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IT People. How often do you program?

zokudu

zokudu

Diamond Member
I'm 2 and a half years into an Information Systems degree and I am god awful at programming anything. I'm slogging through my last programming course and having an awful time of it. I always feel so inept in these classes.

I love the other parts or IT like networking and databases and such like that but slap me in front of an IDE and tell me to make an elegant solution and I just blank. I think its a bit too late to change my major but I wanted to know in the real world as an IT person do you use advanced programming on an everyday basis?

If it is a major part of the profession I'll probably end up graduating with my degree and finding work in another field but I'm really getting bummed out about this class.
 
What he said. However, knowing how to script some can be a plus, even if it's just simple batch scripting. You'd be amazed how many people in IT can't even do that. It can save you a lot of time.
 
There are plenty of areas of IT where programming is done very little. In my position at most I am changing our logon script. That is about as much programming as I get to do.

I am a sys\network admin.
 
It really depends on your job. "IT" is way too broad. I'm the "IT guy" for a radiology lab. In addition to all the systems administration, I do a ton of batch scripting, a fair amount of java and web programming, and a small bit of sql scripting.

I don't think most of the folks in the proper IT dept. do much programming. Many do script though.
 
Hate programming but i do see a lot of jobs requesting some scripting. as much as I hate it, wrote a few scripts over the weekend to copy crap from production to nas backup using robocopy, generate log file and email it
 
ImpulsE69 said:
What he said. However, knowing how to script some can be a plus, even if it's just simple batch scripting. You'd be amazed how many people in IT can't even do that. It can save you a lot of time.
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I'm alright with some things in programming its coming up with mathematical ways of doing things that I have the issue with. Like this week we have to write a CLI program to play Hangman but we aren't allowed to use arrays. I know how to do this with the array just fine but without it I'm having tons of trouble figuring out how to rebuild a String to display to the user after they guess a letter.

I just don't think in logical terms like that.
 
I'm a system admin (systems architect) and I do a lot of programming. I wouldn't be able to really do my job if I wasn't writing scripts and applications to do my job.
 
Are you going to a standard 4-year school? I am in IT for over a decade now and I do no programming. I run some scripts but that is it. Basically IT from my experience has a couple of different tracks. For doing work on Servers, Network the best thing to get is certification. If I where you I would hold your nose and get the 4-year degree. However during your senior year look at picking up some certifications.
 
Brovane said:
Are you going to a standard 4-year school? I am in IT for over a decade now and I do no programming. I run some scripts but that is it. Basically IT from my experience has a couple of different tracks. For doing work on Servers, Network the best thing to get is certification. If I where you I would hold your nose and get the 4-year degree. However during your senior year look at picking up some certifications.
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I spent 2 years at community college and now I'm finishing my 4 year degree at a regular 4 year school.
 
i wouldn't be surprised if it varies mostly on the size of the Corp. / IT dept

i would guess that in larger Corp. where duties are more clearly defined/siloed, then my comment of ' you won't if you aren't a developer' is common

i work in a large corp

if you work in a smaller company where duties are more blended, in a smaller IT dept this is likely more common, then you might get asked to do all kinds of specialties, and everyone in the IT dept is more likely to be 'jack of all trades' and have to figure out how to do whatever needs to be done
 
Don't worry about that. The stuff they give you in school is much more difficult than real world applications. The great thing about programming in the real world is that you'll usually have someone around to guide you with your solutions. I too have an MIS degree, but I work as a programmer. I support many different systems and work in several languages, but it isn't too bad.

FWIW, my freshman year I told my CS teacher I didn't want to be a code monkey. Look at where I am now...ha.
 
Genx87 said:
There are plenty of areas of IT where programming is done very little. In my position at most I am changing our logon script. That is about as much programming as I get to do.

I am a sys\network admin.
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Same here. I have written maybe half dozen scripts over 7 years. I have familarized myself with powershell, which I use those commands in exchange. But I have used the same book to help me with vbscript since 2001, lol.

Network admin
 
im a software dev and i consider 'IT people' to be the guys who get me my hardware, install stuff i need, etc. basically the people that can help make my job easier.

although software dev is in the IT field, i never really considered myself an IT person like I do other IT people.
 
Just a related tangent to the discussion (since most have already heard that you won't do much, if any programming), I've decided that not everyone can handle the logic involved with programming. I teach some really simple programming skills in a pre-calculus class. At one extreme, I had a student who never passed a single test all year program circles around the rest of the class. I gave them a simple project and 4 classes to do it; he/she was done in 20 minutes. At the other end, I had a student with a high 90's average who just didn't get it... at all. I tried to give as many hints as possible, but it was no use. "Okay, now you need to have the computer print out what the total is."
print(whatthetotalis)
"You could keep a running tally of all your y-values."
total= add up all the y values

He/she couldn't even comprehend how a simple loop to add up all the values of the integers from 1 through 10 worked, let alone have a prayer of writing a program to find the left endpoint, right endpoint, midpoint approximations of the area under a curve, as well as Simpson's method of approximation.
 
zokudu said:
I'm 2 and a half years into an Information Systems degree and I am god awful at programming anything.
Click to expand...

So are most professional programmers, so fear not.

Still, unless you're hired as a developer, you won't be programming. The occasional script is about as close as you'll ever get.
 
Never. I'm a consultant who works with VMware, EMC, and Cisco UCS. Aside from scripting with Powershell or BASH, I don't do anything that could be considered programming.
 
DrPizza said:
... not everyone can handle the logic involved with programming. I teach some really simple programming skills in a pre-calculus class. At one extreme, I had a student who never passed a single test all year program circles around the rest of the class. I gave them a simple project and 4 classes to do it; he/she was done in 20 minutes. At the other end, I had a student with a high 90's average who just didn't get it... at all.
Click to expand...

this is VERY true, i can't do any maths higher than algebra, but i have the 'logic gene' or whatever and have been learning/doing programming for 30 years

not that i am a programmer, i consider myself an engineer or whatever you call someone that can figure out stuff or what kind of a program can be used in a business situation to solve a business problem with poorly defined 'requirements' :sneaky:
 
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