So I figured I would create an account on this website to try to get an accurate jumping off point.
So I'm 42. Largely unhappy doing things I don't like in a non-programming context. So. If I'm being entirely honest I wanted to be a programmer since junior year (grade 10 in the US) in high school.
That never happened. Back in my day my shitty 2nd tier state school in a second class state. (name witheld to protect the guilty) basically was so terri-bad it was not something that was planning on getting me to work on something "in the real world".
I thought I was over this feeling. I wasted years of my life being forced to learn (poorly) Pascal, C++, and a single year of Java. Most of that was entirely useless because it was unapplicable to do anything important. Never used to do something more important. Isolated, and of course poorly taught.
"teaching yourself" isn't my jam. You can't figure out what you don't know if you are the one doing the judging.
My plan is to just do my government job in the national government until I die there. And yes that is doable. We have people up through their 90's in walkers coming in every day so that's my default plan.
I just don't want to have any regrets and this is a big one.
Apparently actual programmers who aren't just writing toy examples of nonsense for apple polishing ideologues apparently have to 1. figure out how to do something they are voulentold to do, with tools they are voulentold to use, for "reasons". 2. random fix/figure out/adjust things. Again would require some kind of magical system to do that. You can't do that in isolation. 3. Apparently do things that are "important" or "useful" but all the instruction is literally aimed at doing stupid shit, then practicing the stupid shit 50,000 times, getting graded and then magically using your ability to do stupid shit in something important which you would be ill-prepared for.
I thought I was done caring about this part of my life until I met an actual programmer (okay, I'm intensely socially isolated so that's not as big a deal as you would think). I instantly got Jealous(tm) again.
And once again when I idly inquired how this magic turn of events happened I got told an improbable story about how their career "just happened".
Apparently they randomly fix problems with some kind of Java program for financial institutions that they pay these people to administer like a specialized software as a service thing.
Literally there is no book, training program, or process I can think of that would be able to specialize in specialized stuff.
I have no idea what language to pick any more. I looked and the current advanced placement test for computer science has defaulted to Java, so I guess that's my plan?
Basically I want some kind of accurate simulator for what any kind of future randomness would be like... I don't know enough to know what I don't know. All I know of the process is to "randomly do projects that will impress people" (I have zero ideas what those would be). I know it's not "practice doing exercises and then sign up to become a kung fu assassin" like in the past.
Seems like it would be some kind of simulator where you would get told to do something boring, using tools you don't know about in wacky combinations and try to figure out insanity that someone else did and fix it etc. These are not things that I've seen taught.
Top comments (0)