Computer Science degree

NathanE said:
SAP has been popular in its market for a couple decades though? It's just a software application. Nothing special about it. No idea what the job market is like for it. I suspect, given its size, it has its own little ecosystem going and that's when prices inflate.

.NET is basically on a par with Java. It's a programming platform. It's not going anywhere. I've never, ever, heard it described as a "fad" before.
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Well OK cool. I guess what I'm saying is learning it at UNI (or as preperation for uni) is risky as it is more likely to not be used when he gets out of uni then a load of other stuff he could learn instead like 'C++' or 'UNIX' or 'ORACLE' or even 'VB' - thats all I was saying really .. if I'd learnt all specifically about Windows XP 5 years ago (and didn 't need to, but chose to for the future) I'd feel like a right numpty now
 
What nobody has said so far is it very much depends if you're actually any good. I see plenty of graduates (and experienced guys) who've done a fairly nice degree and have good experience on paper - maybe 1 in 10 of them are actually decent programmers. Good programmers are like gold dust these days unfortunately...

And I don't believe it's about going to a decent uni and paying attention, it's about being naturally talented in my opinion. A few people have the right type of minds for programming elegantly and well, a whole lot more don't but try and make do anyway. God knows I write appalling code personally, fortunately I know it and get actual developers to do it - the thing is, my ability is on par with a few programmers I've met and they write code for a living.

Still, no harm doing a CS degree if that's what you want (though I've never been convinced by them for anything other than programming msyelf)
 
But C++ is very quickly losing its mojo. Yes job market is still thriving for it and it always will be because of the sheer number of lines of code that need to be maintained. UNIX lost it a couple decades ago. The only sectors that still use UNIX are defense and banking, pretty much. Oracle is just a SQL Server clone, the skills are transferable for the most part. VB? Not VB6 surely? VB.NET yeah? In which case, no problem with that but have to wonder why not just go the whole way to C#.NET. VB.NET was only added to .NET to keep the VB6 converts happy.

If I came straight out of a Uni. I would not want to be learning any of the things you describe. Because apart from Oracle, they're all of their own niché now and past their sell by date to some extent.

I don't understand what you mean by "learning Windows XP" or "learning the Windows 7 registry". These things take about 5 minutes to accomplish? It's not like "oh damn my Uni. computer used Windows XP but now I've came out of that cave I discover the whole world is using Windows 7 therefore I wasted my money at Uni. OMG the Task Bar is completely alien to everything I know." :p
 
Could not agree more with bigredshark, on paper after i finished my degree i look an all round programmer - who could easily apply for a programming job - dabbling in Java, Python, VB.Net, C and general web stuff PHP and so fourth. Truth be told i know the basic's and would leave it at that. University only gives you a flavour of what can be achieved. I know a few "Decent" programmers and they see logic very different to how i see things.

NathanE said:
SAP has been popular in its market for a couple decades though? It's just a software application. Nothing special about it. No idea what the job market is like for it. I suspect, given its size, it has its own little ecosystem going and that's when prices inflate.

.NET is basically on a par with Java. It's a programming platform. It's not going anywhere. I've never, ever, heard it described as a "fad" before.
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SAP is well past it's sell by date. As i say i work for Microsoft - Microsoft Dynamics (equivalentto SAP/Sage) Programmers/Developers for the .Net / dexterity / silverlight here in the UK working on Dynamics are on a decent wage.
 
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Mr^B said:
Shenanigans!

The only way to see ANYTHING approaching that money is by contracting, and you do NOT want to go contracting for any length of time in an IB, which is why most people don't.
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Interesting to hear you say that, I'm currently contracting at an IB (having previously done permie work in banks) and to be honest I prefer the contracting route.
OK, no bonus (and it's bonus day today in my place) but I get a decent rate and the work is pretty good.
Most of the guys I work with have been contracting in banksand hedge funds for 20+ years and I reckon they would say it's a good gig to get!
 
kai said:
SAP is well past is sell by date.
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I completely agree. But it still doesn't make it a "fad". SAP is a legacy system. In exactly the same way as UNIX. If you learnt either UNIX or SAP now, you'd still be able to find a well paid job because there's plenty of companies out there whose "old hands" are retiring and they need young blood to take up the reigns.

A "fad" is something like ColdFusion. Remember that?
 
Well OK my advice in only anecdotal and I don't want to fight! , but all my large client sites have always used some combination of

Front end (normally VB or even some kind of intraweb - they don't care what OS as long as it works)
Middleware (Maybe Citrix or such)
Back end (Unix OS, Oracle DB (or maybe Informix))

And we're talking about over 10 clients that are all big national companys. We wanted some .net doing so got contractors in for 3 weeks, they did it (very pretty!) and then we booted them out. It was seen, rightly or wrongly, as 'pretty front end sparkles'. For the ongoing bulkneeds of raw maths, data storage and high transaction processing - the stuff business will always need - there's just no need for them to move beyond UNIX and nothing as reliable (which is of course the most important thing).

Who cares if it looks ugly etc it's only doing maths! For the bulk big-business IT work, .net filled a gap that didn't exist.
 
britboy4321 said:
Who cares if it looks ugly etc it's only doing maths! For the bulk big-business IT work, .net filled a gap that didn't exist.
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Disagree - Silverlight has taken up the reigns big time here at Microsoft - all for cosmetic improvement. Eye candy sells :cool:
 
madcat said:
Hey britboy, hope you don't mind me asking. Whats your job position and who do you for?!?!
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technically I work for myself I am an IT contractor. Senior Test Lead (although job positions are mainly used to appease underpaid people:( invent another job title for them that'll shut them up use the word 'Senior' or 'Lead' this time :( ). I do of course have a client ..
 
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britboy4321 said:
technically I work for myself I am an IT contractor. Senior Test Lead (although job positions are mainly used to appease underpaid people:( invent another job title for them that'll shut them up use the word 'Senior' or 'Lead' this time :( ). I do of course have a client ..
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What do you do in this role, in order to earn £80k?

You must write some pretty **** hot code, right? Please tell me it's not just Xwindows administration and writing hacky VB6 programs? :(
 
NathanE said:
What do you do in this role, in order to earn £80k?

You must write some pretty **** hot code, right? Please tell me it's not just Xwindows administration and writing hacky VB6 programs? :(
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I just test C programs in a unix system, that accesses a pretty big informix database.

I don't do any coding. Do some BA on occassion.

You have to know some formal methods, but the work is easy. Anyone could do it really ..
 
Wow. Sounds like summer camp :D

You better hope the people writing the programs that you test don't adopt modern development practices such as unit testing :p
 
Computer type people can earn serious money contracting.

I know of several SAP related independent (non-agency) contractors who charge £800 a day. With these fees come the price of low job security.

You could also go into law or investment banking with a comp. sci. degree.
 
As maybe a helpful hint. One of the options if you have a CS degree or similar and don't fancy programming is (technical) project management. Project manager's are another of those jobs where good ones are very thin on the ground, having technical knowledge of programming methodology (even if you couldn't write the code yourself) will really give you a big edge.

It's an interesting job as you're doing different projects all the time and it's a good route to management if that's where you want to go and if not then I would kill for a good project manager. Bad ones will make you want to kill yourself but a good project manager is a godsend.
 
Nitefly said:
Computer type people can earn serious money contracting.

I know of several SAP related independent (non-agency) contractors who charge £800 a day. With these fees come the price of low job security.

You could also go into law or investment banking with a comp. sci. degree.
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I've earned that in the past contracting/consulting (at a certain level the two blur) on network architecture. £800 a day for three months producing a proposal they dropped as too expensive, one of the easiest, most pointless and most lucrative jobs I've ever done all rolled up into one.
 
So.... how do I work out if I'm a "good" programmer rather than a standard programmer ? How would you define "good" code ?

You've got me wondering!
 
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