Going back to uni to study computers

There's some interesting stuff here; I work in IT doing web marketing/project management for a startup but don't have any specific training - and not being able to develop minor apps myself is a constant irritation. So seeing a few perspectives on this is good.

My 2p: if more money is what you're motivated by have a look at web marketing which is booming and suffering from a big skills shortage. The concepts involved are simple and you'll probably have become familiar with many of them without realising it if you've been coding web sites. It's also something you can get into quickly without the expense of university (at the rate I'm going it'll take me 10 years from graduation to pay for it all...)

Entry level jobs are pretty crappy but it as an easy sector to move up in very quickly, especially if you are in account management at one of the agencies and show reasonable aptitude. There's relatively little training out there (main source of decent training is e-consultancy - but they are expensive) but you can educate yourself online to the extent where you'll be able to pick up a first job. For jobs and to get an idea of money look at marketingjobboard.co.uk and e-consultancy.com. Feel free to PM me if you want a chat about it.

Never ridden a sportive then have you? Fail.
I, however, have already done my share of racing.
So.. with the utmost respect for the lesser men amongst us.. fuck you.

I hate tea.

Fred - what do you do?

Hippy you are a good fella but step over the line and diss out nations favourite drink and i'll be forced to get medievel on your ass!
a good cup of tea mends hearts, builds empires, seduces women, aids hair growth and brings on the roses.. a bit of respect for the nation that is letting you stay here... till some law changes are made...

Arup - There is a lot of good advice here, you should have a look at the job papers and see what is about, a careers adviser will let you know what progression is available within a profession and within a company. You are going to need the challenges so be sure the job you aim for will give them to you going forward.

I know several people who did a two week course and blagged the first step in support and moved up from there. it's quick and you learn on the job, you get comfortable with technology and you have real world experience

Tea is shit. It's not the first time I've said it, nor will it be the last.
Bring on your medievalness :P

! days are numbered....

+1 tea is shit.

highfive!

Out of interest how much will it cost you to do this course? Can't be cheap.

It's something like £3,145 for the year. That's the standard university fee. I can still earn my basic costs while I'm studying by continuing to teach yoga as it pays quite well and I can do it in the evenings and weekends.

So it's not really about the money. I could easily teach more yoga as I've been doing it for years and have loads of contacts. But I'm a bit bored of it, the teaching not the practice and feel like doing something else. And the mrs is really supportive of me going to uni and is willing to go back to full time work while I study. But she gave up her full time job in the city to pursue her passion for baking. She's willing to do it again for a little while.

I've also tried distance learning before and find that without a structured learning environment I tend to lose focus. I also realise that a degree course is a bit more academic than a vocational one. I really do want that solid foundation and I do want to simply learn about the subject in depth.

Apart from a short 4 year stint during my twenties, I've never really had a full time job. In the sense of 9-5 and going to a place of work having vowed to myself never to work during my teens. I've managed to get away with it so far but now I fancy having a go. But it has to be something that I might enjoy.

I have considered the idea of doing a java certification with Sun and a developer friend said he'd help me out with the learning. But I want to have a chance to try out various areas of IT and programming to see where my real passion lies. My wife came away from her baking course at London South Bank with a passion for cake decorating which she would not have considered before.

The UCAS form doesn't have to be submitted until Jan 15th, so I have some more time to weigh things up a bit more.

Green Tea is where it is at. I am still gonna be pushing up those hills and flying on the track when you non-tea drinkers are long dead-and-buried.

Drink enough of it and you can live forever apparently

Fred - what do you do?

i give hand-jobs for a living, just like most people :-)

IT/investment banking consultancy.

I've also tried distance learning before and find that without a structured learning environment I tend to lose focus. I also realise that a degree course is a bit more academic than a vocational one. I really do want that solid foundation and I do want to simply learn about the subject in depth.

I think this is a very valid reason for wanting to do a degree and will impress potential universities and then employers in the future.

I'd recommend Imperial if you want to study in London. The people I've worked with who've done their Computer Science degree (which is now called Computing) all seem to be very well rounded in all aspects of computer science.

If you want any help or advice then PM me, I've worked in the software industry for the past 16 years.

This thread has inspired me.

I'm now looking at doing IIS at Birkbeck next year.

Thank you.

And yeah, I don't need to. I already am pretty much top of my game... but it's a personal thing. I really want to put right a very bad youth and correct the fact that I don't even have A levels to my name.

whats IIS?

Hey andyp & VelocityBoy and all other IT workers,

May I recap and say that it is easy to find a job that pays well or is fullfilling but hard to find both?

Also, is it a good idea to focus on open source languages & technologies? I mean, Java has been GPL'd recently. I really like the vibe of it and I kinda feel that Microsoft is Satan itself (sorry VB) but have heard very good things about C#.NET too.

Can I get away with not doing the Microsoft stuff?

lenni,

A lot of it depends on the people but I think it is possible to find a job that is well paid and is fulfilling. I've been fortunate in working for such a company for the past 8 years, although that is soon to come to an end.

Personally, I'd definitely advocate going down the open source rather than the proprietary route but then I would say that as the team I work for have just helped to instigate the largest donation to the open source world ever made (as far as we can tell).

Microsoft were the dominant player, and will remain influential for some time to come but everyone has seen what they do to a market (drive down margins for everyone but themselves essentially) so they'll never get such dominance again in any other market.

I only ever programmed on Unix/Linux so it's definitely possible to get rewarding work whilst avoiding Microsoft.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE&feature=related

Stay away from all things Microsoft. I am also beginning to feel that way about google, although the GWT is not bad.

Open Source is the only way to go I reckon. Also, there is becoming less of a boundary between front end and rear-end development. Most Web developers who are now writing back end server side code now need to be up on the latest front-end javascript technologies. Ajax and libraries such as the excellent JQuery should be on most web developers CVs

JQuery is indeed awesome. MikeC, have you gone the whole hog and used SproutCore?

http://gallery.mac.com/emily_parker#100558&bgcolor=black&view=carouseljs&sel=0

And all done in JS. No more shitty Flash that makes your CPU run amok.

On the other hand, Microsoft can't be that bad. VelocityBoy makes his money from (at least from what I can glean from Linkedn) it and he is in command of the interwebs.

whats IIS?

Intelligent Information Systems.

Think of things like the Semantic web and inferring additional meaning from the meta data. Computational intelligence for mining this new meta data, and then visualisation and surfacing techniques.

Hey andyp & VelocityBoy and all other IT workers,

May I recap and say that it is easy to find a job that pays well or is fullfilling but hard to find both?

Also, is it a good idea to focus on open source languages & technologies? I mean, Java has been GPL'd recently. I really like the vibe of it and I kinda feel that Microsoft is Satan itself (sorry VB) but have heard very good things about C#.NET too.

Can I get away with not doing the Microsoft stuff?

You should always try and do both. Pick Java and C# and understand the differences. I'd personally say picking Java and a purely functional language would be more beneficial to you.

And yes I work with MS stuff. But I also run this server and work with FOSS stuff. And my prior work has been with Java, TCL, PERL. The languages you work with come and go, don't become entrenched with any.

I wouldn't worry too much about one language over another. Programming languages come and go. When I graduated, C was the must-have skill, then it was C++, then Java etc, etc, Visual Basic was very big for a while as well. If you understand how computers work, and how OO works, then you should be able to move from one language to another.

I don't cut code any more, but I hire a lot of programmers, mostly C# and Java, but also C and Cobol. Programming languages are the easy part of hiring a developer, you can establish with a few questions and a technical test whether someone knows a language. The decider when I hire someone are things like understanding how projects work, release management, change control - stuff that university courses tend to be very light on. The other big thing is team working - there is no shortage of prima donna's in the programming world, and they can be really disruptive.

The final thing that can set you apart as a developer is testing skills. Most developers are very amateurish at testing. Understanding test strategies, phasing and techniques is far more rare than you would think.

Right, I have been reading this thread again, since I am now half-way through my course in CompSci. I am loving it and have a thoroughly good time. I'm hoping to do my summer project on machine learning.
However, I am a little bit worried about job prospects. How hard has the IT sector been hit by the depression?

Right, I have been reading this thread again, since I am now half-way through my course in CompSci. I am loving it and have a thoroughly good time. I'm hoping to do my summer project on machine learning.
However, I am a little bit worried about job prospects. How hard has the IT sector been hit by the depression?

I've got a good friend who's also study compsci and is also doing a project on machine learning. Looks pretty interesting. I get the impression that jobs are a little sparse at the moment, though there's always a few out there.

Surely the economy will have improved by the time you're graduated?

no, many companies are moving towards cost cutting exercises like virtualisation and more econimical technologies with lower power demands like blades.
modern IT kit and its associated cost has its place on the P&L making cost cuttings easier to demonstrate.
you have fewer new initiatives and a lot of health checks and consolidation.