r/learnprogramming • u/Warm_Sort_8783 • 1d ago
Tech and coding.
If you were starting programming from zero in 2026, what skills would you learn first to get a job?
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u/FeckinKent
1d ago
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None, the industry is cooked for most people especially junior devs.
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u/PossiblePlatypus69 1d ago
Facts. 75% of the job postings I see are for senior level talent. The other 25% are entry to mid level and they get flooded with hundreds of applications, most of which get auto-filtered out by some shitty AI. This job market is impossible for anyone with less than a Bachelor's and less than 6 years of experience.
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u/etdoh00 21h ago
I have 3 and based in UK. I have about 75% hit rate so this is not entirely true
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u/PossiblePlatypus69 20h ago
I'm based in the US. In the last 2 months, I've applied to maybe 50-60 jobs and have only gotten rejections or silence so far. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
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u/Fubuki-Shirou 1d ago
It seems to be almost impossible even for someone with a Bachelor’s degree. What matters the most is experience.
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u/EntrepreneurHuge5008 1d ago
Do a Computer Science degree:
Make sure it's at least a Bachelor's. Associate's degrees are meaningless
Make sure it takes at least 2 years to complete. Internships are the main hiring pipelines for junior/associate-level roles. If it takes you 2 years to complete the BSCS, then you'll have at least one hiring season to try to get an internship
While you're getting the CS degree:
Get ahead in your learning p1: You will have a class for XYZ programming language, OOP, Data Structures, and Analysis and Design of Algorithms. Get ahead and start learning them in that order BEFORE you get the actual class.
Get ahead in your learning p2: You might have an elective for whatever specific field you want to get into, but these are usually senior-level electives. Don't wait until senior year to start learning these. Do make sure you've covered the above classes up until Data Structures, at least.
AI/ML -> will require you to also do Calc I-III, stats, and linear algebra. Fast.ai employs a top-down approach where the "theory" is covered later, so you could do this to learn AI/ML concurrently with your math and stats classes.
Cybersecurity -> Look into CompTIA certs
Software Engineering -> Pick a tech stack and stick with it. Don't ignore cloud technologies; look into AWS/GCP/Azure certs too.
Robotics -> not my area, but you'll want to pick up a low-level programming language for this.
There are a bunch more specific areas you can look into, but I'll stop here. You can do your own research afterwards.
Get ahead in your learning p3: Personal projects where you implement all that you've learned at school AND independently are what will get you the interviews + something to talk about so the interviewers know you know what you're talking about.
To reiterate, you will want to do both, get a degree AND self-learn.
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u/mandzeete 1d ago
Go for a degree in computer sciences and learn whatever they are teaching. Ifyou get lucky, they have updated their study program to match with the current trends in the job market (LLM tools and AI agents). Without a degree your chances to be hired are close to a zero. Even people with a degree are having hard time finding a job.
In addition to the study program your university provides, you should also concentrate on systems thinking, business analysis, technical analysis.
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u/PolishedTendency9 1d ago
i feel like this is mostly right but also kind of a bummer to read if you're just starting out
the degree part is real, nobody's getting past HR filters without one lately, but i think you can soften the blow a little for self-taught folks by pointing at github contributions and open source work as a backdoor
the systems thinking angle is underrated though, most new devs can write a function but can't see how it fits into the bigger picture and that's what separates the juniors who stay stuck from the ones who get promoted
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u/sonicfood 1d ago
Did you write this with ai and tell it not use capitalization or punctuation lmao
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u/Dazzling_Music_2411 1d ago
It's tough.
You can still do it but the bar has been raised 100x.
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u/pushangupta 1d ago
And that's a good thing
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u/Dazzling_Music_2411 22h ago
Strong agree.
There was too much dross on the back of the "everyone can be a programmer" era!
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u/pushangupta 1d ago
First thing, I would do is this:
Do not care about getting a job. But care a lot of being relevant.
And I would achieve that by learning stuff that would teach me how to solve real world problems
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u/Beginning_Basis9799 1d ago
My honest take is whatever you learn will be out ot date when you reach industry.
At the moment we are in a scenario of the emporers new shoes weekly.
Learn first engineering principles.
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u/Early_Key_823 1d ago
You picked the right profession at the WORST time