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General Discussion

Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill
1,064 Points
Posted by Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill
1,064 Points

At a crossroads...

Hello all... I need a little mentor advice... I'm an older guy, about to retire from the military. (27 years total, the Air National Guard to be precise) Being that I am a "Guard Guy", I have had a chance to be a "Traditional Guardsmen", (Not a full time military person, as in two weeks a year, one weekend a month) where, on the outside, I actually worked as a MS Exchange/Network Administrator for 17 years. I left the IT world to finish my CSE (UGH, it's still not done) and to get back up into the air before I left it all for good. That being said, I've been away from the "Bleeding Edge" of technology now for almost 5 years. So, I'm now pursuing my dream of becoming a developer.

But, as with all crossroads, I've hit the proverbial stopping point.

I have taken the required C programming class way back when, and I can follow along in most code, whether it's PowerShell (yeah, not really code, but...), Visual Basic, Java, C (to include, and most especially Arduino's version of C), C++, or C#. But as an older guy, I need to get started in the right direction. I know that most developers out there are coding for the web... but my interest has never been in that arena. Am I spinning my wheels, trying to make something from the C# development aspect? Should I even waste my time heading in this direction, or should I take the web developer path? Obviously, I'm young enough (cough) to realize that I still have enough life ahead of me to be something when I grow up... So, what would you recommend?

Thanks All,

Rob

1 Answer

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points
Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

With C as a first language, you can learn to do just about whatever you want. It was mine, too, and I'm very happy it was. That being said, if you like C-like languages, you might as well stick with it. A few good friends of mine are C#/ASP.NET developers, and they do really well with it. Of course, they know other stuff, too, but there's definitely a professional demand for C#. If you'd rather not work mostly in a web backend, you could also learn Objective-C/Swift/Java and be a mobile developer.

What I'm trying to say is that there's a great big world beyond the web front-end, so you can probably find work in just about whatever stack you want. Full disclosure, though: I'm only 19 and just starting to try to get a job in software, so my advice may not be the best

Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill
1,064 Points
Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill
1,064 Points

Michael,

Thanks for the quick reply...

ANY and all advice is gladly accepted and appreciated!

Yeah, I kinda thought that by having some C experience, it would make the decision easier, too. Java and Swift both look and feel like supercharged versions of C to me... I may try to look at those at a later time.

Thanks again for taking some time to answer!

Rob