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Ask Slashdot: Best Options For Ongoing Education?
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?"
Just learn them. School will only teach you one specific set of solutions to a problem rather then teaching you to problem solve. If you want to learn another language, just do it. Sit down, think up a simple application and write it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Just start learning the new languages. You'll be surprised at how easy they are to pick up when you already have programming background..
IMO: You'd waste time & money going back to school.
If that's what you want to do, sure. But these PHP/C#/Web folks are a dime a dozen. You already have experience in something specialized. There may not be many jobs per se, but there aren't many people to fill those. Move into driver development or embedded system programming. You will be able to transfer current skills and you won't face saturation like in the higher level languages.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
This is probably one of the few professional areas where going to a formal educational institution is a waste of time and money. There is SO much by way of online resources that you can use to self-teach, communities to ask questions (like StackOverflow), and practical projects that you can do to learn programming. If your aim is to learn another language, consider yourself extremely fortunate. Decide which language you're interested in, get a good book, start an SO account and get started.
First of all its really easy to learn a new language after you mastered one, especially c++, since it's sort of low level. Second, all you need is a book and a few hours a week and you'll learn a new language in a month or so. You should be competent in that language by then. Third, going back to school would be way over kill, it's not that big of a deal to learn a new language especially going from c++ to C# since c# is based on c++ with the c style syntax. The only other thing that pops up is getting to know .net, but that's not hard due to reference sites like msdn.com.
Ok, that came out a little harsher than I'd intended. Let's blame it on passion.
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
If you really want to get into teh web development side, I'd check out your local community colleges. All your gen ed stuff (english, math courses, history, etc) from your prior degree(s) should still count, so you'd just need to do the core classes for the AS degree you are interested in. You should be able to finish up in 3 or 4 semesters, if that.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Background: I am an adjunct instructor and an IT professional. As such, this is a common discussion topic.
The education industry, meaning colleges and universities, need a way to "add on" additional skill emphasis to degrees without requiring whole new degrees. I think, instead of detracting from current products (associates, bachelors, masters degrees), this will add revenue abilities from lifetime learning requirements that tech people have.
For Example: BSCS, Purdue University, 1990
CS Advanced Programming Topics, Coursera, 2013.
This would allow people to add the 2-3 courses that they need to refresh their skills, get students into the halls paying tuition (out of pocket, or company money), allow current students to brush up and work with more experienced folks IN CLASS, and show what HR is looking for, current accredited skills improvement.
But we seem stuck in the past. So we have to suffer through $1,000 a day "boot camps" that still require you to do a lot of on-your-own learning. We NEED something better. Colleges, be they 4 year or community, need to have programs that carry through the whole career ladder for skills improvement. I think that will help all of us overcome the "no training dollars this year" dilemma we constantly find.
Yes, because there's apparently much more demand for them, so more people develop those skills. I'm currently doing .NET/web stuff specifically because I couldn't find work writing C. (And I'm entry-level, so it's not as if experience was a factor -- in fact, I wrote C & Fortran in my research assistant job while at school).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
... or if you don't want to just write a toy program that you're going to throw away, then find some open source project that you can contribute to.
Or check Code For America (or whatever the equivalent is in your country) to help out on local projects ... then you're also networking in your area, if you're looking for a new job.
Go to school for learning the fundamentals of programming ('this is a variable', 'this is a function'), or maybe to get a deeper understanding of different styles of programming (procedural / functional / OO / event-driven, etc.) ... but for learning languages you're often better off working on a project you care about and maybe finding a support community (local users group for that language, or the support community behind that project) or a mentor (eg, someone else from that project)
If you're one of those people who learn better from structured education ... then maybe look into a MOOC or community college. This is not one of those situations where shelling out university prices is appropriate.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
You have it backwards. Don't find a solution when you don't know the problem. It's easier to figure out what type of problems you are interested in solving and get the necessary training to solve those types of problems then the other way around.
WTF, sounds like you want to give up a job you like because ... there seem to be opportunities for people with other skills?
People with the skills needed to work as a teller in fast food joints are also in demand.
Got a job you like? Upgrade on your own time, take some courses, and use your industry network to let people know you've got the extra skills. THAT will get you variety and maybe move you up/around in your current company.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
There are so many great online professional sites with tips, tools, tutorials, etc., plus great publishers like WROX press, O'Reilly etc if you want to go that route. I tend to do both
The bulk of my development skills were self-taught or learned on the job, I don't even have a CS degree (I changed career paths), and I work exactly in the areas you described; C#, ASP, .NET, SQL, etc.
Seriously, I don't think it makes sense, and for gawd's sake DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, go to place like Phoenix or Capella, they are a joke and not a single person in IT I know puts ANY value on those kinds of places.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
A master's degree might open some doors closed to a 4 year degree.
I'd focus on emerging technologies if you want a big break.
The things that are about to disrupt the current paradigm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Ditto. I'm also watching the video archive for the Compilers class from Stanford and it's been really helpful to understand more of the underlying structure.
Electives and minors are what makes US graduates less marketable that graduates who could focus on their core subject.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
An open mind.
If you already have your BS why would you go back for another? If you want to further your education you go back for a MS. What you want from the content of your question however, sounds like you need a couple hundred dollars worth of reference books and some free weekends.
The problem with learning this way is that you need the motivation. Either because you need the new skill/language to complete some part of a paying job or project, or because it scratches a particular itch or fills some need you have.
Taking a course, even at a community college, where you've paid for the course, paid to be evaluated (tests/projects/labs throughout the course/semester/term) and you've paid to recieve a grade is sometimes the only way to get truly committed to learning the skill or completing the course work.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I feel your pain. I actually went into, and then out of OO programming. The issue is that while it's a perfect technique for some very specific directions, it's horrible for solving real-world business problems.
You, specifically you, need to look at OO programming much differently. Then you'll find it quite easy to use. It's not actually any different than procedural programming. It's simply a collection of encapsulated procedural mini-programs. That's it. It's exactly the same code, it's just called differently. It's the same function/subroutine, it's just launched/triggered/executed with a different syntax.
The reason it's horrid for most business problems is simply because business problems are solved by figuring out how to sequence individual and often disparate tasks. Whereas OO is designed to solve problems where the same task needs to be solved countless times and the sequence is almost irrelevant.
If you've always tried to use OO for business tasks, then your struggle wasn't with the hammer, it was with how to use the hammer to turn a screw. But if I were to give you a nail, you'd suddenly understand how to use the hammer quite instinctively.
If you still/ever need someone to walk you through it, let me know. I'm happy to help.
Your best option here is PHP. There is tons of PHP work out there to be had and it is cross-platform so you won't be locked into MS.
PHP has had a bit of a renaissance lately and being based on C you'll be right at home with lots of job opportunities.
Just start taking PHP contracts. No need to go re-educate yourself to do something simpler than what you were doing.
I've found Udacity to have some pretty good online CS classes. They have been expanding into other areas as well lately, but their focus has mainly been CS. I thought the Web Applications class was really well done. Python is even my new favorite scripting language because of it.
[citation needed]
Rhapsody in Numbers
The education industry, meaning colleges and universities, need a way to "add on" additional skill emphasis to degrees without requiring whole new degrees.
They are called graduate certificates. You take a couple of graduate level courses, and you get a graduate certificate. Often, you can get a certificate while you are on the path towards a masters.
I'm in similar but slightly different position.... I went to a well-known university but didn't have a chance to finish my degree. I've been working as an datacenter operations linux system engineer for some 10years now... I want to move up to management but without a degree it seems to hard. Additional life pressure has added on... now that I'm married and have a baby. I still wanna go back to college and get an MIS degree... and hopefully MBA if I still have time after that... It just seems that after a day of working and dealing with family requirements... there isn't much time left for academic activities... am I just being a lazy ass?
Well if he wants to move from code/developer to software engineer on some project
that has government ties that requires higher level degrees to higher level pay
then its viable.
The area that is seeing the most growth is the emerging tech list I posted earlier.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
First, if you want to learn new programming languages, just do so. Your education in CS should have given you the necessary skills to do so. In the end there are only a few paradigms and concepts present in all the languages you mentioned. Nothing you did not already have in some way in university or school.
Second, it is true that there are more openings in those areas. However, there are also much more competitors for those jobs. Most students learn Java or at some strange universities C# and .Net. Furthermore, people who like to code a little often start with PHP, Python or Ruby for their web thingy. This all results in a lot of people able to "code" in these languages and with the associated frameworks. And they are cheap. Cheap as in "I am fresh from college/university and need the money" cheap or in "I am a college drop out and need the money" cheap. Therefore, it might not the best to wast your time in becoming a member of that pool of coders. Better improve your skill level in embedded systems. And there is definitely a lot to learn even at university. Especially if you have only a bachelor degree.
You can pick these skills up from online courses and self-study. College would through you in with a bunch of software engineering newbs and cost you way more than you need to spend.
Not needed. It's bloody obvious.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
My rule of thumb is that most everything you know now will be useful, but mostly obsolete in ten years or less. That makes extracurricular learning a constant and ongoing process. There are a multiple ways to accomplish this. The best way will depend on your learning style. The areas you study will depend on both your interests and available opportunities.
You already have a Bachelor's from a good school. An additional degree in computer technology isn't going to deliver a lot of value. You've been working in embedded systems, which can be its own little world sometimes. But at least where I live, good opportunities abound. If you like it, you can stay there, or you can branch out. I moved from embedded, to systems software, to application software. I still like embedded programming.
If you want to branch out, it's vital that you know your goal. It can be exploratory, or it can be more concrete. There's room for both. But, be prepared for some major time commitments. You can find lots of resources for self directed learning with a little searching. If you need a classroom setting, Extension courses are good resource, albeit expensive. Don't forget to check your local community college. Our local CC offers an excellent introduction to the Java programming language. It's always filled.
Online tutorials in most subjects are plentiful, and there are more traditional books and study guides. Study groups are another resource, if you find a good one. They have the advantage of expanding your social and professional network too.
My personal mix is mostly books, online articles, and fiddling around doing something useful for someone else. I also attend a couple of conferences I find particularly useful. However, I do appreciate that there are times when a structured approach is best. I find it most useful in abstract areas like UML, or other methodologies and particulary complicated subjects like optical engineering. You get to determine what's best for you. There's no canonically right way.
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
Not that high on the list of concerns for the heartless corporations.
Half or more of the corporations that act like they have a heart are acting.
In the bottom line oriented world that is unfolding core knowledge
of your skillset is what they are looking for, that and teamwork.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
But I don't want a heart, I want to improve my skillset
Given how difficult it is to replace firmware, and how crappy a lot of it is, I would have thought that the world needs more (and not fewer) firmware developers.
Ezekiel 23:20
As a former firmware engineer myself, let me assure you that the rest of the coding world views us as the elites-of-the-elites. Yes, you need to know SQL and Javascript to get a job these days, but if you can pick those up (you can), you'll have a distinct edge over virtually everyone else applying for whatever job you want.
;)
And in case you wondered - Yes, you do have it harder than the rest of the coding world. Shit, I could sleep through my 9-to-5 and still outperform most of my peers at writing user-space code. Like a cool breeze on a hot summer day, 80% of the pay for 5% of the frustration. You won't look back!
Just a warning, though... We tend to suck at GUI design. Fortunately, you'll have no trouble finding members of your "team" that actually want the "glamor" of arguing with management about typefaces and colors.
Both are quick to pick up and in highest demands and really have zero impact if visualization keeps accelerating. 100% US English is also great to have. Christopher Hull 219 613 3785
Unless I'm missing something, those are just languages. Learn the basics and start writing your own projects in the one/ones that interest you. I was hired as a C++ developer, but I've been required to learn Perl, Ruby, and Bash scripting to perform my job. Picking up a new language isn't a big deal, provided you have sufficient motivation to do it.
You've got a CS degree from a good school. If you can claim a language on your resume and back it up with code, then I don't see a reason that you'd need to go back to school just for that.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If you know C++, you have the fundamentals and then some. Picking up Java, C#, etc. will be something you can do in your spare time over a couple of weeks. I know, because I was hired as a Java programmer on the strength of my C++ experience, in spite of having written only one tiny Java class. I read an ebook and was productive immediately. Granted, it took a lot longer to learn all the rest of the ecosystem, like HTTP and all the godzillions of available libraries, but it wasn't hard.
No sig? Sigh...
Colleges time tables are poor for ongoing education and there needs to be a some kind of badges system that makes taking classes to refresh / learn new skills add up to some thing and not just that nice but it's not an degree from HR.
college needs to change and HR needs to drop the need it to get a job part.
In my experience, the best programmers all have one (among others) critical skill: They have the ability to pick up new languages, APIs, technologies, etc., quickly and on their own. The fact that, after 10+ years as a programmer, you see ASP, .NET, C#, etc. as so formidable that you feel (apparently) that you might learn them more efficiently by sitting in a classroom and being spoon-fed would give me pause if I were considering hiring you for any developer position.
Showing actual, relevant work products are the best way to get a job now. Pick the technology you want to learn, build an application that motivates you to put in the time. The technology should be marketable, the application doesn't have to be. Just has to be professional quality in the end. Based on your existing skills with embedded development and lower level languages there are a couple directions you could take. 'Internet of Things' is getting hot if you want to stay with embedded development. Objective-C for iOS is a good fit with your C background. ASP, .NET, C# all require commitment to the Microsoft world. It's not just the languages and frameworks, but you have to buy products, and learn many server side components. Certifications are also usually expected. A big commitment. PHP is OK (one of my primary languages), free to use and don't have to learn large frameworks to do productive work.
Can't go wrong at this point with JavaScript, that should be a secondary skill for pretty much any developer now, and it's become a very viable primary language also. It's on the way up, while PHP is probably declining.
I think that a great way for people to further their knowledge and skill set is through taking online courses. I agree with some other comments in this thread about how college will only take you so far and you'll learn very rudimentary skills. I've been taking online programming courses for about half a year and have learned various programming languages and web development skills. I would suggest taking advantage of this sites deal https://learntoprogram.tv/cour... They are giving access to over 25 courses which includes courses that will give you some of the skills your searching for, for only a dollar for the first month. Good luck!
In a lot of cases, a shiny new CS Degree actually hurts your chances of employment. Just learn the shit yourself, inside & out, design philosophy & all, contribute to a few FOSS projects &/or throw together some elaborate demo.
From the summary: " I have a computer science degree from Purdue and have been employed as a firmware engineer for 10+ years writing C and C++."
Also from the summary: " I was thinking that a computer information technology degree would fit the bill..."
As a person who also has a BS in computer science I ask, "Do you know how to make coffee?" If so, make yourself a pot and pretend you already have a degree in making coffee for the programmers.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If you prefer more structured learning then online courses are probably best as they tend to be more current. However most of the good coders I know would just grab a reference and start writing code. There are countless programmers out there whose only experience is in a high level language, and don't properly understand how things work at a lower level. If you are good in C and C++, you can better understand what the higher level languages are doing under the covers. C++ is far more complex than these other languages.
If you can't figure out a good pet project, then start solving problems in books like "Programming Challenges" or "Elements of Programming Interviews" in your new language of choice. Porting software is also a good way to learn about a language. I learned Powershell by porting a bunch of Perl scripts.
Mod Parent Up.
I'm a procedural programmer who has hammered my way into OO and Web programming. I find it easiest to start with a workflow chart, then model the real world workflow, rather than trying to fit everything into classes and patterns.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
We have courses in all those areas, along with real world projects that you work on to build your portfolio.
"OO for business tasks" is just identifying the business entities and modeling them in classes. Just like database design is identifying the business entities and organizing them into tables.
yeah, if they can be modelled that way. but most businesses, especially small businesses, have zero consistency because what you're modeling is the will of the will of the owner. It shifts too much to have any structure. So there are no business entities to class, because everything's a class of 1.
That's when OO falls apart, crashes, and burns. When no class gets used more than once, there's no point in having the class. When no method is used on more than one object, there's no reason to tie it to an object. And when no object has more than one instance, there's no point in calling it an object.
When, at execution-time, no line of code is executed more than once, there's no benefit to OO.
And then you're left with only the disadvantages of OO -- code-structure, hard definitions, layers of abstraction, no injection points -- which makes everything an exercise in making it take as long as possible, to be as robust and future proof as possible, even though it'll never be used again and it has no future worth considering.
Think of an object oriented language in this way: It is designed to stop code duplication and help to group similar functionality. It puts frequently used code in "containers" (i.e. "classes") that you can instantiate. Once the object (i.e. class) exists, you can just call its "member" functions / methods. Similar to C.
That's it. It's a just an organizational tool for the programmer.
I have to say, it does require much more planning to come up with objects and their member functions / methods right off the bat. You can write object oriented languages like C functions, call each one when you need it. One issue I've encountered is I'll sketch out a list of actions that need to get done. I'll start coding. Get the five or seven functions needed to do that. Typically something like building a data structure. I realize somewhere else that I need that same functionality. I don't want to run through the whole rigamarole of going through that initialization again. So I make a class out of it. With one line: Classtype X = new Classtype() [ed. note: the Classtype() is a function call to the "constructor" - a standard function across object oriented languages - which instantiates and initializes the new object) Voila! With that line, all the initialization is done and I can use the object / data structure as I need to, with X->doWhatever().
I think the net result is that it is more difficult to plan out an object-oriented program. Actually... if you want to get forced into an easier-to-use mandatory object oriented language, try Java (as opposed to C++). The structure of the language and the source code forces you to create classes. A good tutorial is "The Java Tutorial" (Addison Wesley publishers, authors Zakhour et. al.).
A good tutorial book. A. GOOD. TUTORIAL. BOOK. Or even a good online tutorial. But a tutorial is what is necessary, not a reference.
You can't just pick up a reference book and start coding or solving problems from that. That's not what references are for. You need a good tutorial. A good tutorial is worth its weight in gold in my opinion.
Some recommendations:
For LAMP + Javascript development? Try "Learning PHP, MySQL and JavaScript" by Robin Nixon (O'Reilly).
For Java? The Java Tutorial by Zakhour et. al. (Addison Wesley).
You need to spend time finding a good tutorial. And work through the problems. That then leaves the issue of getting a job. With your existing background, and being conversant in the language, it won't be easy (without experience in that field specifically), but it will give you a definite leg up.
What about certifications? Well, I took the Java 6 Programmer certification test. I'm typically pretty good at tests. Because I prepare well. I did just about every problem in the Java Tutorial book. I got some question/answer sample exam from Oracle. I prepared like I always do. And I got raped. Failed miserably. I was shocked. I have a CS degree with a high GPA and my IQ has tested well enough to join those pretentious high IQ organizations. And I got totally owned. So, just throwing that out there for that particular certification.
Keep your money for harsh times ahead. Learn what you can on your own. There is simply no promise that jobs will be available in the future. It seems that the corporations have killed off the ability of the public to purchase goods or services and the tragedy is compounded by over population and global warming. Food prices are already going nuts. The worst is yet to come.
I've managed to fit my post into the subject, so here I'll paste my Open Letter to Wacom instead. Enjoy, and please don't moderate off-topic since the Comment Subject is the entire post and is on topic, but I've got to put something meaningful here to get through the filter.
From https://www.facebook.com/john....
(hint: copy and paste into a fixed width editor and reformat to taste, taking care to make my signature look like John.)
An Open Letter to Wacom,
Re: Drivers that don't drive properly, and are welded shut so as to be unfixable for whoever has the misfortune to need to use them.
Dear Wacom,
When I plug my Bamboo into my Linux laptops, it works perfectly every time. It does not, however, work at all properly on my mac, and isn't moving the mouse at all on this Windows 7 64bit laptop despite it having worked in the past, no new drivers having been installed, and Windows 7 saying the driver was successfully installed.
Please investigate how the Free Software community was able to write a working driver, hit your driver developers over the head with a clue-stick or other relevant therapy, and consider having open source (BSD licensed or weaker) Windows drivers---from which open source and Free Software drivers can be developed, maintained and debugged independently---written from scratch following advice of the Free Software community (but not copying code itself) and released under a BSD-style open source without restrictions license.
Since I cannot trust Wacom products to work on my Mac, nor on my Windows laptops, and my £200 Corel Painter software doesn't have a Linux version, I cannot justify the cost of an Intuos Pro no matter how much I love the idea if digital painting, and the philosophy of what was Fractal Design's Painter.
That I cannot trust Corel Painter to try to kick it's twice-a-day crash habit, means I can't trust it either.
Krita is a nice idea, but is at least a year or so from being production ready, and Gimp is not really a digital painting product, but a General Image Manipulation Program, so that is no substitute either.
You can put part of the blame on Microsoft for the driver issue for having such a stupid USB driver model, but you are the fools for actually trying to code to said broken model.
Yours wondering-when-Ableton-Suite-and-Reaper-and-all-my-VSTs-will-be-available-on-Linux-and-I-can-ditch-Windows-compeletly-ly,
JJJ h
_J_oo hh nn
J oo hh nn
J ----------- .
John Allsup.
15th February, 2014 (Hangover-after-Valentines-and-too-many-glasses-of-wine-Day Day) [hic!]
John_Chalisque
If you are looking to get a job with a big faceless corporation their HR department will probably be quite happy if you have some paper. Even if the job has requirements such as Node.js or MongoDB I suspect they would prefer if you were somehow "certified" in these areas.
But if I were hiring someone I would just say, "Prove it." by basically having the person show me something interesting they built using the technologies claimed.
Beyond that the key is families of knowledge. C# probably shows you know some Microsoft stuff. C++ means you can learn things like PHP, Java, and Lua quickly. Node.js shows that you are interested in new things, Python is just handy, and Lisp shows that you are an academic of old. One SQL DB is good but two shows you can learn. OpenGL means that you have progressed past script monkey stage.
But the real key is to see the spread of knowledge. There is nothing worse than someone who has "mastered" only one thing or one thing and its related thing. So it is fine to be a master in PHP and MySQL as long as you are good in something quite different such as C++. And it doesn't count if you moved from one related technology to another such as Ruby to PHP or ASP to Ruby.
So you have mastered firmware in C++ which seems to be pretty hard core. My suggestion is to go way off the reservation and learn something like OpenGL programming in Python (as a suggestion of something very different not as a particular suggestion) even though your skillset would probably translated best to something like Java which, if learned, is highly marketable. Python oddly enough is not as marketable. But make sure to learn a DB as I suspect that you didn't do any DB work with firmware.
Have you forgotten what is a public library? There are also very affordable courses on the internet, from zero to what you are willing to pay.
I have self taught myself C, C++, assembly (multiple), pascal, and a few other languages. My expenses thus far, are two manuals for around $70/ea.
Am I too cheap? No, I am anxious to learn and I have bills to pay. If I can't borrow the books or follow the courses online, I do without. I just take an alternate language course.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
After all, Dover reprints those old relics of math books precisely because they *are* still relevant.
-- hendrik