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Just stumbled across your blog post. You’re right, there are very few kids like yourself these days getting into computer programming early on and turning it into their career. In times gone by there certainly were many more who skipped University entirely and jumped straight into the job (myself included!) and there is certainly nothing wrong with that! It certainly beats the majority of students who see IT is simply a career path.

If you’re not going to University one piece of worthwhile advice is to make sure you train yourself up on the more boring aspects of programming that you would have learnt on an Undergrad course; such as UML, IT project lifecycles etc and knowing Java is always handy. You also might be interested in looking at the MCSD certification track which can be completed pretty quickly and backs up your self taught training with qualifications that employers recognise.

Anyway – well done, and I hope you have a long, enjoyable career and never lose your passion for computing!

Steve

Universities don’t teach computing students what they need in the real-world, they teach the science bits&bytes which in reality very few students will actually be working with on a day-to-day basis. There was no teaching how to build highly scalable solutions, no teaching the importance of writing clean/maintainable code, no teaching how and why to test your code.

I lived with a guy who was doing a 2 year course at Reading College (now TVU) in Computing. He was learning how to design and write business applications. But because it wasn’t a degree he found it hard to get a job. Yet to me he had more experience in what he would actually be doing in a day-to-day basis in the job than someone who had done Computer Science at University.

It’s depressing how the majority of companies think you must have a degree, and because you have a good degree you will be good at the role, it’s complete rubbish IMO. They can’t distinguish between the passionate guys/girls (who may not have gone to the top universities) from the academic “i know how to write a complex algorithm yet ask me to write a maintainable solution that is 90+% of systems and I couldn’t and don’t have the interest in doing so, i want to write complex algorithms noone understands”

I’d much rather work with a bunch of passionate self learners who are interested in continual improvement than someone who has a degree from a top university who then stops and rides the career ladder (you have n-years experience that makes you “job title x” whether you deserve it or not).

Bit of a rant but thats my take on things

Self learning does has its downsides. A good mentor saves you a lot of time as you are travelling into the unknown. I find the unstructured nature sometimes leads me down the wrong path. So I’ve gone to uni to find something with a bit more structure. The fantastic thing about that is that you get breadth. You are asked to study in areas that are at the bounds of your circle of interest. I also find in self-learning that I learn just enough to get past the problem. Sometimes with structured learning you are asked to have a deeper understanding.

Should you go to uni? I don’t think it matters unless you want to? The key thing is I think is that you have the drive to improve. Be confident in your skills but be humble in the knowledge that there is much to learn. This is the path to true enlightenment grasshopper.

I had a permanent job when I was 17 as well, I had to go to the university with this concurrent work. It was hard…But I can’t say that I got nothing out of the CS education. It has a lot of cons, I won’t repeat them, but systematic learning is a real added value. The main reason for this is, if you learn how to learn systematically and embrace it – you can do it for all the time and for everything. If you do it only with the motivation – when you loose your motivation, it is going to go away.

Since this is a professional world, and hence, we are doing a lot of boring work and fun work in a same day. The university is the second best body that teach you how to deal with the boring stuff. The first one is compulsory military service, huh.

Anyway, best of luck in your quest and I am sure brilliant minds like you will keep increasing within the maturity of our sector.

Sidar

Over the years since I have never regretted not going to uni. For me, I prefer to learn on my own schedule rather than adhering to a prescribed course.

Personally I’ve found being involved in open source projects a particular benefit. Not only does this demonstrate to potential employers a willingness to learn and a passion for development, but it has also helped me become a better developer by being exposed to the code of so many talented developers.

Have to say I think you are doing it the right way.

I did go to university, got a degree, and the most useful things I got out of it were formal OOP training in C++ (still useful now I sit in C#), and a years work placement at an IT company that wouldn’t have touched me otherwise. That was 16 years ago.

Since then, self training has been the way to go, wherever possible. There’s various DDD events, which offer great looks at various technologies, and if you feel the need to be certified, MS Certifications are £80 for the exam. I’ve done 14 of them over the past 10 years, and most were self taught. Getting them approved by the company hasn’t really been an issue as it helps maintain our MS Partnership, which is a plus anyway…

Great post, good luck, and hope to see you at some Dev events soon.

Nick