Ask Slashdot: Best Options For Ongoing Education?

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 14, 2014 @06:02AM from the hardwire-your-brain-into-stack-overflow dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Lately, with the volatility of the economy, I have been thinking of expanding my education to reach into other areas related to my career. I have a computer science degree from Purdue and have been employed as a firmware engineer for 10+ years writing C and C++. I like what I do, but to me it seems that most job opportunities are available for people with skills in higher level languages such as ASP, .NET, C#, PHP, Scripting, Web applications and so on. Is it worth going back to school to get this training? I was thinking that a computer information technology degree would fit the bill, but I am concerned that going back to college would require a lot of time wasted doing electives and taking courses that don't get to the 'meat' of the learning. What would you do?"

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Purdue is useless, Get a refund. by holophrastic · 2014-02-14 06:11 · Score: 0, Flamebait

If they gave you a computer science degree, and never taught you how to pick up a new language for free in a matter of a few days on your own in today's world of unlimited documentation for the ten-year-old languages that you've listed, then they're useless, you should never have gone in the first place.
You're now talking to a population of people who've picked up dozens of languages, and continue to pick up a handful every year. If you can't learn on your own, then you aren't worth squat to anybody.
C and C++ are among the most complicated and in-depth languages to learn, and even more effortful to comprehend. PHP is probably the simplest, with the shallowest learning curve and the most documentation. If you can't move from sprinting to walking, then you should just lie down now. Learn to bake pizzas; you'll find it challenging.