<p>I was wondering how you bridged the gap between classroom exercises/assignments and real life programming. I have been interviewing for a few development jobs and I find it is difficult to relate my "350 line hangman game in python" to "device driver programming" or "email system development". These are just examples obviously, but I think you get the point. I guess the obvious answer is to pick a real world problem and try to develop a piece of software for it, but I wanted to hear from you guys. What did you develop to show in your interviews? How were your first jobs in the industry? Thank you.</p>
<p>Have you done any type of programming for a job or anything? If so, I would use that.</p>
<p>I worked at my school’s College of Medicine using this “off the shelf” database software (I believe called DataEase) to manage a research lab’s patient records and print out monthly and weekly reports. I guess that was enough for Westinghouse (my first employer right out of undergrad) to hire me and immediately place me in their 1-week training for Ingres…which was hot then like Oracle is now.</p>
<p>During the interview, I made sure to tell things that I did with DataEase (whether true or not, lol) that was the equivalent to the things that Ingres could do.</p>
<p>any senior thesis/project work or something like that? just use what you can. at entry-level they know there will be training involved so just be confident and try to illustrate your eagerness/potential to learn rather than your “real world” accomplishments.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies guys, I am going to speak with a professor I know on this topic, he has industry experience so we’ll see.</p>