Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!gegeweb.org!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx04.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: markspace <-@.> Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Newbie needing advice Date: Thu, 03 May 2012 09:19:47 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 30 Message-ID: References: <7fb27b6b-a974-49ea-b252-c043cfd81fc4@z17g2000yqf.googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 16:19:50 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="zgW2MA4sFrKxp4jMohs6RQ"; logging-data="1851"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/xC6F5PVYx0Pdg5wkQ+LuTx26Dcq7I1pE=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20120428 Thunderbird/12.0.1 In-Reply-To: <7fb27b6b-a974-49ea-b252-c043cfd81fc4@z17g2000yqf.googlegroups.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:0XPLVD3WaTwtwDDvjcVc+P0j9RE= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:14191 On 5/3/2012 8:55 AM, zack ballard wrote: > Greetings, > > So, I am a complete newb when it comes to programming and am wanting > to learn. My advice: go to school. You aren't going to get any serious work, or learning, done trying to learn on your. Learning on own is going to be difficult, and won't be taken seriously by an employer. If a university is out of the question, consider a junior college or trade school. If I personally had to hire someone, I'd consider hiring someone with a 2 year degree or the first 2 years of college coursework at a junior college before I'd hire someone who was self-taught. If you don't have a related degree (math, science, etc.) then "I learned it myself" is going to be a non-starter; I simply wouldn't hire anyone with no degree at all. That said, sure, Java is an acceptable language to start learning. It's practical and used in the workplace, as well as being not too baroque for a new student. Other acceptable choices might be C#, Ruby, Python, C, or probably a few more I'm unaware of.