Need some advice... (college)

[Jonathan5]

Oh cool. The difficulty is kind of intimating. I'd like to hear more about how your course in CS has been going. Sounds like your for sure when you said you were choosing Networking, could you explain a little bit more why your so for sure? I think I might continue programming just as a hobby then.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I know someone who's a programmer, and all he does is sit at a desk writing, testing, and rewriting code to control a parking lot ticket system. He gets paid a **** of a lot for it, but it's dead boring. Don't get me wrong, programming is an extremely useful skill to have, I just wouldn't choose it as a job.

I'd say the hardest part of networking is the very fundamentals. Once you got that down, the rest is pretty easy. The course I'm doing is the "Diploma of Electrotechnology (Computer Systems)" to be exact. The networking part of it is a CISCO course, check out the CCNA qualification if you want more info on that. If you want to do networking, I'd recommend doing the CCNA, and if you really wanted to, continue on to the CCNP.
anyway, that's just my opinion ultimately you should just choose something you'll enjoy, and it wouldn't hurt if you were getting paid for it either

 

[mikesgroovin]

I'm a Network Architect/Engineer by trade and by career path. I also find that programming or simply put, a programming hobby can be quite rewarding. For instance, I've been studying networking since 10base was a solution (nevermind a standard...LOL) but I've also been reading and practicing in PASCAL (If you know what that is... then you're on par... not going to explain) at the same time. PASCAL moved onto BASIC/C/et cetera/et cetera.

Ok, that is all boring (main point was that I've been reading about both concurrently).

Fast forward to the present. I'm working for a company that needs a networking solution planned/developed/deployed on a large WAN to a country 1/2 way across the globe. Well, the networking I got down. And with PERL, I was able to plan it out/develop (small scale... we aren't talking writing code for a full scale game here LOL) and then deploy over the WAN with the least amount of downtime due to the propagation methods that I've learned. (you can learn to cheat routing hops ) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is. Learn what fancies YOU ... not what some company or some paycheck dictates. Learn what you find F U N!!! The rest will fall into place. Life is too short to learn crap that you don't find rewarding.

 

[Jonathan5]

I thank you both for the replies. Yes, I definitely don't want to work a boring job. I figure programming will be much more fun if I do it as a hobby, but I have to do something. I'll look more into Networking to get a better understanding of it. I'm still so unsure of many things, but again, thank you for your replies. I made the same thread over at Gamedev and got two replies that told me google was my friend.

 

[Prototype]

What kind of math do you need to know? I would like to know how much they pay for programming, repair, graphics, ect...

 

[jaeusm]

What kind of math do you need to know?

For computer science: calculus (2-3 courses), discrete math (1-2 courses), calculus-based statistics (1-2 courses), and linear algebra (1 course, typically). Some universities will also require differential equations, as well.

 

[mikesgroovin]

What kind of math do you need to know? I would like to know how much they pay for programming, repair, graphics, ect...

It's going to vary based on the company that you work for and the experience that you have. Just speaking for the programming aspect: There are many levels and aspects of programming, all with different pay scales. But, an entry level developer would begin somewhere around the 55k-65k range. I am only speaking from the experience gained from the company that I currently work for though.

 

[Jonathan5]

I'm thinking about doing Web Design, HTML seems easy enough.