d rather write a whole library of thread-safe data structures than deal with one moderately complicated Web page with all of its floats and absolute positioning (which is relative, btw :))
I’m hoping Flexbox or Grid Layout will make web programming easy enough that I can do it without hurting my brain some day. As far as the art work and pretty fonts and all that goes - forget about it. I’ll never be able to pull that off without someone’s help.
Is freelance work in high demand for someone who hasn’t gotten their first entry-level job yet? How competitive is that? Does anyone have suggestions about doing some type of work (other than self projects) that could help gain experience? Work for free?
When we hire freelancers we’re looking for someone who can come in strong, have immediate impact, and get the job done quickly and efficiently. I personally wouldn’t hire an inexperienced freelancer. I don’t have resources available to supervise freelancers at the level an inexperienced developer would need.
If you want to go the front-end route, you need to build a portfolio of sites you’ve worked on to show others (and often developers will link to their Git repositories as well). One way to build such a portfolio would be to volunteer to do web site development for non-profits or small local businesses. The first web site I built was for my kid’s school. Boy did that make me realize I don’t have a creative bone in my body and was born to do database development!
What experience do you have that leads you to this conclusion? Seems like those of us in the industry find that it is a rare person who can do both well. Many will tell you they do, but when you set them to coding it’s almost always clear they are better in one type of development than the other.
Maybe…or possibly maybe not…drawing is one of my strongest abilities while growing up. I also have always enjoyed solving things logically…but that might be my second strongest…
lol - I would hold the evaluation of your strengths until you have actually really done the work - CS in college has a very high drop rate for a reason.
Start with front-end - back-end development will be harder without the full degree / upper division electives.
Is the full stack development program(s) at boot camps that difficult to pull off on one’s own? I talked to one (head) rep from a bootcamp. I suggested the idea about pulling it off through my own self study and he was taken aback and suggested that he would be impressed if anyone did the same thing themselves on their own, especially in the same amount of time (3 months)…
I force myself to refresh my Web programming skills every few years because I feel like it’s dangerous to know nothing about it, but it hurts my brain.