At my current workplace, the BBC, we are language agnostic, meaning we have to pick up any language that is suitable for the job. However when you really know a language, you should be able to pick up other languages easily, so just spend some time learning a new language in your spare time, say you know it on your resume, and then apply for a job. Easy.

In the UK, I went to the equivalent of a 'magnet school' in the US. We were taught programming, in fact it was my main introduction to programming and I loved it. Currently we are in the process of restructuring our IT/CS curriculum in the UK. It is important to have a secondary school grounding in CS, but currently our schools are only set to give a basic IT introduction (how to use MS Word, Excel etc). The government want to change that, to bring in 'real' CS. However the school tutors are not prepared to teach CS, and are not qualified in it. Hopefully that will change..

I have a blog that I use as a portfolio and generally for sharing solutions to technical problems that I've encountered. It is foremost a technical blog though, and the fact that it functions as a website that potential employers can look at, is secondary. However I keep it professional and don't post non-technical information.

It has been very helpful in securing work. I have been offered a technical book contract through an agent reading my blog and seeing that I have experience in a particular specialism. I also have just got an interview from an employer impressed with what I've written. So I do recommend you set one up, just make sure you are genuinely interested in sharing information foremost, and don't use it solely as a marketing tool.

Here is the website if you're interested: http://www.davidcraddock.net.

TDD is really about writing the tests first. If you're not writing the tests first, you're not doing TDD.

Writing unit tests and aiming for high code coverage (percentage of your code that is covered by unit tests) is a really good thing to do, and is very important in most applications. TDD is one step further however (or backwards, or sideways, depending on your thoughts on TDD).

tycos, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 AM, said:

That sounds like BDD, not TDD. Cucumber is a tool for writing automated acceptance tests in a domain language. TDD is usually about writing unit tests.