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  • Author Author: littleben1
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Going back to school

littleben1

Ok so for reasons out of my control (illness) I've been disabled for many years now, but still a functioning human being who loves to learn. Anyways, for a while I had considered going back to school (probably online) just to keep my mind busy and not go crazy. I had applied with the Department of Rehabilitative Services (which will help me go back to school) a long time ago and have been on a wait list for a long time. Well today I got a letter in the mail saying that my wait is finally over (I had actually forgotten about it) and that I am now out of the waiting period and needed to call to set up an appointment. Well after calling and setting up an appointment I realized that I have no idea what exactly to go to school for. I love fixing electronics, and have been teaching myself programming for awhile now and love that too. Sadly, I really just don't know what I should be looking at doing as far as school goes. Any suggestions out there, or maybe just a good shove in the right direction. I have always spent my time programming for things like Arduino and Raspberry pi type stuff and have never touched web development, but am always up for new things. Anybody got any good ideas??

  • never too old to learn .... well the learning isn't the issue, it's the remembering... so you're still ahead of some of us.

     

    When we went into schools and asked if anyone had done any software programming, inevitably one of the kids would stick their hand up and say web development ....

    The response from one of the software programmers was "... that's not programming ..."

     

    Rather than web development, I would think that App Development might be a better approach .... since everyone seems to be glued to a phone now days.

     

     

    The bigger issue will be what capabilities do you have (or lack) because of your illness.

    You may not be able to spend long times doing coding full time, or conversely be agile enough to tackle some electronics repairs.

     

    If your illness is stable and unlikely to change, then you can at least work out what the future has, but if is changing or likely to cause other problems, you might want to factor that into the decision.

     

    You may want to think of the other aspects of coding. I imagine there is still a verification aspect to programming, loading software and checking backwards compatibility.

    Likewise there is quality control, production repair, testing associated with manufacture and even education.

    Some of these may be suitable further down the track or if your personal circumstances change, and could be part of your plan during your schooling.

     

     

    Good luck I'm sure you'll enjoy the challenge.

     

    Mark

  • If you look for a program that includes embedded programming and interfacing, it expands your capabilities to have fun with both hardware and software projects.

  • Hi Benjamin,

     

    If you are in doubt I found that there is a page on Tutorialspoint that details many of software engineering languages and scripts. The page actually takes you to an online IDE which means you can 'try before you buy/install'. The site is https://www.tutorialspoint.com/codingground.htm

    If you have a look around there you might some some software/web technologies that you would like to learn more about at school. Some of those Front-End technologies are cool for extracting data from web-servers and processing it e.g. JQuery, Javascript, JSON

     

    Alternatively if you enjoy programming why not get a formal qualification in software engineering - in addition to programming you'd learn about development cycles/methodologies, version control, verification and validation etc.

     

    You could also 'top up' any school course with some home learning modules. You could use Element14 or a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC); some of these are on Element14 MOOCS  and there are many other sites like Coursera that run them. Many of the courses are free to join and learn from but they charge if you want a certificate at the end.

     

    You could also learn, to name a few more ideas:

    • Digital Signal Processing techniques and use software like Matlab or Octave to reinforce that learning
    • FPGA (VHDL, HLS, Verilog) - get a cheap board from Farnell/Newark
    • Data Science Techniques - using R Studio software package or Python and a MOOC

     

    [I am not affiliated with Tutorialspoint or Coursera - just found them in the past to be great learning resources]

     

    Rod

  • Firstly, congratulations for having the drive to do stuff and making it happen.

     

    Web development is probably a good direction. Easy to get started. Plenty of work out there if it does become a career or a you want to do a bit of freelance work from home. Obviously the most important thing is to decide what interests you the most and that is really up to you!