A bit off topic, but...

There is a IT-Career fair at my school happening on the 20th. So I wanted to ask a few things and if you have the time I'd be grateful if you shared your journey of when first started off.

My goal for this career fair I am hoping is to secure a job or an internship for something in java or android.

I plan on telling potential employers that I'm looking to immerse myself in a programming environment. I'm most interested in what the employers training of employees consists of.

Questions:
-Oddball Q: What should a programmer wear? I fear black jeans and a plad shirt isn't formal enough. Should I get a dress shirt / pants for this? What do you wear at work.
-Not sure exactly how I should word the answer to the question "Sooo Noobtard what is your desired job?" I might respond with "I'm enrolled in the Web Analyst / Web Programmer program here and have taken an interest in both Java and Android development, I plan on next Spring to graduate with certificates in both, I would like to pursue either a straight java environment and move towards android, or hop into both right away." << Would that be a good response? (ultimately aiming towards Android Development)
-What are your opinions on paid / unpaid internships? I value experience, but I also value not burying myself in debt. Thoughts here?
-At your first job, what was the teaching like for you? Did they just give you an assignment and say GO!? Were you partnered with a senior developer who guided you? Did you get thrown into a team?

I will most likely have more questions as time goes on, but I just wanted to incubate this topic and continue it as it gets closer to the 20th. By the 18th my goals is to have a 'plan of attack' that includes some of my responses to things they might ask as well as questions I would like to ask employers, to see weather or not I'm interested in what they do.

Note* I have no projects outside of school projects to showcase. I've had a few self project ideas, but neither the knowledge or time to make them into a reality. (poor excuse blaahhh)

As always, thanks for your time.

-Oddball Q: What should a programmer wear? I fear black jeans and a plad shirt isn't formal enough. Should I get a dress shirt / pants for this? What do you wear at work.
Wear dress pants or khakis and dress shirt, nothing to flashy though.

-Not sure exactly how I should word the answer to the question "Sooo Noobtard what is your desired job?" I might respond with "I'm enrolled in the Web Analyst / Web Programmer program here and have taken an interest in both Java and Android development, I plan on next Spring to graduate with certificates in both, I would like to pursue either a straight java environment and move towards android, or hop into both right away." << Would that be a good response? (ultimately aiming towards Android Development)
Say you wanna be a java developer first, then say why.

-What are your opinions on paid / unpaid internships? I value experience, but I also value not burying myself in debt. Thoughts here?
Expect to work for peanuts when you start out. Most companies won't look at your resume if you have no experience. Even if it's just a few months at a shitty non-paid internship, you can start applying to real jobs. Also ask about full employment after the internship and how long it lasts.
So basically take any job you can get, even if you don't get paid.

-At your first job, what was the teaching like for you? Did they just give you an assignment and say GO!? Were you partnered with a senior developer who guided you? Did you get thrown into a team?
My first couple days, I was sent around to different programmers and they teach me about the various applications we work on. After that, my boss started giving me easy assignments, which I could ask him questions about. They'd get harder and harder. Also, a lot of my training went into learning proper syntax and efficient ways of doing things.
Another thing, you'll probably have to spend a ton of time playing around with whatever software they develop so you understand it.

School projects are fine. I used them in my resume. Just make some videos of them and put it on youtube or make a blog.

Dress nice, obviously. Doesn't have to be a suit n tie, but definitely a tucked in button up and some solid khaki pants (like mentioned above)

If you got asked about a desired job (which seems weird to me), I'd just be as honest as possible.

The biggest thing is, back up any statement with experience/reason

Example: "Why do you want to do ____"

Answer: "Well, last semester, we had a project involving ___, and I had a lot of fun learning/working with/using/ _____ to solve project x/y/z, which involved details q,r,s"

basically, don't say "I LIKE JAVA BECAUSE IT HAS BETTER SYNTAX THAN C"

instead, use some kind of backing experience which shows you have some sort of proficiency in it.

Just don't be TOO verbose.


For a CS guy, you can expect most internships to be paid. My first internship paid $15/hr....not bad.

This post was edited by Eep on Feb 11 2015 07:09pm

i always wear jeans and a woot tshirt to a job interview. if my potential peers look down on me for it, i likely won't want to work with them anyway. nobody's ever declined me because of it.

Solid advice! We had a group of interns from a company come in and share there experience with our class, a lot of what you said resonated with what they had to say. Also a lot of my other questions I have not put here were answered. Sooo, i feel pretty prepared for next tomorrow.

Any advice on this:
*Notes
-topic is my topic class -- DOES NOT FOLLOW JAVA NAMING CONVENTION IN THIS (gotta review how to rename correctly in Android Studio before I try to change again)
-topic class has instance arrays of questions / hint / answers.... and getters and setters for them also.
- not all my code is included below, but in here I believe lies the problem.
- I have another working version of this code, but super inefficient. (Creating an array of questions per topic etc.)
- Trying to follow teachers advice and be more generic / think more reusable.
- The app is a "flash" card type game, that has Questions Answers and Hints.
- In this code I'm trying to create an array of Topic objects which index is = the amount of topics in the spinner widget. I would like to populate the topic object with an array of Q/A/H...
- My approach was to make a arrayList that holds String[] elements and to add the xml string array resource into each index spot. The String[] element of ArrayList never has a defined length, but it varies from topic --> topic how many questions it might have... Here lies my problem?!?
-So in my for loop - I create an Topic object and I setQ/A/H_Array to the String[] within the ArrayList.

To me this should all work -- but I get error code block after my code




I probably will hand in my inefficient version of this code since time is running out, buuuttt I'd still like to know how to do it at least more efficiently.
I know I didn't post a lot of the code, if you guys want more and or all of it, do let me know. Also if you have questions or need clarification on the functionality of this, I will try to relay it!

Thanks for your time!

Found the problem.
mSpinnerCount = mSpinnerTopic.getCount(); // this happens after mSpinnerTopic widget is defined

It otherwise is set to null when my for loop goes.