Any IT majors?
Going into a bachelor of IT next year, want to get a head start as i have loads of free time, what are some things i should learn so the work/study load is lightened next year?
(not languages, as im unsure what language we will be focusing on in class, just concepts etc)
The course outline hasn't been posted for next year yet, i imagine it's close to, if not the same as last year.
still would appreciate any resources or tips
Go ask Sup Forums
Math. I'm a CS major and I can tell you everything I do is just another way of doing math. Learn it
I've been working in the industry for about 15 years... I'm geriatric by technology standards.
AMA op.
Certs get your foot in the door. Degree's get you more money after 7-10 years. Think about what you want to do. Write that shit down. Research any applicable certs. Get them. See if you can volunteer or even work for a local company doing it. Thats your entry level experience for when you go looking for a job.
I would study the objectives for the Comptia IT fundamentals certification.
Certs will get you a job in a company with a HR department that doesn't understand or value what you do.
key being still gets a job. which makes money. then you can look for a job while you have a job.
I have a high school education and make good money doing IT. Just have certs and experience.
Helpdesk on your resume isn't gonna get you a real job unless the dinosaur babysitting the mainframe gets a pocketwatch.
Did you do a degree?
What are some of the most useful skills i could learn?
is it a good industry to go into, pay, job opportunity's etc ?
Get A+, CCNA, CCDA, MCSE, MCSA, Server+ and Security+
Back when I went to college, it was popular to drop out before you graduated. The companies were looking for cowboys back then. I dropped out my Junior year. Honestly, I regret doing it.
I've been programming my whole life, and that is my primary skill.
I started as a Linux server admin, moved into Windows, finally got a gig programming, ended up being a private contractor for a few of years, but taxes were a pain, so I went back to regular work, and into network engineering, and now I'm back to programming, for the ISP that I did networking for.
In my opinion, the greatest skill you can learn is how to read documentation. Learn to read it, learn to forget it when you are ready to move on. You have too many things to remember, so accept that you can't remember them all. Learn how to find the answers you need quickly.
Don't do it for the money. It's not worth the money. You can make great money doing it, but it's not worth the money. At times, it's soul crushing work. At times, it consumes your life and leaves you empty.
I do it because I like my job. I'm underpaid and underappreciated, but I know the value of my work, and I take pride in it's quality.
learn how to do this
Depends what you want to focus on under the very broad IT umbrella.
Programming patterns are good to learn, as the come in handy all the time. As someone else suggested math also comes in handy. In particular the areas discrete mathematics covers will be useful.
If you enjoy math the hardest units (and the ones I learnt the most in) were game related units where we designed our own engines and tools for developing games.
AI is booming so learning about some of the theory behind it would be helpful. Check out artificial neural networks, expert systems, fuzzy logic, and evolutionary computation. Michael Negnevitsky's book "Artificial Intelligence A Guide To Intelligent Systems" might be useful. It goes over a lot of the theory and math without actually doing any programming.
Thanks user, i think working with ai would be cool.
i dont really know what i want to do in IT, programmer would be cool though, i would prefer to work around hardware though
Do what you love, and trick someone into paying you to do it.
Tell us what you actually wanna do, and we'll tell you what fiends you should look into.
Honestly if you practice one language such as C# c++ PHP or python a lot of languages have the same general concept so if you learn one really well the others will come easy
Then you'd have to become a mechanical or electrical engineer. IT is generally going to be all software.
not OP here, CS has interested me since my cousin taught me how to make a twitter bot using java
what if i fucking hate math, am i fucked? can i learn to love it somehow? I'm willing to, i've seen the paychecks
No problem, I enjoyed my AI units and would recommend. It can get a bit dry sometimes though.
What sort of hardware do you want to work around? You could design your own integrated circuits etc, but then you will need to learn about electricity applied in electronics as well.
Someone I know is doing a computer science / electrical engineering double major and he's right into hardware stuff.
Some places offer courses in mechatronics, which will expose you to multiple different fields (not just IT). I'd recommend checking out the wikipedia page for mechatronics and see what sort of applications it has.
If I could do it again, I'd probably try for some sort of mechatronics course myself.
This is pretty accurate. Once you learn how to program, learning a new language is pretty easy.
There isn't a huge vocabulary involved in computer programming, translating from one to another doesn't take a huge leap.
Learn good programming patterns, learn how to read documentation, and you will be good.
Do not get A+, Server+ or Security+. Complete waste of time. And don't listen to this complete amateur.
Either b8, or complete fool.
Depends what kind of CS. I research machine learning and optimization so I literally do math all day. If you research or work in another subfield could be no math at all. For example just pure software engineering really you just need to understand basic big oh of various algorithms and how to calculate it etc and you're set on math.
You don't have to be a math god to make cool stuff. There are plenty of readily available libraries (for nearly all languages) other people have made that will handle a lot of the hard math for you.
A+ is such an outdated cert. I don't even think you can get a job on the Geek Squad with an A+ cert.
I mean, programming would be fun, i have limited knowledge in c#, but i really enjoyed my time with it.
I enjoy building rigs and shit in my spare time, also diagnosing issues, but i know thats badly paid.
just something that is well paid and has decent job opportunity's
"Building rigs" is not gonna be a very interesting job, unless you can get an EE degree where you develop at component level.
The closest I can give you to "Building Rigs" is babysitting racks at a server farm.
Desktop support pay is shit. It is mind numbing work and you will hate every single computer user ever as you realize more and more that the average user is fucking stupid. They aren't though... you just never have to fix regular user's computers, you just have to fix stupid and you will become a bitter shell of a man.