|
... and should I even bother? Thanks to a lucky break securing connections during an internship in High School, I sort of launched myself into doing web development work with a single organization. I've been at it for almost 7 years. The organization I work with has pretty low standards, in my opinion, which means I've managed to work at this stuff long enough to call it a career despite no formal training. I'm almost entirely self-taught, benefiting from the grace, expertise, and patience of some incredible mentors in the workplace. The problem is that as I try to break away from web development, or basically any work that is slightly more complex than my easy job, I find that I don't really know what I'm doing! This isn't a shock to me, I always believed I was probably coasting, but with poor basic math skills and no formal education beyond high school, I think I've simply hit the limit of what I can do from self-teaching. I feel that lack of education is seriously handicapping me here. One problem is I can't tell for sure if that's true. From what I read, it's really common to feel out of your depth as an "imposter" in programming. Another couple of problems are time and money. I'm building up my savings, so in theory I could get to a point where I could pay for school. But I'll never save up enough money to live off while schooling. So that leaves either going to school after work or subsisting on loans. Going after work might have merit, I'm not sure. That's definitely a level of dedication I've never shown anything in my life before, but if that's what it takes I guess I can't complain. I live in an isolated area, so this would have to be online schooling. I'm not really seeing much in the way of Computer Science degrees online, and what is available reasonably requires that I have some other credits in fundamental or general classes beforehand. I don't have a lot of confidence in this route, but I don't really have any better ideas. The loan thing is like, bonkers to me. It seems like every week I'm hearing another horror story about someone getting loans for school, only to find no benefit from it in their career. So now they're saddled with some notoriously bad debt and no way to pay it off. In my case, I'm wondering if I wouldn't just be putting a bunch of time and taking on a bunch of debt only to not even get an advantage that matches up to the fact that I've been working in the industry, albeit poorly, for 7 years. I mean, does it even make sense to get a degree at this point? I feel like I have so much to learn, but it's hard to tell if school is really the place I should be learning it at this juncture, particularly with the cost and time investment associated. College, as a concept, has always been an overwhelming black box to me. I just remember one day in sophomore year in high school being told, without warning, that if I wasn't already applying for schools and getting scholarships, I had already hosed myself beyond belief. I had no plan and it was only thanks to landing that internship and making a good impression that ultimately, I didn't need one. I don't understand the processes that lead to getting an education and I can't tell a good program or good advice from a con.
|
#
¿
May 2, 2017 00:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:24 |
|
|
Grumpwagon posted:What's your goal? Web dev is a huge, well paid field right now (though granted, it's not for everyone. If you hate it, I'm not going to try and keep you there). What are you trying to do instead? What triggered this crisis of confidence? In truth I'd like to expand into games programming, which is a lot more math intensive. My early study has ended up referring to a lot of concepts I just don't understand, to the point where I feel like I could spend my entire life just googling the necessary terminology to proceed. I wouldn't really consider it a bad life I stuck with web development, but even so my suspicion is that the moment I need to work elsewhere, I'm going to find that I don't have the chops to work a "real" job. To be honest, though, that probably has more to do with the kind of backwards environment I work in than whether or not I went to school. I'm a .Net developer. To be honest, I think I'm pretty handy with C# and SQL. There's always more to learn, but I've had the privilege of focusing on these tools and I've come a long way. When in doubt, I pretty much rely on Google, Stack Overflow, and a random smattering of O'Reilly books at my disposal. I also have smart colleagues willing to share their expertise, even if collectively we seem to be stuck a decade or two in the past.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2017 16:47
|
|
|
Thanks for the advice everyone. Just to be clear, and this is somewhat mercenary, but is there not much chance that a bachelor's degree might give me a significant advantage in pursuing work (web dev or otherwise) in the future, even with 6+ years of professional experience? I realize that's a separate question from whether or not I'll learn anything of value, but it's kind of a big part of the college equation.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2017 18:45
|
|
|
For what it's worth, I've been diving in to Unity and having a fair amount of success. I wouldn't have made it as a self-taught developer, even in my current environment, if I didn't have the willingness to step into new things with nothing but a copy of Visual Studio and access to Google. It's only when I started peering into more technical stuff (working on writing my own shaders being the most immediate example) that my head starts to spin and I wonder if I skipped a fundamental step in my education.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2017 22:59
|
|
|
Alright, that makes a lot of sense. There's no reason I can't pursue individual online courses and, of course, keep on advancing my skills through practice.
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2017 04:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:24 |
|
|
There's a pretty big chance my bread-and-butter professional work will always be web development, or something similar, but pursuing more complicated work on my spare time makes me feel like I'm investing in myself in a meaningful way. The flip side is that when I see programming concepts that are alien to me, I kind of freak out and wonder if I've been coasting just a bit too long on the shallow end of the programming pool.
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2017 19:24
|
|