On 2022-08-21 17:50, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
On Sun, 2022-08-21 at 07:08 -0700, [email protected] wrote:
I think the Universities
will dry up.
I H O P E S O !
M E T O O ! ! !
Degree discrimination really frosts my petunias. Very little of the
programming I've
done or seen done couldn't be done by a fairly bright person, perhaps
with 3 or 4
programming courses in junior college. To me, the higher education
system is class
warfare, plain and simple. And I have a BSEE degree.
I would agree, especially PHP. I think some make PHP more difficult
than it needs to be.
I first looked at college in 1978 and that year it was $275 a semester
at the University of Arizona. I ended up going to junior college and
it
was $100 my first semester the spring of 1979.
I took programming and business courses at Santa Monica Community
College, for
$20/course. My income tripled, so both the state of California and I
laughed all the
way to the bank.
Nice!!
When I was first exposed to programming in 1983 a bachelor's degree
was
required to be a programmer. I think that requirement is long gone. I
think employers are looking for just skills.
1983 was the tail end of the glass house, IBM Mainframe era, which was
almost a
monopsany. By 1985, with DBASE, Turbo Pascal, and the rise of
affordable 286's,
the Kitchen Table Programmer made his or her move, running circles
around the
mainframe programmers on minis or micros.
Interesting observation. I started programming on dBaseII in 1986. A
manager gave me an Otrona Attache portable computer
https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=1227 telling me
I was the only one who had any computer experience. At that time I was
working on an Associates degree in programming.
In 1986 I bought a Commodore 64 and the next year I bought an 8088
garage clone that has 2 360M floppies and 640K of RAM. A couple years
later I got a Seagate ST-225 hard drive, which as I recall, was all of
20MB and cost somewhere around $300.
I followed the dBase clones all the way to 2000.
I was exposed to Turbo Pascal in junior college and at the university.
But still, many employers screen out the
non-degreed. They claim it's because the graduate at least proved
he/she could
complete something. But all too often, what a college degree proves is
you didn't
have to spend all your time supporting your family as a kid. By the
way, 1984 was
when I busted into professional programming: Whitesmith Pascal on a
PDP11/23 running
TSX multitasking over RT/11. The next year I started professional
programming in C.
Nice!!
I think self study is big today.
Huge. And also these inexpensive online courses.
And if the economy does crash I'm
thinking that the next generation of programmers will be self thought
and might just be more inclined to be using Linux.
LOL, depends on the severity of the crash. If it's too bad the guy
knowing how to
grow crops, sanitize water, and buy/sell stuff will be on top.
I've heard that. Don't think I'll become a farmer in my old age....
But yeah, if it's
only like 1982 or 2008-2009, and there aren't enough rich kids to fill
the
programming positions and they don't import hordes of H1-B's, then
yeah, self taught
will be more of a thing. By the way, it's already doable: I've seen
folks do it here
in Orlando.
Incidentally, I've seen a formula used, time and time again, for
self-taught
programmers to succeed hugely:
1) Learn the technology to a level of plausible expertise.
2) Network, network, network.
3) Get yourself installed as a presenter at multiple
shows/clubs/groups.
4) Network, network, network.
5) Lowball your way into getting your first client.
6) Network, network, network.
7) Whipsaw multiple clients to raise your rates.
8) Network, network, network.
9) Rinse, lather, repeat.
SteveT
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