Getting experience + learning in development?

[sports_brah]

I've just finished university with a degree in Business Management BSc.

It's taught me some useful components, though I recognise that I need to boost up my employability.

To this end I thought that maybe something like getting a good working knowledge on computing would be a good idea as a project during the summer.

I was thinking of:

-Learning about web development so I have a knowledge? Maybe get myself familiar with HTML5 and CSS3?

-Apps for mobiles. Not sure of how to even go about this, or if it's even possible to get a good understanding in a few months, but it's still a growth area and I feel it would be useful.

-Adobe Suite (got CS6) which I would like to get a working knowledge of, and will hopefully complement the above.

-Word packages. (got 2010) Looking to learn some Excel, Word etc.

Basically I'm not really sure! I've pottered around with various sites before with things like Wordpress, templates of sites etc, but nothing "hardcore".

What would you propose I get myself clued up on?

 

[nex20]

If you want to make mobile apps or websites the only way to learn how to do it, is to do it. No matter how many books you read wont help if you don't actually do it. Just make a website or a mobile app. Also don't use templates because that defies the point in learning how to create the website. Half the fight is making the layout and making it work correctly with multi browsers etc...

Not really sure what there is to learn in Excel except for some simple formulas and everything is available easily on google when you need it.

Adobe suite is similar to coding as mentioned above. You wont get good in Photoshop / illustrator unless you just open the program and create something you find interesting.

Why not try and do something like Prince2 certification / Microsoft certification / sharepoint courses etc... or something related to your degree. 1 summer is not really a lot of time to become proficient in development at least (development being more than HTML and CSS).

 

[sports_brah]

Are there any good theoretical practices I should learn before embarking on this?

I was thinking of setting a project for the summer. Eg create an app which will work in both apple and android, with a website made from photoshop + dreamweaver.


Getting a certification could be quite a good thing to aim for.

 

[DodgeeRascal]

in regards to apps development it might be worth while getting an understanding in object oriented programming and learning some of the key principles.

 

[nex20]

Are there any good theoretical practices I should learn before embarking on this?

I was thinking of setting a project for the summer. Eg create an app which will work in both apple and android, with a website made from photoshop + dreamweaver.


Getting a certification could be quite a good thing to aim for.

If that's what you want to do, create an App in HTML5 as that can be viewed / put into an app for all smartphones pretty much. HTML5 is actually really powerful, not that I have really used it. JQuery is a very popular currently too.

As someone said above, read up on the principles of Object-oriented programming and functional programming. Maybe even go into design patterns etc...

If you want to go more networking side maybe looking at doing a CCNA would be good.