Considering a change of career.

[Rubric]

Looking to get into an IT career as at the age of 29 i need to stop bumming around in jobs and get a real career started.

Programming appeals and something like VB.net.

Anyone have any ideas on how i should get started in this i can only study part time. I have looked at things like computeach who seem to reckon to do the A+ then MCDST followed by MCAD VB then MCSD VB. I have read bad reports on these people. Is this set of courses advisable or could i go straight in at the programming end and miss out the hardware and networking side of things?

Any help gratefully received.

 

[dysfunction]

I would have thought some good knowledge on harware and networking would be beneficial even though you want to go the programming route...


I dont have any other advice but good luck!

 

[gunner440]

Uh, just making sure that I'm not misreading your post as from what I understand - you don't have any previous experience with programming whatsoever but you are looking to get into that industry?

 

[Rubric]

not since my zx spectrum days many years ago. I'm thinking i may have missed the boat at my age.

 

[gunner440]

not since my zx spectrum days many years ago. I'm thinking i may have missed the boat at my age.

Ah ok. The reason why I mentioned it is that programming isn't the easiest of industries to get into in terms of learning from scratch. I'd say that it's more of an acquired taste and is not something where you can be easily shown what to do hence why you've probably heard lots of bad reports.

In terms of hardware/software, I'd be comfortable saying that most programmers do have an IT-heavy background and that the step towards programming is just taking it a level up.

 

[ST^]

29 isn't anywhere near too old You really do need some kind of general knowledge in IT.

You should download VB.NET 2005 Express Edition (legally free) and play around with it. Find some tutorials and stuff, make some basic command prompt (Console) applications. Start with just writing text to the screen and doing basic math.


PS: you may want to look at C# instead of VB. It 'looks' harder but it's actually easier. Also, MS are gonna support and develop it more than VB it seems.

 

[Bob007]

Pff am 35 and am back at college, you never to old

I would surgest you look at the local college's and see what entry level stuff they have on offer, do a bit of background and even go in and speak to them. Then pick something the you want to do and pointing you towards your end goal then do that. See if you like it and work up from there.

Best advice i can give, make a plan and have a time-scale and stick to it as much as possible.

GL, Retraining is something some of us may have to do.

 

[gunner440]

Pff am 35 and am back at college, you never to old

Bob stop lying and tell the man the truth. You're back at college because the weekend is over. You never finished!!!

 

[Trem]

I'm 35 in October and I am going on a course next week.

Its only took me almost 19 years to decide what I want to do, you are too old when you are dead.

 

[Yaka]

im preety much in the same boat as rubric, also looking into taking a homestudy/partime study course thru open uni on programming. its something i wanted to do since i left high school which for RL reasons i couldnt do.

nice to know im not the only one aproaching 30 and thinking of studying again

 

[Rubric]

Thanks for the input guys.

I have found a college about 10 miles away that do comptia a+ and network + the courses are just short of £400 each two nights a week for 10 weeks. Trouble is the a+ starts 10th Sep and no way i can sort funds before then. Then the network plus starts in Oct but on the same nights!!!! i guess they run the courses again later on in the acedemic year. The A+ will hopefully give me a qualification to land a help desk job. I do have some technical experience in hardware as built my own PC before but no network experience.

Once i have landed 1st line job the network + should get me into 3rd line fairly quickly i hope and then i can start on my programming side. Interesting comment about C+ rather than vb.net will have to do some more research.

 

[GReaper]

I have found a college about 10 miles away that do comptia a+ and network + the courses are just short of £400 each two nights a week for 10 weeks. Trouble is the a+ starts 10th Sep and no way i can sort funds before then.

Speak to your college about it.

If they're anything like most colleges, then they'll probably be willing to arrange some sort of payment plan just to get you on the course. The number of people enrolling and achieving on a course is quite important to them.

Go there and ask!

 

[Chilly]

Be aware that there is a large difference between what a course might teach you and the reality of the subject.

Personally, I'm a silicon-fed homegrown geek, first memory is trying to drag everything on my mums desktop into the cool thing that looked like a bin on her desktop - this was about 18 years ago I program because its a means to an end - having computers do my bidding.

Its not easy, and to be any good you need to spend an unhealthy amount of time sat on your arse absorbing seemingly useless information that will help you turn into a more powerful coder. coding isnt the only facet of working in IT either.

Support and training can be equally rewarding and interesting and lets you focus on a much narrower subject matter (ie its easier to get into yet pays well when you get above the junior levels).

Networking isnt essential knowledge for coders, but its getting more and more important with every passing day. The number of programs I use on a daily basis that dont talk to another computer somewhere I can count on the fingers on an amputees hand, but thats because I'm a network programmer myself and the tools I use reflect that.

By choosing the C# path you are choosing a path that has several consequences for your future career which you will almost certainly be ignorant of at the moment. For instance, c# doesnt run as well as it might on operating systems other than MS Windows and the only reason it runs at all on several Unixes is because people programmed the support for it in their spare time. Obviously, the market for coding on Windows is huge so that's not really going to limit you much, but its something to consider.

Also, c# is what's known as a very high level language. you do things like say "create me a list of stuff and sort it", which is all fine and dandy for a lot of things. If you are working on performance and resource critical programs then c# generally simply wont cut it, its too slow and uses too much memory. This is because it runs several layers detached from the underlying hardware - which is good for a lot of cases and bad for many as well.

Languages like C# are indeed very useful and employers want people who can code in it and will continue to do so, but using C# means you tend to not know what you are actually doing in the low level detail, whether this bothers you or not is a religious matter (as in there are several camps and all have their advantages and disadvantages but ultimately its all bollocks so it doesnt really matter).

Take what you learn in those courses with a pinch of salt and do a lot of reading around the subject at home. Read up on "mono" (the implemtation of the .NET framework for linux) or about how .NET actually works. Read up on basic CPU theory and how memory caches work, read up on search algorithms and basic computer science. It's a lot to absorb but without it you will never advance beyond a competent tool-user at best. Like someone who can execute every feature of excel but ask them to build you some form of graph that does something different to what excel supports and they will stare blankly at you.

 

[thergador]

my best adivce would be skip collage and go directly to uni (if your in the uk you will get as a mature student) theres hunderds of course's and plenty of them are part time, as a mature student if you go full time you will get between 12,000 and 25,000 per term depending on if you have a family to support and if you went full time you could do a year in work, giving you valuable that much needed experiance.

and you need to be 100% clear what you want to do as and IT course will not include much much programming, if you want to do programming id look for a computer science course that is creditted by the british computer society.

thats what i did i then went on to do an Mphil and Phd i now work as a lecturer in computer forensic science.

one thing i would say if you only go to collage, not uni and do it remember you will be competing for a limited number of well paid jobs, and a large section of the other applicants will have been to uni, have worked in the area or even both leave you at a mass advantage

as for missing out hardware /network side of thing you can but you might not understand how to code some programs if you dont understand the workings of architecture of the computer, network and network layers

fell free to PM if you wanna chat more

 

[Chilly]

With regard to format qualifications in general, I recently was very amused when I was offered a job at my current employer. I was on one of those awful "graduate recruitment day" things where 12 of you all rock up and take part in a load of questionable exercises and have interviews and such and they pick one or two. I was the least academically qualified in the room on my day, I only have a bsc from Reading uni, and was competing against double firsts from Oxford and people from Imperial and other similar calibre of grads. The reason I got the job and they didnt was because I knew my stuff, not just my degree. I actually run a small business which allows be to explore and teach myself about a shitload of stuff ranging from BASH programming to setting up mail servers and writing random programs to display stats from a game.

Employers want the whole package - sure degrees are good but they want someone who can actually be authoritative on a subject and be trusted to be so.

 

[Rubric]

Be aware that there is a large difference between what a course might teach you and the reality of the subject.

Personally, I'm a silicon-fed homegrown geek, first memory is trying to drag everything on my mums desktop into the cool thing that looked like a bin on her desktop - this was about 18 years ago I program because its a means to an end - having computers do my bidding.

Its not easy, and to be any good you need to spend an unhealthy amount of time sat on your arse absorbing seemingly useless information that will help you turn into a more powerful coder. coding isnt the only facet of working in IT either.

Support and training can be equally rewarding and interesting and lets you focus on a much narrower subject matter (ie its easier to get into yet pays well when you get above the junior levels).

Networking isnt essential knowledge for coders, but its getting more and more important with every passing day. The number of programs I use on a daily basis that dont talk to another computer somewhere I can count on the fingers on an amputees hand, but thats because I'm a network programmer myself and the tools I use reflect that.

By choosing the C# path you are choosing a path that has several consequences for your future career which you will almost certainly be ignorant of at the moment. For instance, c# doesnt run as well as it might on operating systems other than MS Windows and the only reason it runs at all on several Unixes is because people programmed the support for it in their spare time. Obviously, the market for coding on Windows is huge so that's not really going to limit you much, but its something to consider.

Also, c# is what's known as a very high level language. you do things like say "create me a list of stuff and sort it", which is all fine and dandy for a lot of things. If you are working on performance and resource critical programs then c# generally simply wont cut it, its too slow and uses too much memory. This is because it runs several layers detached from the underlying hardware - which is good for a lot of cases and bad for many as well.

Languages like C# are indeed very useful and employers want people who can code in it and will continue to do so, but using C# means you tend to not know what you are actually doing in the low level detail, whether this bothers you or not is a religious matter (as in there are several camps and all have their advantages and disadvantages but ultimately its all bollocks so it doesnt really matter).

Take what you learn in those courses with a pinch of salt and do a lot of reading around the subject at home. Read up on "mono" (the implemtation of the .NET framework for linux) or about how .NET actually works. Read up on basic CPU theory and how memory caches work, read up on search algorithms and basic computer science. It's a lot to absorb but without it you will never advance beyond a competent tool-user at best. Like someone who can execute every feature of excel but ask them to build you some form of graph that does something different to what excel supports and they will stare blankly at you.

Thanks great post i apreciate the time spent.

 

[Rubric]

my best adivce would be skip collage and go directly to uni (if your in the uk you will get as a mature student) theres hunderds of course's and plenty of them are part time, as a mature student if you go full time you will get between 12,000 and 25,000 per term depending on if you have a family to support and if you went full time you could do a year in work, giving you valuable that much needed experiance.

and you need to be 100% clear what you want to do as and IT course will not include much much programming, if you want to do programming id look for a computer science course that is creditted by the british computer society.

thats what i did i then went on to do an Mphil and Phd i now work as a lecturer in computer forensic science.

one thing i would say if you only go to collage, not uni and do it remember you will be competing for a limited number of well paid jobs, and a large section of the other applicants will have been to uni, have worked in the area or even both leave you at a mass advantage

as for missing out hardware /network side of thing you can but you might not understand how to code some programs if you dont understand the workings of architecture of the computer, network and network layers

fell free to PM if you wanna chat more

Thanks for the input not sure going back to uni as i have two kids to support is an option :-(

 

[thergador]

Thanks for the input not sure going back to uni as i have two kids to support is an option :-(

i had 1 one i started and had another 1 while i was there m8 you get your student load plus mature stundent grant + perental eduction grant + child care cost covered and a few other bits i know couples that go to uni and get an income of 50k between them from doing it

 

[Rubric]

i had 1 one i started and had another 1 while i was there m8 you get your student load plus mature stundent grant + perental eduction grant + child care cost covered and a few other bits i know couples that go to uni and get an income of 50k between them from doing it

Blimey sounds like they know how to play the system.

 

[thergador]

Blimey sounds like they know how to play the system.

university want maturer students m8 i know i would rather have them than fresh out of collage ones they tend to want to pass more. speak to your local LEA of university finance office they will be able to tell you more m8

 

[raid]

Lots of good advice here already and Chilly's post pretty much summed it up.

You're definitely not too old. But I'd like to second that what is taught on courses is much different than reality. Don't want to scare or disappoint you, but in my opinion, programming is not the best career if you prefer "just taking some courses and find a job". Courses are good to get started, but you need a kind of ambition to become good. Anyway, my 2 cents:

If you go the .NET route, I also definitely suggest learning C# instead of Visual Basic. Both are probably as hard/easy to learn, and you can do the same stuff using either of them, but the "market value" of C# seems to be in completely different league. Overall, despite the drawbacks Chilly mentioned, I think .NET is very good choice for starting. Note that I say .NET instead of the language, because at end of the day the language makes rather little difference. Understanding the general concepts and practices is far more important.

Programming using the very high level languages will not teach you too much about the low level stuff, but I believe there's a lot of real work where you might not need to know it anyway. The library/framework you use normally contains good search or sort algorithms already, and you can indeed say "create a list of this stuff and sort it" and it might very well be faster than an algorithm a "less experienced programmer" would write himself in a lower level language.

Also, Developing with Visual Studio / C#.NET is a very pleasant experience compared to many other environments. When things go wrong (and believe me they WILL go wrong ) you usually get very descriptive error messages/exceptions, which is much different from just a cryptic segmentation fault or access violation. I might sound like a Microsoft fanboi, but it's actually very far from truth. Credit where it is due, and I think MS has made excellent job with their developer tools.

Good luck with the new career!

 

[Rubric]

Thanks all just dropping in to let you know what the state of play was. College part time was out of the question as was full time due to when me making this decision far too late this year. I have decided that the open university is the way forward and a Bsc (Honours) in Computing in Systems will begin in February.

Thanks for all your help and input guys much apreciated.