I presented it to students of National University of Water Management and Natural Resources Use (Rivne, Ukraine). Basically, it's an overview of knowledge and skills that students expected to have after graduation.

1. How To Become a
Software Engineer
@YaroslavBunyak
Senior Software Engineer, SoftServe Inc.

2. Agenda
• Knowledge
• Tools
• Character
• Experience
• Value
• PR

3. Who is this guy?
• Senior software engineer
• 15 years of programming experience
• 7+ as a professional
• Master’s degree in Applied Maths, 2007

4. Who is this guy?
• High-performance code, real-time 3D
graphics, and mathematics
• Millions of people see my code in action
• every day
• The Weather Channel, CNN, Fox
News...

5. English or
GTFO

6. English or
GTFO

7. Knowledge

8. What?
• Hardware architecture
• Data representation
• Algorithms
• Mathematics
• Programming languages
• Technology

9. Hardware
• CPU
• Memory and cache
• GPU
• more and more important today

10. Data
• Bits and bytes
• Floating-point numbers
• Data structures

11. Data Structures
• Array, list, queue, stack
• Map, hash map
• Tree (binary, red-black, k-D)
• Graph

12. Algorithms
• Search
• Sort
• Optimization
• Recursion
• Greedy
• Scatter, Gather, Scan, Reduce

13. Math
• Computers are all about math!

14. Programming Languages
• Native - C, C++, Objective-C, C#
• Scripting - Python, Lua, Perl
• Web - JavaScript, Ruby, PHP
• Functional - Lisp, Scheme, Erlang

15. Technology
• Multithreading
• Networking
• Database design
• GUI
• Computer graphics
• Image processing

16. Tools

17. What?
• IDE or editor
• Source control
• Diff / Merge
• Debugger
• Profiler
• Build system
• Bug tracker
• Task management
• Continuous
integration
• Code review
• ...

18. IDE
• Integrated Development Environment
• code editor
• build system
• debugger
• profiler
• ...

19. IDE
• Microsoft Visual Studio
• Apple Xcode
• Qt Creator
• Eclipse
• Code::Blocks

20. Editor
• Vim
• Emacs
• Notepad
• not!

21. Source Control
•
Version Control System (VCS)

22. Source Control
Server
---------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
File Y, version 0
File Y, version 1
...
File Y, version 5
Engineer 1
-------------
Engineer 2
-------------

23. Source Control
Server
---------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
File Y, version 0
File Y, version 1
...
File Y, version 5
Engineer 1
-------------
Engineer 2
-------------

24. Source Control
Server
---------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
File Y, version 0
File Y, version 1
...
File Y, version 5
Engineer 1
-------------
file X, file Y
Engineer 2
-------------
file X, file Y

25. Source Control
Server
---------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
File Y, version 0
File Y, version 1
...
File Y, version 5
Engineer 1
-------------
file X, file Y
Engineer 2
-------------
file X, file Y

26. Source Control
Server
---------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
File Y, version 0
File Y, version 1
...
File Y, version 5
Engineer 1
-------------
file X, file Y
Engineer 2
-------------
file X, file Y

27. Source Control
Server
---------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
File Y, version 0
File Y, version 1
...
File Y, version 5
File Y, version 6
Engineer 1
-------------
file X, file Y
Engineer 2
-------------
file X, file Y

28. Source Control
• Update
• Commit
• Diff against previous revision
• Branch
• Integrate

29. Source Control
• Centralized
• Perforce, Subversion
• Distributed
• Git, Mercurial

30. DCVS
Engineer 1
-------------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
file Y, version 0
file Y, version 1
...
file Y, version 5
file Y, changed
Server
---------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
file Y, version 0
file Y, version 1
...
file Y, version 5
Engineer 2
-------------
file X, version 0
file X, version 1
file Y, version 0
file Y, version 1
...
file Y, version 5

31. Diff Tools
• Beyond Compare
• P4 Merge
• DiffMerge
• Kaleidoscope
• and many, many more...

32. Profiler
• Instrumented
• Sampling

33. Profiler
• Intel VTune
• Very Sleepy
• xperf
• (built-in) Visual Studio and Xcode

34. Build System
• make
• Premake
• CMake
• Tundra
• Jam

35. Research
• Vim philosophy
• spend 5 minutes to find the right tool
• profit!
• 5 minutes is okay, but 3 months probably
not

36. Character

37. Must Have
• Initiative
• Responsibility
• Persistence
• Self-improvement
• Self-driven
• Get things done!

38. Experience

39. Advice #1
• Practice
• Practice
• and Practice
• Practice makes perfect

40. Where To Get
• Start a hobby project
• gamedev (why not?)
• Internship
• Join open source project
• Get a job
• Probably not the best advice for a student

41. Typical Path
• Don’t know how to
• Know how to
• Know how not to

42. Value

43. Value
• With your hard work you create value

44. How To Sell Your Work?
• Salary
• hourly, fixed
• Royalty
• Share
• Freelance (contract)
• Open source

45. Value
• Your work is used to create a product
• alone or within a team
• So...

46. How To Sell a Product?
• Self-publishing or publisher deal
• License
• Service
• Support
• Ads
• Give away for free

47. Contracts
• Consider you want to help somebody to
create/enhance/support a product
• You need a contract
• yes, you DO!

48. What’s in a Contract?
• Scope of work (what has to be done)
• as detailed as possible
• Cost (money)
• Support (included or not)

49. What’s in a Contract?
• Now remember:
• any, ANY additional work outside of the
contract scope has to be included in
another contract
• Otherwise...
• you will do it for free!

50. Open Source
• Choose a license
• BSD, MIT, Zlib are good ones
• GNU GPL - not so!
• Publish your code
• GitHub, Bitbucket, Google Code

51. PR

52. Remember
• It doesn’t matter how good you are if other
people (clients, customers, employer) do
not know it
• You have to promote youself

53. How
•
•
•
•
Prepare a nice CV (no BS there)
Publish your work (code, software)
Connect with people
•
•
•
Blog
social media (Twitter)
professional networks (LinkedIn)
attend conferences

54. Thank You!

55. Questions?
Twitter: @YaroslavBunyak
e-mail: ybunyak@gmail.com

56. In The Next Episode:
Software Development Life-Cycle (SDLC)