#ProgrammingLanguage #SkillsValidation #CareerDevelopment #CodingSkills #JobInterviewPreparation
Do you ever find yourself doubting your programming skills? Have you been in a situation where you claimed to know a programming language, only to feel unprepared during a job interview or project? It’s a common struggle faced by many individuals in the tech industry, but fret not, as there are practical steps you can take to validate your skills and showcase your expertise confidently.
Understanding Your Skill Level
Before diving into proving your knowledge of a programming language, it’s crucial to first assess your skill level accurately. Knowing the basics of a language is one thing, but being able to apply those concepts effectively in real-world scenarios is another. Here are some ways to determine if you truly know a programming language:
- Reflect on your experience: Think about the projects you have worked on using the programming language in question. Have you successfully completed tasks and solved challenges?
- Take a proficiency test: Online platforms like LeetCode, HackerRank, or CodeSignal offer coding challenges and tests to evaluate your skills objectively.
- Seek feedback: Ask peers, mentors, or colleagues for their honest opinion on your proficiency level.
Proving Your Skills
Once you have a clear understanding of your skill level, the next step is to prove your expertise in the language. Creating sample projects or building a portfolio of work can be a great way to showcase your abilities to potential employers. Here are some practical tips to demonstrate your programming skills:
- Build a personal website or blog using the programming language: Showcasing your ability to create a functional website can impress recruiters and highlight your skill set.
- Develop a small application or tool: Whether it’s a calculator, task manager, or simple game, building a practical program demonstrates your understanding of coding concepts.
- Contribute to open-source projects: Collaborating on GitHub repositories or contributing to community projects not only showcases your skills but also demonstrates your commitment to the coding community.
Remember, employers are not just looking for theoretical knowledge but also practical experience and problem-solving abilities. By actively working on projects and showcasing your work, you can prove your proficiency in a programming language effectively.
So, the next time you’re faced with doubts about your programming skills, remember to assess your level accurately and showcase your expertise through tangible projects. With determination and dedication, you can confidently prove your knowledge and excel in your tech career!
Do you have a personal portfolio of github repository containing non-trivial code you’ve written in these languages?
If not, perhaps you don’t really know them.
There is no objective way to measure knowledge. The way you prove it is by demonstrating you can and have written programs using that language.
Just avoid saying “I know language X” and instead say “I’ve worked with language X” and then you can give examples of projects
“Knowing” a programming language isn’t really a binary state in the same way that “knowing” a natural language like French or Russian or English isn’t. You’ll never learn a language, computer or natural, in a way that makes you one day cross a line from not knowing to knowing. Instead, you should be thinking about how much you know, and how well you know it. Most people would say that you “know” a language when you can use it effectively without having to stop and look for answers on line or in a book all the time. Can you write a program in your language of choice without help? Can you read code that other people have written and understand it 98% of the time?
Why can’t you talk language features?
In Python I would ask:
– What do you think of list comprehensions? Tell me what you know about them and where you would use it.
– Tell me about the last decorator you implemented?
– How would you use an asyncio.gather()?
– What libraries have you worked with in Python?
In js:
– What is an arrow function / lambda function?
– Tell me the difference between a map and a reduce
– Give me examples of JavaScript events in browser, how it works, and what it can do for you
Edit: rereading your post, I realize that you have some competency in the languages, but not at the level they want you to be at. So why don’t you determine what the answers were that they were looking for?
Knowing English doesn’t make you a competent writer.
To “know” a language, you can just Google everything. We need to know how you *use* a language. Maybe you’re confusing memory with logic?
When it comes to proving you know a language, every programming language (within their paradigm) has basically a small handful of characteristics that make them uniquely different then other languages when it comes to **actually solving a problem**. For instance, a python interview I did years ago landed me an offer because I did an arbitrary, universal leetcode problem in a repl instead of an editor, and used things like list comprehension. That was proof enough that I knew the language well enough for that company, even if I didn’t take the offer.
Nowemdays, I interview on Go, and every question/problem I’ve been asked to do almost always needs to take advantage of Go’s concurrency strengths and sync library.
If the language is an actual important part of the interview requirements, a great way to show you know the language is to do the same thing that can be done with any language, but to use the language’s unique strengths to do it
say you’ve worked with language X by creating Y as a personal project. That way they are kinda forced to ask more about code you’ve personally written so you’re more comfortable talking about it which will also show confidence and competence.
Before I had projects to talk about I would just get asked really annoying obscure stuff and coding puzzles
“It’s kinda like being in love. No one can tell you’re in love, you just know it.”
Try and program an app using your programming language and see if you can do it. What programming language do you know so I can recommend an example app?
I want to see what you’ve made with that language.
If you’re failing the weird “programming language trivia game” that a lot of interviewers do, you need to do interview prep.
Google stuff like “Python interview questions”.
Also want to mention, I absolutely detest these sorts of interviews. Literally nothing but pure memorization.
The real test for me is when I can debug and optimize someone else’s code effectively. It shows that not only do I know the basics, but I can also understand and improve upon existing projects, which is crucial for any programming job.
Psvm
What sort of questions were you asked? It’s possible you found a really bad interviewer, but it’s also possible you don’t know the language as well as you think you do.