The main reason that online courses and certifications are so popular is that they’re cheaper than teaching in a classroom. You can organize your study schedule in an intelligent way and finish it a lot faster (and cheaper) than through a classroom. It’s definitely easier to learn to program using an instructor-led training program or doing online programming tutorials (unless you’re serious about a career in a computer programming language, of course).
If you’re already a professional computer programmer, you probably already have some idea of what computer programming tasks mean, like clicking a mouse, entering a character into a text entry program, or a database program. These usually involve tasks that look something like this:
- Typing
- Data entry
- Bookkeeping
- Connecting the computer to a printer or scanning module.
Generally, when people talk about “computer programming”, they mean exactly what you’ve listed as tasks. It’s rare that you’ll find any real-world application of these techniques. But the basic concepts are essential to program; understanding the ” foundations of programming ” is essential for another programmer isn’t going to help you parlay your knowledge into a satisfying career.
I’ll briefly talk about each of these skills (somewhat broken down into general categories).
- Typing
As an initial step, you should learn to type at least some of the time. Even ten to fifty hours of daily typing should be better than most people can type at a decent speed. To improve this skill, either learn keyboard ergonomics and find a typing instructor to train you with the use of an actual typing machine. You’ll have to submit a few score reports to your instructor to test your progress.
- Data Entry
Data Entry (or more specifically, data mining) is often mistakenly thought of as a programmer’s helper. But it’s a fundamentally different skill set: a mechanical- Procedural (or MAB) programmer.
What do these programs do? These programs work on the PLC (or pulse generation) model of decision making. That is, they use a special machine learning algorithm to train a computer to look at a set of data and decide a statistically valid answer. The concept of PLC programming is actually Older Than desktop computing. It’s an architecture designed to be flexible, so it can be used for many different applications. Desktop computers have a large number of inheritable hardware components. Desktoptops can be added to a computer easily enough without much extra cost, and it’s a fairly simple process to add components to increase performance. The main place desktop computing used on a day-to-day, is in the implementation of a program that requires a large amount of input. A good example is medical assistants. They need a lot of input to do even the most basic of procedures, like gathering lab specimens.
- Writing
Bill Gates used to say that one of the most important places for a computer programmer to work is in “The comfort of your own home”. A computer programmer needs this because computers are everywhere. They’re built into almost every home and small business. They’re everywhere in the airport, hotels, coffee shops, your message board, and even your local dentist. How many times have you typed in the phrase, “Hi, this is CLIPBOID”. Typing in the word “CLIPBOID” (itech cochleiding) gives you a lower probability of finding a certain keyword, because the computer scans the letters using Ortholinguistics. Or it scanned the word “criveted” (ivated). These computerized systems are good at parts of speech, rather than complete sentences. After schooling, your mastery of spelling will take practice. Fine, but it’s not enough.
- Doing the Research
This step is actually the easiest. Almost every company has a website. Even if it doesn’t have a website, it probably has one! If it doesn’t have one, the next step is to do some research on the company. This is actually two steps: do the typing to databases, and do the sourcing ( keyword research). If you know the name of the company, the full name of the owner (the link to their website). Or the name of the CEO (assuming you know enough about the company’s CEOs!). I don’t know how you’re going to begin, but the more research you do, the better it will be. Source every bit of information you can find on the company’s background (important owned, past CEOs, managers, locations, organizational chart structure).
- The Interview
Here’s how I see it. You want to get hired, but you want to avoid a negative interview. Okay, everyone knows to avoid those embarrassing themselves during the interview, but everyone is embarrassed to admit they’re nervous.