Wooo. Scary ####, I just quit my job with only half a plan what to do now



I'm moving from tech support to software development... If anyone in the industry has any tips over the best languages to study and over any qualifications that are actually worth having (obvious comparison is the laughably pointless MCP qualifications in my old career track - sys admin / tech support) then feel free to pass on advice here or direct to my email (dogthinker@gmail.com)

At the moment my rather vague plan is to self-study full time for the next 3-9 months then seek out junior roles to cut my teeth on... Gut feel is to work with C++, but I'm wondering about C# and the like.

* Dogthinker watches his savings nervously, and slightly curiously, watching to see how fast they collapse now he has no income.

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Java seems to be popular right now. One wonders why.

Net $hould al$o be u$eful & profitable, if you can $tand it.

And of course, assembler to keep your mind in good shape. Kinda like Sudoku for the IT-oriented.

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Well, if you believe web apps are the way to go and you trust Groovy, you could go with Grails (used to be Groovy on Rails). It works well with AJAX mash ups, which helps too. (Rails can be a bit quirky from what my friends tell me - although I hear it is being worked on now).

The nice thing about Grails is you can be pushing out apps early and then work backwards to raw Java.

Go bounce around Wiki for all the links to the homepages.

Just a thought.
S.

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Dogthinkers wrote on Sun, 17 February 2008 17:32

is the laughably pointless MCP qualifications in my old career track - sys admin / tech support) then feel free to pass on advice here or direct to my email (dogthinker@gmail.com)

What's wrong with system administration?

Quote:

Gut feel is to work with C++, but I'm wondering about C# and the like.

Most likely Java, as people are slow to adopt new stuff. It will be around for a while and it is popular.

I work with 2 long time friends that are also Development programmers at the company I work. I think it is really personal preference, as I doubt either would go back to C anything. So, if you are looking for a basic laundry list from a fairly cutting edge company...here is stuff from their daily job descriptions.

Java, XML, Perl, Javascript, Cold Fusion, Tcl/TK, Ruby (on Rails).

Unix commands and scripting.

DB's - Oracle, MySql, SQL Server, SQL, JDBC.

Application servers like Resin, Tomcat, Cold Fusion. Maybe get more into Cold Fusion (Lots of people have that worthless piece of crap, and need help! lol).

Web development like Spring or Hibernate

Methodologies, so you can speak geek, and wow the crowd. Agile seems like the current fad at our work.

Some tools like Junit, Cruise Control, Crucible, and Ant.

More basic tools of the trade like CVS or SVN, and something like Eclipse.

This is probably to much...but whatever. Most of our legacy stuff is centered around Java and Coldfusion, but we are constantly changing.

Hope that helps!
Good Luck!
-Matt

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mlaub wrote on Fri, 22 February 2008 15:44

What's wrong with system administration?

Nothing... Except when I started getting pre-release training for Server 2008 I realised I was bored, not excited.

BTW, thanks for the ideas. I think I'm fairly set now on starting in with C++.... But I definately need to read up more on Java to get my head around exactly what it's good for (I've currently got something of a misconception to shake off that it's a web language, not as 'serious'. But people are quite clearly using it for more than that, so I need to give it more attention before I made my decision.)

[Updated on: Sun, 24 February 2008 20:32]

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Dogthinkers wrote on Sun, 24 February 2008 15:45

Nothing... Except when I started getting pre-release training for Server 2008 I realized I was bored, not excited.

Ah, lol. My motto is the same as house cleaners, "I don't do Windows".

Well, if I don't have too, that is. Currently we run the spectrum, Windows, Apple, and Unix (Mostly RedHat Enterprise). However, I am currently helping to redeploy our *nix infrastructure on Xen. Probably much more fun than being trained on Windows Server 2008.

Quote:

BTW, thanks for the ideas.

NP. Good Luck!

-Matt

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neilhoward wrote on Thu, 01 May 2008 10:47

perl lisp python fortran cobal for the win

For the WIN?!? omg...have you *tried* running any of those in windows?

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I started learning Visual Basic when I was about 9 or 10.

Then at 13-ish I found Dark Basic (A Basic language dedicated to creating 3D games and applications).

Then I dabbled in C, C++ and tried out C#.


If you have never programmed before, Basic is a good place to start. It is a high level programming language, meaning that it has a more limited scope for what you can do with it, but it is still a very powerful language. Visual Basic is set out in much the same way as the C# interface, where you are presented with a form (window) and you may drag and drop buttons and such onto the form. Then you write the code behind it to tell the program what to do when you press that button.

C# is probably best for the next stage as it has the medium level language (meaning you can do anything with it, but it needs a lot more coding) - much more powerful than Basic - but retains much the same interface.

With C and C++ you must code everything. Including the form itself, the buttons, text boxes and everything else that go into it. So this takes much, much more code, but means that you can do far more with it.

I wouldn't bother with Java unless it's a web-related program, as this is primarily what Java is for. I don't know too much about Java, but I understand it is another high-level language.

Oh and if you're wondering why I have mentioned only high and medium level languages, assembler is a low level language, but is far, far more difficult to understand and the code (all numbers and symbols that is actual computer language) is many times longer than even C. All other languages when compiled by the software writing program are converted to assembler code, and are simply a more manageable way of displaying said code.

By now you may be thinking "This guy is a complete and utter nerd" and I think you'd probably be right. I'm 18 and I code for fun.

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[Updated on: Mon, 07 July 2008 04:56]

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beanspoon wrote on Mon, 07 July 2008 10:24

With C and C++ you must code everything. Including the form itself, the buttons, text boxes and everything else that go into it.

... or you can resort to libraries, which may even be your own.

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Adacore wrote on Mon, 07 July 2008 10:55

I can't begin to count the number of times I've thought "Ooh - I wish I could write a program to do that!"

For some not-too-low-level tasks Javascript is a perfectly useful language. It can display stars, calculate fuel usage and planet values, validate race designs, and even mimic a reasonable webmail client interface.

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