It's your first day on the job. You've got the programming chops, you're up on the latest tech, you're sitting at your workstation...now what? Give your career the jolt it needs to get going: essential industry skills to help you apply your raw programming talent and make a name for yourself. Programming commercially in the modern workplace requires skills and experience that you can't get from school or from working on your own. You need the hard-won lessons of years of experience in the workplace. Joshua D. Carter give you his. Programming at this level requires new skills---you'll build programs that dwarf anything you've done on your own. This book introduces you to practices for working on large, long-lived programs with a professional level of quality. Along the way, you'll learn tips for working efficiently with your tools, and discover new tools not often used by the student or hobbyist. Living in the corporate working environment requires its own savvy. You'll learn how to understand and navigate the business, the office, and how to deal with other people outside of your department. You'll understand where you fit into the big picture and how you contribute to the company's success. You'll also get a candid look at the tougher aspects of the job: stress, conflict, and office politics. Finally, programming is a job you can do for the long haul. This book helps you look ahead to the years to come, and your future opportunities---either as a programmer or in another role you grow into. There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of shipping a product and knowing, "I built that." Whether you work on embedded systems or web-based applications, in trendy technologies or legacy systems, this book helps you get from raw skill to an accomplished professional.