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How Often Can a Software Engineer Switch Jobs?

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How Often Can a Software Engineer Switch Jobs?

One common question I see software engineers (especially newer ones) ask, is “How often can I switch jobs? How much is too much?”

I’ve seen many rules of thumb floated around the internet especially for programmers just out of college getting their first job. One of them is “stay at your first job for at least 2 years”. Let’s start there.

Does a programmer need to stay at their first job for 2 years?

No, you certainly don’t need to stay at your first job (or any job) for at least 2 years, but ideally you would. There are two main reasons for this “2 year” timeframe.

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Ultimate Hacking Keyboard Review – Worth the Wait?

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Ultimate Hacking Keyboard Review – Worth the Wait?

In early December, 2015 I came across a Crowd Supply campaign for the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. Like many professional programmers, I have a mild obsession with mechanical keyboards and ergonomics. It didn’t take too much convincing for me to pull the trigger on my first (and still, only) crowd funding campaign.

ultimate hacking keyboard review

I certainly wasn’t alone as the company raised ~$691,000 to build out this promising programmer’s dream keyboard. It took 48 project updates and nearly 3 years (they had originally planned on shipping in about 1 year, hah) but finally my package arrived in late July of 2018.

Was it worth the wait? Is it worth the estimated retail price of $275?

Here are my thoughts.

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What’s the difference between PL/SQL and SQL?

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What’s the difference between PL/SQL and SQL?

If you’ve been doing some work on Oracle databases or just learning more about the RDMS, at some point you’re going to stumble across PL/SQL, or “Procedural Language/SQL“. Most programming curriculum I have seen never touches on anything like PL/SQL so it often comes as a complete surprise – so what exactly is PL/SQL, and how does it differ from SQL?

A Straight Forward Explanation of PL/SQL for Beginners

PL/SQL is basically a programming language that exists on Oracle SQL Servers. It can be viewed as an extension of SQL, offering much greater control over the data in the database and how you interact with it. Other RDMS tend to have their own, similar but very different procedural programming languages like Microsoft SQL Server’s T-SQL and Posgres’ PL/pgSQL.

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