IT course - what to study

[jaredwb]

Thinking of a change of career and have been looking at getting into IT (kerching). I have heard that learning Java would give me good employment opportunities. Anyone recommend any places to study? All I can find on the web is IAC - but I have heard that they are not too good.

Hi Churchill....

I own a staffing company and work with 8 Fortune 100 software and tech companies.

I would strongly suggest taking open platform courses in Unix and Linux.

From a language side...JAVA all the way. C++ and C# are standard now and you can't go wrong learning them...but most new companies and products are being developed in JAVA on Unix/Linux.

Also, software and network security are VERY hot! CISSP is a hot certification.

Happy to chat more if you drop me a private message.

 

[JonM]

Hey what's up Churchill,

As others have mentioned, it probably depends on the type of work you want to seek.

I'm a user interface designer, and I've been working with and working on internet startups for the last 12 years. I have quite a bit of experience working with development teams and seeing the various ups and downs of programming technologies.

About 7 to 8 years ago we did a lot with Java, but amongst the startups I presently know, I haven't heard it come up in ages. It's obviously more of an enterprise technology.

Python seems to be making a comeback. Mainly because of Google. All the cool kids on to the next thing I know are learning Django. A framework for Python that operates similarly to Rails, the framework for Ruby.

For the last three or four years we've been developing most of our web applications in Ruby. It's attractiveness is the speed of development and the low cost of change. It's challenge and drawback is scalability.

The startup I'm presently working on is developing our web product in Ruby and utilizing Amazon's cloud service.

Also, another language you should know if you're building web applications is PHP. It's extremely useful.

Lastly, though it has a steep learning curve, learning Objective C (the language of native iPhone apps) is a great asset to have as well, and will unlock a lot of employment opportunities.

I hope that helps.

I'll be arriving in BA from NYC on January 6th and staying for two months. If there are any other geeks or startuppers floating around BA then I'd love to connect.

Cheers everybody.

 

[clooz]

Hi Jon,

enable the PM feature, and send me a message when you arrive. We can trade startup stories,

Allan

 

[igor]

If you want to make a career in a big company as a developer then you've got to learn either Java or .Net.
If you are planning to work on your own projects, then it is comes down to PHP, Python, Ruby (on Rails) and Perl (in this particular order).

Find yourself a programming book for an absolute beginner on the internet. To grasp general programming concepts the language itself is not so important. Java or Python may be good choices.

If you can concentrate and have strong motivation reading books would be better, in my opinion, than going to courses.
To get some initial experience you can write your own program or contribute to some open source project.

 

[Johnno]

I haven't been in IT for years so my advice will be pretty rusty - but taking on board the stuff you need for web site development and writing weblications/etc. to me would make a lot of sense - and also perhaps specialising down the track in something like programming apps for Android - to me the web is here to stay for a very long time - and so is Android (well - thats my hunch anyway

Having said that, I worked in IT for years and most of my work was in either customer support or sales/marketing - these are both areas to look at because you can effectively ''hop straight in'' to some extent considering you have reasonable computer literacy and you have some sort of experience in sales/marketing... Just a thought...

John.

PS Bad hangover today - so hope the above actually makes sense and is of some benefit

 

[JonM]

Hi Jon,

enable the PM feature, and send me a message when you arrive. We can trade startup stories,

Allan

Hey Allan, I just enabled it.

I'm late in getting to Ba. I arrive next Thursday.

 

[Roxana]

Universidad Tecnologica Nacional offers good courses for free. It is one block from Avenida Cordoba and Medrano street. They start with the inscription to the classes in February. i think you need to have an student visa and DNI to take classes there.