Does anyone here know PYTHON (the programming language) or any others?

[sgreger1]

I haven't been keeping up with this thread too much, so bear with me. I am going to school for CS so I thought I'd chime in.

If you want to do IT at any professional level, generally you will need a degree of some type from a school, as opposed to simply gaining certifications and such through tests or training programs. While IT and programming go hand in hand, they are basically two different fields of study with multiple sub-disciplines. Depending on what you want to specialize in, you can take different routes for each. Again, if you want to program at any professional level, you will need a degree.

The flip side to all of this is that you can easily learn and master both programming and IT work on your own. From this, the possibilities are endless with respect to freelance work if that is what you are interested in.

If you are looking to program, and you've got the 'just' of how computers work, I would simply stick to beginner programming books and go from there. The course certifications won't land you jobs on their own and are simply just costing you for something you could learn on your own.

YAh this is where i'm stuck right now is that at the end of the day I have to get a degree to get hired anywhere, but I also have to keep working full time to pay my bills so even getting a bachelors would take me like 8 years since I could only do a few classes per semester. On top of that they have cut many of the night classes so I can't even really still get a degree unless I quit my job. Then the problem is that I already make $40,000 and even if I spent a bunch of money and took 8 years getting a bachelors, that degree will only get you a job worth maybe 50k. So I am investing tens of thousands just to get a tiny pay raise. The economy is so ****ed right now, especially for people who don't already have their degrees.


I think I am just going to learn all of this stuff on my own as much as I can and just do it as a hobby for a while until I can pick it all up and figure out the job landscape a little better, it's just that I know I have to go get a degree but its just so impossible to do right now. How the **** else does everyone else do it, everyone is like "it's never too late to get your degree", but since I can only take one or two classes per semester, and due to budget cuts most of those night classes have been cut, I just don't see how I can get a degree at this point.


Thanks for all the help guys, I guess i'm just in a rut right now. I should have gone to college when I was younger but now i'm ****ed even though all of the college kids i've ran into don't seem any smarter than me. Most of the people who got bachelors at UC Santa Cruz when I lived there were like high schoolers, I just couldn't believe that they spent 80,000$ and came out knowing almost nothing.

[internope]

If you can't go the degree route get a beginner IT certification or two and find an entry level job. From there you can get some experience and start moving up. You will find that you might not be able to get a foot in the door at a lot of companies without a degree, but there are still plenty of places where demonstrated expertise and industry experience will be sufficient to land a decent job.

There are enough books available and free (or pirated) study resources on the Internet that you can get the knowledge required to pass the lower level cert exams without spending money on any ripoff trade school classes. If you are willing to give up most of your free time to study and bust your ass taking a second job doing IT work at night you could reach your goal within a year or two.