Choosing A Path

-



It was a line of jargon I could not understand. A few words of English mixed in with symbols, typed in some kind of structured writing. An electronic form of poetry in an alien language I thought. With a few inputs into a black screen they call the command prompt, man and machine converse. My friend, a programmer since high school and now working with embedded code for a large tech company, showed me the wonder that is programming. I didn't say so, but it piqued my interest begging the question: how does it work?

Witnessing some simple code, that crunched numbers and asked the computer to open and close it's CD drive, pulled at me. I never really cared to learn before, but now that I have chosen to learn and make a career out of it, I will never look back. The world of computer science is as astonishing as it is complex.

Before I decided to take the dive into learning the field, I dove into the treasure trove of information that is known as the Internet. I just wanted to know the basics and found some info that anyone taking an introduction class into computer science will know. I went on popular message boards and forums and read about people taking the same journey, for personal enrichment, career change, or in the attempt to create the next big tech company. I found many free online courses and video tutorials. The resources available are akin to an endless delicious Las Vegas style buffet.

FIRST, what is your reason. This can determine how far you will go. Think of your will to learn as a fuel tank and your passionate interest is the fuel. If you don't really care for the subject, you'll have a hard time going far and maybe realize you just wanted to know the minimum. But if, let's say, you wanted to solve a problem that could help out humanity, you're going to need all that passion.

THEN, choose your path. I'm going mention three pathways that you will commonly hear about. One will be the traditional path. Go back to school. As I have mentioned before, this is what I did because I felt this was the best way for me to absorb knowledge. The structure and pressure of college helps keep me on track. An advantage I saw in this was being exposed to other subjects within the field. Being exposed to beginner classes in web dev, data management, and graphic design actually enforced my interest in software programming. And then, being exposed to a few programming languages  Another path is attending a coding bootcamp. Literally, a place where you are just drilled nonstop day and night, with a stack of technology of your choice. Usually, you can choose to take a backend course that focuses on server side technology (software programming) or you can go frontend (web dev/design). I approached a bootcamp here in Las Vegas before I even took a trip to the registrar at school. I just wanted to see what the hype was all about. If you do a bit of research you will see all the rave reviews and how many students come out knowing enough to land jobs in just about every tech hub in the country, or so the reviews say. All that being said, you could just choose to make it on your own. Find intro to advanced level tutorials online and structure them in a way that will work for you. Many have gone down this path and documented their learning processes through blogs and podcasts.

FINALLY, just do it. Don't wait. Don't make excuses. Time waits for no one and neither will the progression of all that is technology.








Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 4, 2018 at 12:58 PM

    A very well written post Paul. You might even want to consider a degree in journalism because I was very intrigued! I think you make good points and show the readers a few paths they could take with programming. Which boot camp did you visit here in Vegas? Great work my friend!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PaulJohnnyMarch 17, 2018 at 7:13 PM

      Thank you! In fact I used to consider getting into journalism, mostly because I feel I can be very chatty when it comes to typing things out. I'm actually pretty happy I have finally started to blog.

      As for that bootcamp, the name of it was The Iron Yard. It was located downtown on Charleston and Third St. It went out of commission a couple years back and unfortunately I do not know of any other coding bootcamps out here.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using Flickr

-
Image
Here is a link to my album. Here is a direct link to the slideshow. I decided to embed the slideshow onto this post just to see how it would look like. I also include the link to the album itself. EDIT: the embedded above must be manually scrolled. The direct link will bring you the actual slideshow that automatically goes through all the pictures. The above pictures are more along the lines of a personal sneak peek into what I am seeing when I'm doing some coding or something computer related. The logo you see is something I designed for my graphics class. The next picture is of the textbook I have been using for this and last semester. Currently not my favorite programming language but the material presentation taught me enough OOP. After that is a picture of a large coffee mug with the drip brewer behind it. I think it's a common stereotype that all programmers have coffee in their veins so to speak. Personally I love coffee so much I probably should do a blog of t
Read more

The Workstation: Keyboard

-
Image
Another episode of The Workstation! Today I'll talk about that one thing you get your hands on the most when your in front of the computer. The keyboard of course! Now if you think they're all the same and it's just a piece of hardware, you couldn't be more wrong. Or you just don't spend that much time working on a computer. When you log in hours upon hours of typing time, you will feel the difference in quality between the keyboards you will come across. Again, what I use isn't that fancy but I've had a $10 keyboard and I've had a $100 keyboard. There is DEFINITELY a difference. Cheap generic general use keyboard vs. Razer Chroma Ornata keyboard (Yes, I know it's an extremely lopsided comparison but it'll help me make my point.) The first thing I notice when I try a keyboard is how well the keys respond to how I type: $10 keyboard: The keys are stiff an feels like I need to jam them to even get a response.  I can't really type as f
Read more

What is OOP

-
Image
Object Oriented Programming: Part 1 Think of a generic person, place, or thing; any noun if you would. Think of all the details pertaining to this 'object'. What does it look like? Does it have name? What does it do? Those questions and more can be translated into code. The best analogy I have seen to visualize the software design structure known as OOP, is using a car as an example. A car is a class.  A car has a model name, color, fuel type, capacities, etc. These are what would be called class instance variables.  The car also moves forward with the gear in position and the gas pedal pressed. It also can go in reverse and stop when the brakes are pressed. The actions of the car can be described with class methods. Here's a an example of what I just described using C++: #include <iostream> using namespace std; class Car {     private:             string model;             string color;             string fuel;             double fuelCapacity;    
Read more