C++ projects

I’ve recently received several invitations for job interviews, mainly for Java or C++ developer. The fun thing is that - I guess - one of headhunters might have wanted to offer me job in.. company I already work for :) I didn’t really even talked to them but given the information they’ve sent It’s highly possible. Our company is one of the largest IT employers in the area always seeking for IT pros badly, commissioning search to headhunters.

Good thing is that our company has engaged in cooperation with my University and invites students of my Department directly to their office for a loose conversation about possible jobs. Well, it’s good that company opens up to local academic society and resigns of headhunter’s services. It’s especially good it resigns of employing people as external staff and outsourcing development to them.

There’s anyway one thing I’ve learned: do not take C++ developer jobs. The odds are high you’ll end up working on an outdated, long-aged project. C++ projects I’ve seen so far in the wild are a horrible mix of ANSI C, C with classes and code full of some insane dirty tricks. Some code is written by people who favor pure assembler over TDD, GoF and stuff. And it does not use Boost or other modern libraries that solve common problems. Instead, such projects are more likely reinventing the wheels all around again and again. Moreover, new projects aren’t hosted in C++ anymore, Java and other technologies proved mature enough to be eligible even for High Availability solutions. Most C++ projects out there are projects that for some reason didn’t give up its place to newer technologies. Perhaps the company was unable to handle training and transition process? Another bad sign, another clue to avoid it.

I do not mean that every C++ project is like that but most of them unfortunately end up so, I think. It’s far more difficult to manage C++ projects than Java projects. C++ introduces more complexity and implicit stuff, more caveats that developers have to fight with every day. I think we have enough complexity to fight with, so I’m definitely avoiding C++ in future, even though I think I like the language.