I'm considering learning to code in order to make a career change, but every bit of research I do leads to more questions. Looking for an Ag in the industry to let me pick their brain.

Quick background: I'm a journalist by training but have spent a decade teaching high school English in Austin. The only programming I've ever attempted was Fortran during a freshman engineering class; however, I'm tech savvy and think I could handle the challenge.

What I'm looking for: Flexibility (maybe telecommuting), more pay, a challenge.

My little bit of research as led me to think web development is where I should look with something like Ruby on Rails. If you work in this or other areas, I would love to ask you some questions.

Please PM me. (Cross posted on Job Network)

Not to hijack your thread, but I may want to pick your brain as well. I've been thinking about leaving a technical career to teach high school English. I figure that I took four years of English in high school so learning how to teach it at the high school level should be quick and easy. I'm looking for summers off and as little headache as possible.

Mind if I contact you?

Sure.

lol @ this thread

Definitely not what I was expecting.

I do Ruby on Rails or Node.js for most of my personal projects and use PHP (not by choice) at work with an Ember.js front end (I love Ember).

Feel free to shoot me an e-mail at JDCAG.email at gmail.com - if I don't respond quickly, remind me on this thread as I don't often check that e-mail.

I think Picard's point - and it is a valid one - is that too many people are pretty flippant about picking up coding, like it is just a hobby and it can come across as a bit of an insult to folks that do this professionally.

You'll need to be willing to put in a lot of time and learn a lot of things if you want to make a career out of it. You don't have to have a degree in a related subject, but it's not something you can turn into a career from a few hours a week of dabbling.

That said, jump in and see if you find it enjoyable. If you do, keep going - if it leads you to a point where you can make the leap, go for it.

To be a great programmer, you need to be very good at math. Given that you're an English teacher...well...

I'm going to get have to get my freaking sarcasm meter checked if I'm going to get into the tech world. Picard's comments went straight past me. I just felt bad for him wanting to get into education.

Thanks, and I will send you an email.

Good note, Sparkle. I was a science major for most of my time at A&M and have three semesters of engineering calculus under my belt. (Never got to diff eq.)

Maybe that means something. We'll see.

[This message has been edited by Rodney Dean (edited 5/16/2014 9:38p).]

And if I stick around the Nerdery, I'll probably need a new nickname. Maybe "Lynn Minmei's Veritech Lover."

JDCAG, email sent. Thanks in advance.

there's not much math to web development

If(want.riches())
!do();

As a simple matter - the supply of entry level programmers is very high in most major cities. In Austin for example there are tons of recent grads, all with a degree and some with a bit of experience.

Good programmers or developers can make a nice living. Some make a very nice living. But becoming "good" is the challenge. That is much more than knowing a language or three. It is productivity, quality, and the ability to work on multi-team projects under an architect or lead designer. The commercial side of the business will most certainly require experience with the software lifecycle including source code management.

+1. Well said. To be good takes a lot more than knowing a language.

quote:

---

Not to hijack your thread, but I may want to pick your brain as well. I've been thinking about leaving a technical career to teach high school English. I figure that I took four years of English in high school so learning how to teach it at the high school level should be quick and easy. I'm looking for summers off and as little headache as possible.

Mind if I contact you?

---

I love this. So many people think you can do a few online tutorials, and magically be a great developer. It is not that easy. There are many things that you have to learn about besides just how to make something function. There is maintainability, security, accessibility, usability, testability, etc.

That doesn't mean it can't be done, but do not think you are going to read a book or a web page and just step into a six figure income.

That said, I am not tying to discourage you. Read "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master". That is a great place to start.


[This message has been edited by Rex Racer (edited 5/17/2014 10:28a).]

I was going to recommend code complete by Steve McConnell

Dammit, fellas! Way to dash my dreams. I got on here looking for easy answers, but no! Nothing but hot bowls of truth soup.

I thought this copy of Ruby for Dummies I bought last night at Half Price Books was going to have me in the market for a six-figure job by Monday. Now what am I supposed to do with my weekend?

I suppose I'll grade some semester exams and look forward to a future leaving No Child Behind. I'll leave the coding the big boys. Sorry for wasting your collective time. (Which is worth so much on a per hour basis!)








(P.S. I appreciate the suggestions on books and resources. Any more of those will be much appreciated.)

Rodney, it's not to wash your dreams. I think the main point with time & effort it can be done. With all things you have to enjoy doing it and not to chase the money.

Thanks, slacker. I had fallen into a shame spiral, but now I'm back.

It is going to be an arduous task, but if I end up enjoying it, then I will keep on keeping on.

[This message has been edited by Rodney dean (edited 5/17/2014 12:10p).]

Udacity has a good online comp sci 101 course that teaches python. I went through it prior to starting on my masters in CS. Your experience was more than mine was for prior programming, and CS isn't programming, but after a year I can use python, perl, c/c++, java, html, and am learning x86 right now.

Program a lot. I write lots of trivial programs just to practice and experiment. I had a teacher once say a good programmer codes 100 lines a day. I try to do that 3 to 4 times a week outside of class work.

I would also recommend attending Meetups for the languages/topics you're interested in. Lots of helpful folks for questions & it's good to stay up-to-date with the technologies.

Good call on the meet ups. My plan right now is to spend the summer doing a course/class/book/something and see how I do. Then maybe I can start meeting people in the industry and keep working on my coding till I'm good enough to make the switch.

try some code golf to get down your efficiency...

as far as I know there are three ways to play...

shortest code
fastest execution
smallest compilation

I know a little SQL and some SAS. How hard can I expect to ball?

I know of a job opening right now that pays ~$150K if you can write assembler language programs on a z/OS operating system with deep knowledge of IMS database internals.

Assembly?!

"Systems" software for the mainframe is usually written in assembler, sometimes in C.

I work on the hardware side of things but took assembly in school, still gives me nightmares.

Assembly code always terrified me.

Spicewood, that sounds intriguing. I've known assembly language since middle school (also have worked in CPU design). The IMS part is new though.

Something else to think about is the industry you want to code for. Web development is a crowded field, but at least what you learn is applicable across a lot of different industries. If you want less competition for jobs (and therefore a better chance at a decent paycheck sooner), then learn something that is specialized for a particular industry. For example, the demand for developers with SQL, HL7 and some clinical experience is huge right now because of the frantic push to get everyone on electronic health records as fast as possible.

BTW - a complete programmer can debug code, whether they wrote it or not. Gotta understand how to troubleshoot using dumps, traces, etc.

These days it is also a plus to know how to write secure code.

Buffer overflows. Gotta check your bounds.