Where the heck do I start?

[Turbonium]

Depends on your preference actually I myself being an application programmer is slightly biased towards it.But DBA has also tremendous prospect.I myself find PL-SQL/SQL to be less interesting than a pure programming language.If you prefer system administration kind of job it may be suitable to you.There are some interesting aspects like performance tuning which is very cool.

What's a pure programming language? Google keeps coming up with Pure. :|

 

[Jaydip]

What's a pure programming language? Google keeps coming up with Pure. :|

I just used the term basically an Imperative Programming language like C,C++ etc.

 

[smackababy]

The program looks decent enough. It seems to be centered around Java, which is big in web development, and has a huge market. Depending on how much time they actually spend on OO concepts and such might impact the "quality", but the program itself looks fairly standard.

If you don't mind working on web sites and are interested in programming, it will be a good starting point.

 

[Turbonium]

The program looks decent enough. It seems to be centered around Java, which is big in web development, and has a huge market. Depending on how much time they actually spend on OO concepts and such might impact the "quality", but the program itself looks fairly standard.

If you don't mind working on web sites and are interested in programming, it will be a good starting point.

I heard from another source that the job market for database application developers is bad (i.e. it's hard to find a job), at least up here in Canada.

So you're saying you disagree? I'm going to do research either way, but I'm curious to know what you (and others) think.

 

[smackababy]

I heard from another source that the job market for database application developers is bad (i.e. it's hard to find a job), at least up here in Canada.

So you're saying you disagree? I'm going to do research either way, but I'm curious to know what you (and others) think.

Well, I can't speak for Canada, but in America there is no shortage of positions for good programmers. The industry is growing, and while some stuff gets outsourced, there is still a ton of jobs here.

 

[Turbonium]

Well, I haven't done much since I last posted in this thread, mostly out of being busy, but also out of confusion as to what I should really focus on. I did almost sign up for a database program, but life got in the way, so that never happened.

I also tried getting the ball rolling with learning Python, but for whatever reason, I found it extremely difficult to even get started with the material. Perhaps it's my age (late 20s) making it harder to learn, but more importantly the fact that I have been both out of school and unemployed for over 4 years now. I used to be a very hard worker (and still am at my core), but it's just a recent lazy-streak that I'm finding very difficult to snap out of.

I'm going to try to force myself to learn Python again. The icon has been sitting on my Desktop for over 2 months now.

You majored in biology? Do you have any interesting mathematical/statistical/analytical skills?

I wish. I actually did mediocre in most facets of statistics courses I took. Most of the stuff never "clicked" for me (though I had my moments).

 

[Markbnj]

Well, I haven't done much since I last posted in this thread, mostly out of being busy, but also out of confusion as to what I should really focus on. I did almost sign up for a database program, but life got in the way, so that never happened.

I also tried getting the ball rolling with learning Python, but for whatever reason, I found it extremely difficult to even get started with the material. Perhaps it's my age (late 20s) making it harder to learn, but more importantly the fact that I have been both out of school and unemployed for over 4 years now. I used to be a very hard worker (and still am at my core), but it's just a recent lazy-streak that I'm finding very difficult to snap out of.

I'm going to try to force myself to learn Python again. The icon has been sitting on my Desktop for over 2 months now.

I wish. I actually did mediocre in most facets of statistics courses I took. Most of the stuff never "clicked" for me (though I had my moments).

It's just interest and motivation. I'm 53 and started teaching myself Python a few months back. You need to find a small project you can do that catches your interest, and then it will go a lot smoother.

 

[Turbonium]

It's just interest and motivation. I'm 53 and started teaching myself Python a few months back. You need to find a small project you can do that catches your interest, and then it will go a lot smoother.

Part of the problem is that reading through programming tutorials in particular is very difficult for me. I don't know what it is about people who write programming guides or whatnot, but they make it very confusing at times.

I mean, I'm not a novice when it comes to tech speak, but sometimes, even I find they use programming lingo far too early in a given tutorial, and assume a lot of prior knowledge with certain things. On one hand, it totally gets me interested, but on the other hand, it somehow turns me away from the stuff at the same time.

Maybe programmers are just bad teachers/writers? I don't know.

Even my rather brilliant programmer friend is fairly bad at explaining things or breaking things down, and I'm also fairly certain he's not that great at writing, especially on a whim. While I have no doubt he understands the logic and analytical side of a given problem, he just can't seem to break it down into verbal form, or doesn't care to.

I know there are exceptions, but I'm just talking about my experience with this sort of thing.

 

[smackababy]

I am not sure what you're reading, but I would recommend something like Head First: Python. It is easily readable and starts off as if you had zero knowledge of what you need to know.

But yes, programmers are generally, from my experience, bad a explaining things to people who don't have an understand of what they are talking about.

 

[Markbnj]

Part of the problem is that reading through programming tutorials in particular is very difficult for me. I don't know what it is about people who write programming guides or whatnot, but they make it very confusing at times.

I mean, I'm not a novice when it comes to tech speak, but sometimes, even I find they use programming lingo far too early in a given tutorial, and assume a lot of prior knowledge with certain things. On one hand, it totally gets me interested, but on the other hand, it somehow turns me away from the stuff at the same time.

Maybe programmers are just bad teachers/writers? I don't know.

Even my rather brilliant programmer friend is fairly bad at explaining things or breaking things down, and I'm also fairly certain he's not that great at writing, especially on a whim. While I have no doubt he understands the logic and analytical side of a given problem, he just can't seem to break it down into verbal form, or doesn't care to.

I know there are exceptions, but I'm just talking about my experience with this sort of thing.

I can't get anywhere just reading stuff. I start a project, and then I consult tutorials to figure out how to do what I know I need to do. That's a benefit of already knowing other languages. In my case I worked through the tutorial at learnpythonthehardway.com, and went from there.

 

[Jaydip]

+1 to Mark.If you start with tutorials you will get bored to death pretty quickly.I believe it is also good if you set a target for you first.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Trying to force myself never worked. I had to have motivation, or something that truly felt beneficial, as the reason to continue my hobby. I sort of went on a dry spell for about a year or two. I left off doing some basic simulations. But 3D CFD for example, takes forever to calculate a fine case a single desktop CPU.. You can get quick results on a coarse case, but those results are kind of meaningless as your code can still blow up as you make your mesh more fine or decrease the time step. Sure, when you work in a government lab you'll have access to hundreds of CPUs running in parallel, but I'm not there yet. Just doing it myself, on my own machine, wasn't very fun trying to develop and test, when the test phase could take hours to give me output (and end up being wrong).

This past month I decided to give CUDA (owning a Titan and all) a go for all of this. The first week was just painful. I went from 100% lost to maybe 95% lost. But after that I just went on a roll. What was once me waiting for 5 minutes for a calculation is now 10 seconds. Or one hour previously, now only two minutes (and I haven't even begun to really optimize block/thread allocation on the GPU). It's so much better now that I can once again develop and test on the fly. Looking into GPU supercomputing is the best thing I may have ever done with this hobby (other than just starting it some very long time ago).

 

[batmang]

Codeacademy.com, a Headfirst book in the language you're interested in, and a goal. (An application to make). Think of something you do everyday on a computer that you wish would be easier. Maybe you could automate something, make something work faster, etc.

If you don't get into programming by doing those things above... then its probably not for you. Once you get into it though... you'll want to develop things all the damn time.