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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
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.
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.