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fatema wrote: even for the junior roles interview technical skills that all companies care for
Not necessarily. I have a job doing MVC, HTML, JQuery, C#, SQL. Of those, the only skills I brought in were C# and SQL (and I was 2 generations behind on those). I had 0 experience doing any web development at all.
What matters is can you communicate with technical people in a technical way, and believe it or not... first impression (do they like you) matters a lot, even before you start the interview.
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The bottom line for any job is that you have to be able to deliver the goods, so first on your list is getting your skills up to par.
You might consider taking whatever kind of non tech job that you can get right now just to keep the bills paid. Above and beyond getting the money you need to survive, a priority would be making sure you can work 40 hours and be done, giving you the time you need after work to study, code and get your programming skills polished.
You might also consider looking for a very small scale volunteer project as you study. Perhaps some non profit organization or local hobby / special interest group that needs a web site but has no technical capabilities. This gives you a real world app to work on as you learn (which I always find more educational than just doing book examples), but it also gives you something to put on your resume with that skill set.
Once you're ready, update the resume and look for a junior level job to get you back into the game. When you find it, you give the temp job two weeks notice (always be a professional even if it's washing dishes), and off you go.
It's not something you'll get done by January, but depending how hard you study, you could still be back in the coding biz in a matter of months.
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If you were out of work entirely, you'll need to be able to explain at some level why that happened and give potential employers reason to believe you're serious about returning to the workforce and won't end up bailing on them shortly after being hired. Local legislation may, and probably does, set limits beyond which a potential employer isn't allowed to ask; but I can't offer any guidance on what UK law says about the matter.
If you were working in a different field, you'll similarly need to be able to answer questions about what drove your shifts.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Good at C? Linux or AV company.
As long as you're on the fortunate 0.1% understanding what an *(unsigned char *)buffer++ = '\0'; is, or how to revert a single linked list, you're good to go.
The rest is experience - that won't come from a resume. Start checking a (beginner) position [^] on either C# or C, whatever fits you better.
Best line from "Finding Forrester" when Sean Connery tells to the youngster how to write:
"No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!"
Seems pretty good when programming, too. (That if you'll not be too busy doing meetings instead of coding, of course).
Nuclear launch detected
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Cristian Amarie wrote: *(unsigned char *)buffer++ = '\0';
Man, I miss the days when C / C++ ruled the Earth. I miss the dinosaurs, too. Just not as much. They always made a mess of my front yard.
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Well, I usually feel like on the extinction verge. But working on Bitdefender there isn't a single day without guts.
Just finished a meeting for the next version optimizer - should be freeze processes with NtSuspendProcess or registering ourselves as a debugger and do a some form of Break All?
Now *that's* the stuff I wanna do. Not jerking around yet another [fill spaces].JS library larger than user32.dll or discovering some new json database after working with ODBC for years.
Nuclear launch detected
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The big question is, what have you been doing for five years? Is it something that will lend itself to being useful in a new position? Something worthy of putting on your resume, or have you been in the big-house?
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You need to go all out.
Buy cheap old PC's from ebay, fit them out with all the free stuff, do a few practice projects in c/c++/c# on Linux, which is all free.
Start a project or two, tout a product around local businesses - it doesn't have to be brilliant, it's just that you can claim on your CV that this is 'commercial experience', without lying.
Open an account with Abe books and buy LOTS of cheap, used programming books to work through. When going to interviews, you've got to be able to talk the talk. This is not commercial, but you can claim 'familiarity' with all the tech; expand from C/C# and try out (free) Python, (free) Ruby etc.
C/C# are a natural fit for Interop, get used to building C library functions to be consumed by C# apps; if you're on windows there are free 'express' versions of Visual Studio.
And practice, practice, practice!
Then, when your CV looks good(a MS Word template looks good if you have the luxury - if not, do it on a friend's machine, then when you put the CV back on your Libre-office free wp, evrything will stay where it is meant to), HIT THE AGENCIES!
Job sites? CWJobs is a good one. Build experience with the agents. Once you've got a track record they'll often keep feeding you leads because you show.
Good hunting! 
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Ummm... "get back on track"? What track do you want to get back onto ?
You say you did C# and C. Now you want MVC, HTML, CSS.
First of all, do you know what position are you targeting? Or what particular type of project?
You must first determine what is it that you want.
In the "real programming world", C programming is nothing like college, trust me. But if you were any good at it, you must have some solid knowledge about data structures. First go with that and study some more. Add some algorithms and design patterns to your study list, and you're good to start pretty much anywhere a little above the beginner level.
Moving on... C#... this is a rather generic language.
Did you do desktop or web applications?
Did you like it ?
After answering this, you can choose a path to follow.
There are a lot of books out there, some good, some better, some garbage. This is not that important, anyone can read a book, but what matters is what you can do after reading that book.
Practice, practice, practice!
As someone else replied, if you're satisfied with the results of your studies (small projects and homework), you could make yourself an online portfolio. Probably it will not matter much, but you will be doing something which you can show if necessary. Also, you can get some self esteem from this too.
And most importantly, when applying for a job, be flexible, ask about personal improvement, be open to negotiation (regarding not only salary, but also position and projects). Be aware of what you know, be honest, and most importantly, be open.
And get ready to relive the student years, because you will most likely have to learn a lot of stuff after you get a job.
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HTML and CSS are pretty easy to learn, HTML is a tag language, while CSS is for giving style to these tags for presentation, you can find plenty of tutorials about both on the Internet, I learned a lot about HTML from some dead simple tutorials, but this was many, many years ago, so I can't find them anymore. Also, you may also want to add JavaScript to the HTML/CSS mix, as it's necessary for interactivity.
Your mayor problem will be wrapping around the MVC concept, especially if you were doing something with Windows Forms/ASP.NET when you were using C#.
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fatema wrote: How to get back on track ?
And how long were you a developer?
And what have you been doing since then?
If you did in fact have a number years as a professional developer and you have been working in a specific industry since then then the obvious path would be to use your domain knowledge of that industry to land a job as a developer in that industry.
If you don't have real development experience in the past (like 5 years) then you are starting from scratch.
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There are some good ideas here. Especially develop and app that can be demonstrated to potential employers. Also, I know several developers who started out doing testing and verification.
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From a hiring manager's perspective what Ravi Bhavnani recommended (build a site) would impress me most. My main worry about the 5-year gap would be that you didn't find the technology interesting, especially with something as relatively simple as HTML/CSS, so it would be hard for me to hire you to do it at my firm. Building a working MVC site would go a long way - especially if you did some cool stuff with it, and double especially if you are able to say "look at the cool parts of my demo site - I really had fun learning how to do that." Smart people know that smart people can learn to do almost anything relatively close to their existing skill set in a week or two, that's why I hire developers who really love to code and show that by what they do in their free time.
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At the company I work for, we have been using MS for our industrial control system for just about as long as MS has been around. DOS in the early days, then 2000, XP, and finally 7. my issue is coming from exactly where Microsoft is going, it seems like they are pushing developers and the whole ecosystem into the cloud for processing and storage while the APIs are getting more removed from the bare metal of the OS.
Our original DOS system used C and when .NET was first released it was redesigned to work on Windows. Over time the system has gotten quite large; employing communications from serial, raw sockets and remoting/WCF to communicate with various hardware and other specialized computers.
Microsoft's future effectively kills my product; 90% of my customer base has no internet connectivity and even if they could get some sort of internet out there, most of them are too scared to do so; thinking they will get hacked somehow and damage all their equipment or something.
MS put out Embedded/Compact 7/8 but you still got to find equipment running this OS or try and make your own image to put on hardware (I got no time for the later, as I'm the only developer working with 3 other techs). These Embedded systems are still geared for always connected, but may work for the short time.
I started looking at Linux, QNX, Windriver, even Raspberry Pi (with OS). But there are so many flavors and options, I'm not even sure where to start. And then there is the machine the OS runs on; standard PC, PC104, Com Express.....
Any one else doing some industrial control out there not using MS as a base? if so where to start?
I feel like I have oatmeal for a brain today.
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I'm in the same boat brother.
I write industrial control systems, Windows 8 can be bent to work in this situation, but its not easy and really makes it seem like I'm destabilizing it.
I'm looking at possibly moving a lot of my code-base over to Mono and running on some flavor of Linux.
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My system will run on 8 with a few tweaks to the OS, but the techs refuse to learn it/support it, so I'm still building 7 boxes.
Is there a particular flavor of Linux that has caught your eye? I've only started playing with Ubuntu and Debian in a VM. I'm looking for something that an average person comfortable with MS (my customer base) not to get too freaked out when they first see it.
Nice to know I'm not the only one with a headache.
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I think I maybe in that boat soon, some RF controllers on PC104 cards running XPe. Nothing from the customer (8+ years...that good right) as soon as support is pulled whats the betting "oh we have to upgrade now its not supported". I have been trying to get my head around what is Windows Embedded platform CE5, CE6, CE6.5, Windows Embedded, Windows Mobile, Windows for serial killers? There does seem be one now what gives. 
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Debian can be a pain in a ass for hardware support since they roll out updates A LOT slower than anyone else. Debian however, does have long term stability, so if you want something that's going to work reliably for years, if you can get Debian installed and working on the machines you're using, then that's a good option. On the other hand, if there's any new hardware you're using, odds are the drivers in Debian aren't going to support it.
Ubuntu LTS is usually a decent OS and is easy to work with. Their stuff is a lot more up-to-date than Debian but you do pay a price in stability. I've definitely downloaded some updates that broke some stuff in Ubuntu. The LTS version is however decently stable (they put out too many updates if you ask me). Mint is an Ubuntu derivative that throttles the updates in order to provide for a better stability experience. They're also not following path with the Ubuntu Unity interface, which is pretty but slow.
The other option out there that I'd recommend is RedHat Enterprise, it's no longer a free distribution (you have to pay for installation disks or you can get the source code free and compile it yourself). Since you're paying, you do get some support in case you get stuck. RedHat does seem to be very stable but also has the latest drivers usually. Since a lot of people are using RedHat, there's also a lot of forums for help as well (CentOS is the free version of RedHat, compiled by someone else... I have had some performance issues with it however).
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Thanks for the info, that will help me get started. just put a few Linux books in my Amazon cart as I will admit I am a complete nube to the OS, I've spent too many years just trying to keep up with Microsoft.
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Sure, let me know if you have other questions down the line... I've gone through this headache before. I use several Linux distros along with several Windows versions.
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I know that some companies don't like using obviously-windows based industrial controllers. One customer of ours, the morning shift came in to find half the machines not working because the night shift had pinched the ram and processors.
PC104 is ok because they are generally not easily dismantlable, but an "industrial PC" is fair game it seems...
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In general our stuff is based on embedded controllers which can't be repurposed with ease, Windows controllers we generally look at as Windows has a tendency to get interrupted and wander off to do something while you are trying capture data...
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for the most part, our current system is not real time on most things. but the president of my company is making some new promises.
If I may ask, what is your embedded controller/OS?
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