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Possible Duplicate:
Differences between programming in school vs programming in industry?

This is a general discussion about programming in the industry environment. The background story is that my colleague sent me a very interesting article called "10 Things Entrepreneurs Don’t Learn in College." The first point in that post is about the author's experience of programming in the academic environment vs industry environment. After finishing a 4 year Computer Science degree course, I am currently working in the academic environment as a developer, mainly writing Java, J2EE, Javascript code. I know there are differences between academic programming and industry programming, but I was shocked after reading that post.

Trying to avoid this happening on me in the future, or the others. Can anyone from industry give some general advice about how to program in industry. For example,

  • What exactly happens when a task is received?
  • What is the flow from the beginning to the end?
  • What are the main differences between the programming in industry and academia?
  • Is it more structured?
  • Are more frameworks used?

It would be great if some code examples could be given.

Thanks.

user200340
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    In Industry, there are a lot more meetings. A *lot* more. Soooo many meetings... :'( – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Nov 18 '11 at 16:15
  • We also have a lot meetings, and a lot reports. – user200340 Nov 18 '11 at 16:18
  • Many many many duplicates... – riwalk Nov 18 '11 at 16:29
  • _Loc. cit._ [33 Unusual Tips to Being a Better Writer](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/03/33-unusual-tips-to-being-a-better-writer/). – trashgod Nov 18 '11 at 16:31
  • Thanks, i was posting on stackoverflow, and it was moved to here, then I have found the duplicate. – user200340 Nov 18 '11 at 16:35
  • At school, at least they give you homework (even if the assignments are outdated); in the industry, you can sit around if nothing has been decided! – Clockwork-Muse Nov 18 '11 at 16:35
  • @ X-Zero : that is arguably a bad idea, unless you have no aspirations ;) – Timothy Groote Nov 18 '11 at 16:47
  • Conference calls... you all forgot about the endless conference calls. – Kevin D Nov 18 '11 at 16:55
  • @FrustratedWithFormsDesigner I had more meetings in academia actually. Though I do work in a fairly lean small company that is low on formal process. – Alb Nov 18 '11 at 17:12
  • @Alb: I was also in a small company with minimal meeting time. Now I'm in a much much larger company with much more meeting time... I wonder if there's a connection betweeen company size and amount of time spent in meetings? – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Nov 18 '11 at 17:15
  • @FrustratedWithFormsDesigner I think there usuall is as teams tend to be larger, and there also tends to be a larger hierarchy of people that need to be briefed at some level. Small companies can't afford bureaucracy :) – Alb Nov 18 '11 at 17:19

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From a day to day coding perspective the biggest difference I noticed was that in academia I never had to work with legacy code, and any code I wrote was probably never going to be maintained by anyone else for very long.

It took year or two of working in industry to realise the importance of writing maintainable code - agile methodologies such as refactoring, unit testing, keeping methods and classes short, using good names instead of short ones, automated building, continuous integration etc.

Alb
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