Originally Posted by
jack jordan
It has been a while since I last posted, so hello.
I've studied pretty intensely now for about a year and a half. I've spent about 1000 hours in both C and Java, as well as 500 hours in C++ and Python. I believe my Java education, in particular, will allow me to pick up concepts in other languages very quickly, so I don't have much fear towards new languages. I think language learning has gotten both kind of fun and kind of easy.
I've worked at a family-owned restaurant with food delivery for a few years now, and in the coming months, I would like to change my job and break into a programming field. Before I leave my job that has treated me so well, I may want to help them by improving their Point-of-Sale software if it is possible.
Pretty much everything that I have built has been as a programming exercise, and never have I built anything that was intended for actual use. I have built a number of things I am proud of such as a paint program, but these are really just personal projects. I don't know anything about interacting with existing programs. I don't know how to break into this kind of coding. I think it may have something to do with hacking as hacking is supposed to be defined as "interacting with a system in a way the creator did not intend", but I really don't know.
Here is one such way I might be able to improve the current Point of Sale (POS) software:
The current POS asks the user to enter in customer address information. I would like to have it automatically look up map coordinates for that address and enter them into the customer record. This would save the delivery drivers a minute or so every time they return to the store to collect another set of deliveries.
Besides this, I have quite a long list of things I could do to improve it. I am not completely opposed to building a whole new POS tailored to their particular business. I just don't know if that is the best solution. What do people normally do if they want better software? Should I study hacking, or is old software often just left in the dust of new code?