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IT students not want to be programmers then what?


tech291083
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Hi,

 

I have been hearing a lot from an IT student friend of mine about the increasing hatred towards programming of any kind taught at the university and efforts to look for something else in the IT field itself as a career option. Can any one who is experienced enough tell me as why this is a shocking reality? Why universities are failing to encourage students to become professional programmers? If an IT student is not interested in being a programmer what else are the options? What is the most preferred option of all in terms of what you have seen in your professional career? Thanks.

 

 

[moved from Terminal Shell Commands, etc by spinynorman]

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Maybe they just don't want to write any closed-source software and have their future employers "steal" their work and Intellectual Property from them... :rolleyes:

 

Now there's a different perspective! :)

 

As for myself, some of the most important reasons I didn't get into programming because

a ) I was afraid I wouldn't be good enough at it

b ) the market for programmers seemed pretty saturated already at that time

c ) I liked to keep my options open

 

So I went to get my MA as a translator instead (English/French/Dutch).

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I'm going after a Bachelor's in Information Systems which is an IT degree from the business side. I've done my research and there are a lot of things you can do with this degree. Unfortunately not all universities offer this type of program.

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I didn't went to programming for several reasons:

 

1) I like to code, but I can not do it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week

2) when you get 40 years old, you can not keep up with the younger generation, so, if you manage untill then to get in a good position - not programming, it is OK, otherwise....

3) there are so many programmers out there, that you realy must be wery good to make a careear

 

So I became a System Administrator and I tend to become an IT Manager ...

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Did try programming, wrote some relatively cool stuff for the time (10 years ago now and more).

 

Didn't interest me, I'm more a peoples person, and not want to sit at desk coding. So did support. Was Technical Analyst, then System Administrator, then Disaster Recovery LAN Consultant, and now implement systems for clients.

 

I'm surprise no-one wants to encourage programming, else we'll have no software other than what we have now if they all stop, or don't exist :o

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I'm currently a programmer. It can be somewhat hard to find programmer positions these days, mainly because the IT field got flooded with programmers in the past few years.

 

Also, programming is a tedious, frustrating and thankless job. Managers don't understand what we do and give us time lines that are ridiculous, or requirements that just don't fit. The major I was in (IST) is supposed to give us the ability to be middle management with pretty good knowledge of the various parts of a system (the code, the database, etc.) so that we can "fix" this problem. But who the hell gets a middle management job straight out of undergrad? Rarely anyone. So most programmers are stuck working for managers who understand the business side, and cater purely to that, then push it on the programmers to make up the difference between the business side and...well, the reality of code. This means overtime, stress and in the end crap products that have to be patched to the end of time.

 

Being a programmer isn't much fun, at least not in most businesses. The problem is that management doesn't realize that the programmers are their biggest asset, and if you tick them off, you're just screwing yourself.

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I'm a programmer approaching the age of 40, and I love my job.

 

I don't care if the generation coming up doesn't want to program--that just means I'll get paid more for my services.

 

I have never found programming to be boring or tedious in any way. From time to time I encounter a tedious or repetitive task...and I write a utility program to automate that task. There's always interesting stuff to do in software land.

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Research, research again and research some more. There are more opportunities now than when I was looking for work.

I don't have a degree of any description because those avenues where not an option in 1959 when I finished my schooling. I wasn't good enough for Grammar school and technical colleges (which are now called universities) where just about to make an appearance.

Yet from 1970 something I learned programming for the shear hell of it. In that time I have learned 6502, 68000 assembly languages. I took a course in Cobol, now that is programming. Basics 'till they were coming out of my ears. C\C++, bash, perl and any number of scripting languages. Never professionally I might add

All because I wanted to and enjoyed most of it. There maybe a glut of programmers about so companies have great choice and can pay peanuts, but they still need someone who understands programming and one day the good programmers will be in demand. Until then I say to you guys look around, there is certainly more avenues open in the IT world now than ever, a few that have been mentioned. Open your eyes, your mind and look around, decide, and put your heart and soul into it.

I now get down off the soapbox. :P

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Being a programmer isn't much fun, at least not in most businesses. The problem is that management doesn't realize that the programmers are their biggest asset, and if you tick them off, you're just screwing yourself.

 

Fully agreed...............

 

 

There maybe a glut of programmers about so companies have great choice and can pay peanuts, but they still need someone who understands programming and one day the good programmers will be in demand. Until then I say to you guys look around, there is certainly more avenues open in the IT world now than ever, a few that have been mentioned. Open your eyes, your mind and look around, decide, and put your heart and soul into it.

 

Very interesting thoughts sir. People like you should also be listened to after all you have seen the programming evolution since the 70s itself. Let us hope that a good and patient programmer gets his due respect some day.

 

 

I don't care if the generation coming up doesn't want to program--that just means I'll get paid more for my services.

 

I have never found programming to be boring or tedious in any way.

 

Very right sir. After all we do not see doctors retire in the middle of the night if a younger fellow comes and joins his team. You have given a very good and clear message to all of us here.

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I did some programming for Indiana University physical plant and enjoyed it. Most of the work I have done was in MS DOS for data base handling. I also wrote some programs for figuring audio driver box volume and port sizes for speaker systems in VB for windows. Plus some simple games in DOS, I liked programing a lot but I never pursue it as a job. It was one of my many hobbies.

 

I tell the nephew if he ever wanted to get into the hart of computing, he should get into programing. We have lots of computer users and users are a dime a dozen, programing is where it is.

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I tell the nephew if he ever wanted to get into the hart of computing, he should get into programing. We have lots of computer users and users are a dime a dozen, programing is where it is.

Great advice! The hobbyist programmer is a special breed and the rewards are many.

 

I'd also like to say a few things on behalf of programming/application development as a profession (my experience is limited to the corporate/institutional area so my comments reflect that limitation). I agree with tyme and others who have said that programming within a corporate IT department can often be sheer drudgery. There can be so many built-in obstacles to feeling productive. And the bosses often bear a remarkable resemblance to the clueless boss in the Dilbert cartoon.

 

But there's a breed of programmer where to write code is in their blood. To paraphrase Robert Frost, the eminent American poet: "To be a poet programmer is a condition, not a profession."

 

If you love programming like that, and you can't find fulfillment in an IT corporate/institutional culture, my advice would be to seek roles where you can work directly for the client outside of IT. This sometimes can be done while being employed within a corporation/institution but also can be achieved by being a consultant. The client isn't going to hamper you with IT bureaucracy and bullshit metrics. Within IT you've got so many roles to fulfill, you often can't devote the time to really service the client properly because you've got a hundred other things to do. The client can almost become someone you want to avoid rather than to help. As a consultant, you usually can work on a specific project and can more often devote the time to properly serve the client's needs and to make true improvements in their processes for which they are typically very appreciative, which is great for job satisfaction.

 

Consulting directly for a client is not a perfect world, it has it's own set of problem areas, but if you love application development, it can be very rewarding. I've been doing this for 25 years now and the situations in which I have felt the most professional satisfaction are when I worked directly for the client outside of IT.

 

Now, part of the poster's original question was what roles are there outside of programming if you're going to pursue IT as a career? He asked, what else is there?

 

Well, it's a wide-open field:

 

Project Management

Infrastructure Planning and Design

Network and System Administration

Sales/Tech Support

Technical Journalism

Education (tyme, best wishes to you as you pursue your goals in this area)

Training

Couple your IT education with another field (science, medicine, math, finance, etc)

etc etc etc

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CONSULTING.

If You're Not A Part Of The Solution, There's Good Money To Be Made In Prolonging The Problem.

 

:lol2:

 

Education (tyme, best wishes to you as you pursue your goals in this area)
Thanks, have a GRE study guide sitting here waiting for me to crack open (very soon, mind you)...applications are due next January for the Masters program I want to get into.
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