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Back to School
How many people here have been to college more than once? By that, I mean that years passed between a first and second degree, perhaps even in unrelated fields. When did you go back? Why did you go back? How was it different the second time?
I didn’t make the most of my first college experience. Since I decided to focus my career on my writing skills, an English major seemed appropriate. One doesn’t need a degree to learn to write. But employers expect a degree. So there I was, grudgingly. That grudging attitude wasn’t helpful. Nor were the frivolous elective courses. And if any degree would do, I was stupid to pursue a degree in the Liberal Arts.
So now, a decade later, I’m looking into programming degree plans. Any advice? Is an Associate’s degree sufficient for many decent jobs? I’m considering an AAS (Associate of Applied Science) with advanced certificates in C++ and Visual Basic. Programming experience would be useful in many fields, both for corporate and entrepreneurial efforts. But I’m particularly interested in game design, of which I’m fairly familiar and have connections.
Published in Education
Don’t confuse Java with JavaScript. Javascript shouldn’t be called javascript at all, it has nothing to do with Java. The reason it is so called is because early in Javascript’s development they wanted to attract Java programmers, so the renamed it from “livescript” to “javascript”. Also don’t call JavaScript Java by mistake. It’s one of those shibboleths.
JS has come a long way over the years. Today it has powerful frameworks and a mostly standardized language across all browsers. Time was JS was different on each browser, and this made web development a special kind of hell for a long time. Now its (mostly) normalized.
JavaScript is no longer evil; but it still has its quirks. It’s come a long way from making the monkey dance on mouseover.
“Full stack” mean you have a fair understanding of the solution stack for a particular space. In the web world it probably means the xAMP stack, which is any OS, Apache, mySQL and PHP.
But “full stack”, and terms like it, are buzzwords for the buzzword-compliant.
Someone told me that my brother’s C++ books from a decade ago wouldn’t be a good way to start learning today because programming languages are constantly evolving. Do y’all agree that it’s important to begin learning with updated books?
I was also told that what employers care about is certifications, rather than programming degrees, and that professionals must periodically renew their certifications to coincide with language updates. Is that correct?
Much of the language is the same, but there have been minor changes in the syntax that new IDE’s won’t recognize.
Start with online learning. It’s the best. Youtube is amazing.
Most certs are mostly junk in the programming world.
I don’t work in the Microsoft space. But what I understand about MS is that if your business is married to Microsoft solutions they do need people who have those certs, but this isn’t for a good reason. Its because Microsoft actually requires that you employe people who have their certs at some percentage to enjoy a certain partnership status. So basically certifications are a racket.
Certs can even hurt you because then an employer might think you’re the kind of guy who relies on a credential to demonstrate your skills, instead of allowing your skills to speak for themselves.
And yes, a 10 year old c++ book probably wouldn’t help you much, and might even teach you things you need to unlearn. C++ is one of the most painful languages to get started in as well, so be prepared to have no idea what’s going on for a while.
There’s many gotchas in the language due to hard decisions made over the life of the language. They don’t really make a lot of sense in retrospect, but were very good decisions at the time.
I will admit to knowing little about the industry you are trying to enter, and first I would recommend reaching out to people who have a job similar to what you are interested in and them asking for advice. So, take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt.
First of all, I would suggest getting a bachelor’s degree in CS, unless your financial situation presses you to work full-time ASAP. Computer science is about much, much more than coding. Moreover, a bachelor’s degree is valuable for signaling, if nothing else. Despite the many famous college dropouts in the tech world, signalling still matters, especially if you don’t have a portfolio of work to show.
And that leads me to my other suggestion, to establish a portfolio of work as you are going to school. Open a GitHub account and post code for your own projects and contribute to other projects. Or, get involved in the indie gaming and modding communities. I’ve read that Valve has hired numerous employees (many of whom didn’t go to/complete college) from the modding community.
Third, I question whether it’s a good idea to specialize in the Microsoft ecosystem these days. Not long ago 95%+ of computing devices ran Windows. Now it’s less than 20%, and I imagine that slice will continue to shrink. I’m not saying MS is dead, of course, and obviously Windows and Xbox are still huge players in gaming. But the trend seems to be towards cross-platform development.
From 1964 to 1984, I matriculated at a different university every 6 years: Math (no degree); Army; Math & Physics (BS); museum curator; History of Technology (MA); historian & historical site administrator; Computer Science (BS); technical writer (my career goal set in high school). What with scholarships, fellowships, the GI Bill, and part-time work, I never had to borrow a penny.
The back and forth was great. The rhythms of working and academia were different enough that whichever way I was moving seemed to present wonderful opportunities.