Not
everyone can afford to spend years in college before beginning their
programming career. You can gain knowledge of programming from
experienced developers or teach yourself computer programming using
reasonably priced textbooks, training courses and or coaching programs.
Becoming a computer programmer by going to college to study computer
science is a wise choice, but in this article I will show you that you
can gain the same knowledge without having to invest a fortune in a
college education.
Do I Need a College Degree To Get a Programming Job?
Programmers have the skill set
of being organized, creative, persistent, analytical, paying attention
to detail, communicating effectively, thinking logically, and using
deductive reasoning. If you have some of those skills then you are
already on your way to becoming a computer programmer. Do you love
solving problems or like to know how things work? You may already have
the mind set of a computer programmer already and you didn’t know it.
Assuming that you have some of that mindset, let’s look at how you can
translate that into a computer programming job. It’s really not that
difficult because you can get hired in today’s programming job market
without a college degree. This is because when it comes to programming,
employers put more emphasis on your ability to write good quality code
than your educational credentials. Many programmers have taken advantage
of this to forgo college and focus on developing their programming
skills to the best of their ability. This is why the term practice makes
perfect is true in software development careers. You see, you need lots
of practice in order to write good quality code that employers are
interested in paying for. When I started learning programming more than a
decade ago, I didn’t go out immediately and invest money on development
tools, instead I downloaded free compliers and IDE’s (Integrated
Development Environment) and you can too! There are free editions of
Visual Basic.Net, C#, C++ and SQL Server to get you going in your
programming career. Next, put the effort into writing useful software or
web applications. You will learn a lot about design, adding software
features, taking requests from users, business analysis, project
management, requirements analysis, coding and debugging that way.
Do You Have What Companies Are Searching For?
So, you have prepared a resume,
sent it over to hiring managers and are now getting ready for your
technical interviews. Have you thought about what those employers are
looking for? It’s essential to your programming career to be able to
answer that question. In the programming job market, employers want to
see that you can apply your skills to real business problems. They are
looking for competent software development skills and to see if you can
write good maintainable code.
Learn a Top Paying Computer Programming Skill and Get a Tech Job Easily
In any job market, no matter
what type of job you are trying to get, having knowledge and experience
with a particular skill can get you a job relating to that skill.
Programming is not any different, if you have working knowledge of
programming and experience programming you can get a job programming.
Knowledge of programming can be gained from many sources. College is the
first source that comes to mind, but the alternatives are to learn
programming on your own or from a subject matter expert. Now days, you
can read up on just about anything on the internet and it’s free; but
you should probably invest in many different programming books that go
into more detail so you can advance your skill level. Programming
experience doesn’t strictly have to be from a previous job you have had.
You can gain experience working with software development tools or from
hands on training.
How to Begin a Software Development Career after High School?
You can get a programming job
without a college degree and here’s how. You will need to communicate
your programming knowledge and development experience. Knowledge and
experience is the key. Show your prospective employer that you have just
as much knowledge as the guy who did go to college and go into the
specifics about the applications you have built using software
development tools. Talk about the problems you ran into when building an
application and how you solved the problems. Do all that you can to
show your prospective employer that even without a college degree you
are an asset to anyone who hires you!