Bestow Your Wisdom Upon Me

[MRT144]

Being on the infrastructure, maintenance and administration side of IT is boring as ****.

[Riesstiu IV]

I never even knew you could get a 4 year degree in IT. The IT guys in the places I've worked are usually people with an unrelated degrees or who went through some short certification process.

[Asher]

Well, we'll see what I end up getting into. I'm confident in this degree. Even if I got a CS degree, I doubt my starting salary would be a whole lot higher. There's tons of people with CS degrees, and there's tons of people from outside the country taking those positions up.

I know a lot of people with CS degrees in Canada & the US. The average of their starting salaries right out of university was 60k.

[MRT144]

I never even knew you could get a 4 year degree in IT. The IT guys in the places I've worked are usually people with an unrelated degrees or who went through some short certification process.

I'm a High school dropout, with some college.

[Asher]

By the way, if you don't suggest language specific books, which is what I've been looking through, what do you suggest then?

Programming language books teach syntax. Syntax is not important, you could always google it and look it up.

The value and the skill is in design and concepts. This is why the outsourced codemonkeys from India get paid far less from a good software developer in North America.

This is one of the differences between community colleges teaching programming and universities teaching computer science. In a good CS school, they don't even teach syntax. You're just expected to pick it up, as it's not hard. Additionally, once you learn one language of a certain type (procedural, functional, object-oriented, etc) you can trivially pick up additional ones. On my resume, I've got professional experience with C, C++, Objective C, C#, Fortran, Visual Basic, Delphi, Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, Haskell, F#, Javascript/ECMAScript, ActionScript, x86, SPARC, Cg, and probably some others I'm forgetting. And this is over the last ~5 years only. If I wasted time reading programming language specific books, I'd never had time for real work.

The key is to understand fundamental concepts, not the specific implementations of each language.

Some good overall suggestions:

The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth
Code Complete (2nd edition) by Steve McConnell
Introduction to Algorithms (2nd edition) by Thomas Cormen
The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz
Modern Operating Systems by Andrew Tanenbaum
The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt
Refactoring by Martin Fowler
Design Patterns by Erich Gamma

And once you get into corporate software development...
The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks

These are all very popular general-purpose CS/programming books.

[Al B. Sure!]

Ok thanks.

Wezil, I plan to learn a musical instrument but that's a long term goal. They're expensive and very time consuming. I'm looking at either the Cello or Piano.

Jesus. How many 'long-term goals' do you have? You're a freaking dilettante!

[Al B. Sure!]

No, I'm probably expecting 30K starting. Might even be less. Just depends. There's also some consultant jobs out there that might be possible for me since I have dual degrees in business and IT. You can do pretty much all that stuff you mentioned with an IT security degree as well. An IT Security degree is very broad. You learn everything from network design to programming to management. Being a security analyst is obviously my desired route. Getting the M.S. in information Assurance, which btw meets NSA standards for curriculum, will go a long way in moving me towards that. Right now I just need to start off somewhere so I can get some experience. That's easier said than done right now. Getting this degree gives me the best chance of making that happen.

Wait you've been getting an IT degree (which has cost you how much exactly?) for the 'money' but you say you expect 30K or less starting out?

You do realize that your freaking marketing degree or, hell, your freaking high school diploma could get you a job that pays 30K?!

**** man. Go apply to be a manager at a restaurant or a home depot or something and you'll easily get at least 30K.

[DriXnaK]

First, those jobs have no future. Starting pay is just that, starting pay. Second, I can't work those jobs since I'd be required to stand for any period of time. Third, those jobs aren't even available at this point. They're also not something I want to do anyway. I need something intellectually heavier than that. IT and computers is a challenging field and it has a large amount of learning involved.

Asher, thanks for those book suggestions. I will definitely read those and I agree with your assessment of syntax vs concepts. The reason I went this route instead of CS is because in order to get a CS degree you have to go to a regular 4 year school, which means that I'll be working on their time lines no matter how fast I can learn it. The huge advantage of this degree, or I should say this institution, is that it allows you to work at your own pace. If you know the information, all you have to do is schedule your exam and then you go and take it. Even though I've put in probably 10 times the study time I did for my marketing degree, I'm doing this in a fraction of the time. I'm on track to complete this degree in just 3 months. Granted, I had information coming in and I had requirements waived due to gen ed requirements already fulfilled and transfer credit. Total time is probably 8 months when you consider everything. That's still much much faster than a normal school. I can't afford to sit there and take multiple semesters for a degree simply due to an antiquated system.

Also, there's the issue of cost. Since I can go as fast as I want, I completed 60 credits in 3 months (not counting time I studied before enrolling). Total cost per 6 month term is 2800. I got a 600$ scholarship that is funded by the IT companies that support the school (Microsoft, sun systems, etc.). So for 2200 I got a B.S. in IT Security and about 8 industry certifications. Really hard to beat that.

[DriXnaK]

By the way Albi, why do you feel so threatened by other people's abilities, aspirations, and goals? I think everyone should have large amounts of long term and short term goals. What else are you going to do with your time? Interests add character and personal value.

[Al B. Sure!]

Now how much did your Marketing degree cost?

[DriXnaK]

Far more, hence further supporting my decision to get this degree. Also, you didn't answer my question. Why are you so threatened by the more skilled and ambitious posters on here?

[Al B. Sure!]

Far more, hence further supporting my decision to get this degree. Also, you didn't answer my question. Why are you so threatened by the more skilled and ambitious posters on here?

I'm not threatened by Asher.

[Riesstiu IV]

I am.

[DriXnaK]

You should just accept your inferiority Albi and stick to posting in your stupid threads about your dad on facebook and women running away at the sight of you. Good luck on your third try in the marines. Sounds like you have some real ambition in life and are working towards adding more skills and abilities to your repertoire.

[giblets]

Whatever Drixnak. You have no standing.