Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Jump Back Into Programming?
First time accepted submitter FractalFear writes "15 years ago I was programming in BASIC, and doing some C++, after a serious car accident barely making it out alive, my memory went to crud. I have no recollection of how to do anything in either of those languages any more. I've suffered some damage, and my memory isn't all that great. However if I do repetitive work it sticks to me. I've been in IT for 17 years as desktop support, and I fear I won't ever get much further in life due to my handicap. I am hard working and dedicated, I have been reading slashdot regularly for many years now, and I have faith in the Slashdot community advice. I recently bought Head First C#: 2nd Edition(A friend of mine that programs for a living suggested C# as an easier alternative to C++) the first 4 chapters were great, but after that everything just didn't make any sense. My question(s) to you guys is: What was the best way for you to get back into programming? School? Self taught? And what would be the best language for someone like me to get into? My goal is to make games as a hobby for now, but would like to enter into the market of XBOX Arcade, Steam, mobile etc, particularly 2D TBSRPG games like Shining Force. If you prefer self taught what are some really good books you suggest?"
That makes it about 1997 since you had any ground-truth experience with the world of programming.
Here's a clue:
From 1997 until sometime in 2000, there was an explosion in programming jobs and an equivalent explosion in the number of people being imported from around the world, both in physical and virtual terms, to take those jobs. In 2000 the explosion of jobs reversed and imploded. The implosion, as in an atomic blast, was when the real damage was done to anyone not tied into an ethnic nepotism network. If you weren't lashed to such a network, you were blown away by the malestrom -- discarded. Those lashed to their ethnic networks took pay cuts, sometimes severe, but they usually didn't lose their houses. Since in the US, to be in an ethnic nepotism network that protects the interests of founding stock Americans is to be a "White Supremacist" and the government is more interested in rooting out "White Supremacism" than just about anything else, the end result was a catastrophic demographic shift in the programming industry that occurred almost invisibly and overnight. If you are a beneficiary of "white privilege" avail yourself of the only thing you really have going for you at this point: Social Security Disability.
Seastead this.