Being a coder?

[Dinocanid]

Needing another source of income outside of my art, I planned on working as a coder for pet sites. The problem is I'm only familiar with working with the mysidia script, which a majority don't use. It's not vastly different to my knowledge, and uses a mix of OOP and smarty for the base. Would things be that much different? Of course, if they used another framework than I would need to familiarize myself with it, but some don't use frameworks at all and build from the ground up (I'm assuming). Would people expect me to know how it works out the box?

[Anoua]

If your only experience with programming is mysidia script then you'll probably need to learn a bit more before trying to get a job as a programmer. There is a lot more to programming than customizing a pre built script and if that's all you've done it'll be hard to step in and create something from scratch or building on an existing web framework (which is very different from a pet game framework or content management framework but requires a lot more basic programming knowledge to work with). 

As well it's my opinion you should have at least some basic security knowledge if you are offering your programming services. It's important to keep peoples data secure and not leave obvious security holes that could cause major issues or even just minor issues such as cheating which could ruin the economy. Examples being someone inserting negative numbers in the bank and getting free money or deleting your database tables causing users to lose game progress or accounts.

Since you use the term coder and not programmer, if you are just looking to do basic html and/or css updates for a site then there really isn't much of a concern there. 

[Dinocanid]

I have some experience outside of just customizing the script, like building a new feature, though I haven't done anything like overhauls (at least not yet). I'm not skilled in CSS, but I was referring to work with HTML and PHP. I don't have several years of experience, just about 2 at this point, but I would consider myself pretty familiar for doing simple work; nothing completely major just yet. I just don't know what to expect, since I'm assuming that the internal coding would vary from site to site. Things are usually already set up for what does what unless you're helping a brand new in-dev site, so references, database calls, and all that stuff would be different. Would I be told what does what?

Edited July 17, 2017 by Dinocanid

[Anoua]

Most site owners that aren't programmers (the ones that are usually hiring) don't know what does what since they don't program themselves. You'd really need to be able to just jump in and figure things out for the most part. If they had a decent programmer working on their game, it'll be easier to pick up with better organization, naming conventions, and comments, but that is not anywhere near a guarantee. 

Edit: Would recommend just looking up and following some general PHP tutorials to get a feel for things and figure out your skill level a bit better. You'd definitely want to be able to interact with the database if you don't already. I can't think of even a basic feature that doesn't require database interaction.

Edited July 17, 2017 by Anoua
Adding direction recommendation.

[hurricaneviolet]

22 hours ago, Dinocanid said:

Would things be that much different? Of course, if they used another framework than I would need to familiarize myself with it, but some don't use frameworks at all and build from the ground up (I'm assuming). Would people expect me to know how it works out the box?

I can't tell you exactly how different it would be, but even going from one game to another is very different and the logic sometimes flows differently, so I imagine yes, it will be a bit of a jump!

I'm an owner who hires out for all of my major programming, and my games are not built on a framework. If I were to hire you, I would absolutely expect you to know how it works out of the box. Every programmer does things differently, and even within the same languages they don't always follow the same syntax and logical organization, so taking an hour to two to familiarize yourself with the game's code is completely reasonable, but anything beyond that would make me question your ability to work with the code. Think of it like co-writing a book: you should be able to read what the other person wrote, and then jump in and continue the story, but if you have to look up every few words in the dictionary and pull out writing manuals and stylebooks to understand their story, then you're not ready to write in it.

Also, to add on to what @Anoua said, you will largely be responsible for knowing where things are, because that's why you've been hired by the owners. Personally, I've been working with my games for a long time, and I have a basic~intermediate skill level in the languages my game is written in, but I don't do my own programming. So I can generally tell a programmer what script things are in/where they belong, and explain how things work, and usually also point out the spot thats causing issues in the case of a bug. However, that's not the case with every owner, and some of them will only be able to tell you what's wrong/what needs to be done from a frontend perspective, and you'll be expected to handle all of the backend components.

I hope that helps!

Edited July 18, 2017 by hurricaneviolet

[Dinocanid]

It was all helpful, thanks! Now I actually need to work up the courage to make that jump lol.

[Hare]

I've never worked as a coder for pay, have just been coding on my own site (with PHP and MySQL). I have no idea whether my coding abilities are up to par with hired work and might be in a similar situation as you because I also have no idea what to expect (and was interested in seeing people's replies here, thank you to those who did!)

Before I attempt to get hired, I plan on doing volunteer work at least once (preferably on a few different projects) to get a feel for what the work will be like, what it's like to work with an already built site, and get a scope for what will be expected of me. I don't know PDO for example, and am not sure whether I'll have to learn it, but am sure I could get the answer to that and many other little questions through some volunteering.

This might be a good way for you to get started too. Or like others have said, study up and get yourself to a confident place where you think you're ready to try finding paid work. 

[Anoua]

I've thought about accepting volunteers on a more unpaid intern basis. Seems like it could be mutual beneficial arrangement for a motivated learner. And I think doing some volunteer work could be a good way to get experience in general. But I do think it would be good to be under another programmer who is more experienced to make sure whatever your doing is okay and especially isn't adding any security holes depending on what your current level is, or at least have another programmer look things over. 

[Hare]

13 hours ago, Anoua said:

I've thought about accepting volunteers on a more unpaid intern basis. Seems like it could be mutual beneficial arrangement for a motivated learner. And I think doing some volunteer work could be a good way to get experience in general. But I do think it would be good to be under another programmer who is more experienced to make sure whatever your doing is okay and especially isn't adding any security holes depending on what your current level is, or at least have another programmer look things over. 

If you ever do, I might be interested (if I'm still looking for a volunteer job by then). I would definitely feel more comfortable with a programmer overseeing things. But yeah, that would be mutually beneficial. 

Edited July 19, 2017 by Hare

[Dinocanid]

I would be interested in volunteer work too, if you need it. It would give me a feel for things.

[Anoua]

Pm'd you both.   @Hare @Dinocanid