From: Barry Smith <Sax AT wychcraft DOT demon DOT SPAMco DOT uk>
Newsgroups: demon.tech.pc,comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Career's in Programming
Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 09:50:40 +0100
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>Paul Richards wrote in message <039uZHAFNuI3Ewge AT dunvegan1 DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>...
>>Hi,
>>When I leave school I would like to get a degree in Software Engineering
>>and eventually become a programmer.  What sort of degree/job do you guys
>>have?  Is that the right course to take to become a programmer?
>>--
>>Paul Richards

On Sun, 2 May 1999, Chuck U. Farley <c128 AT bellsouth DOT net> wrote:
>I am a programmer.  I program dos/games/utils at home.
>At work, I program HTML, PHP, MySQL, Javascript/Java, and C.
>
>Believe it or not, I only have a degree in Travel and Tourism. (yes, it is a
>real degree)
>
>-Chuck U. Farley

I graduated in Chemistry, but grew to dislike that. Immediately after
graduating, I found a lot of resistance from employers about moving into
computing. This was a long time ago, in the early 70's, when Computing
Science was seen as a branch of mathematics. I would hope that many of
these prejudices have eroded now, particularly now that Computing is an
element of virtually every course.

My interest in Computing preceded my interest in Chemistry, and by the
age of about 13 I had read all the books on programming and computing in
the local library, even though there was no chance of testing out the
programs on a computer. I did manage to get in some computing experience
at University, but the main requirement was an ability to type
accurately, as input was from punched cards or paper tape, apart from a
wonderful Hewlett Packard desktop calculator, which I programmed to
invert Laplace Transforms on.

I worked as a chemist until I was 31, then changed to Computing, finally
specialising in Comms. It turned out that I had a broad range of
exposure, to many different languages, operating systems and computers,
so I was often the guy who got called in to fix things that nobody else
could! Such as when we were writing a control system for a car
manufacturer. We were collecting the data on SCO Unix, and analysing it
on an AS/400. I put in the piece of string that joined the two together,
as no-one in the AS/400 camp had a clue about Unix, and vice versa.

I think that a lot of more enlightened companies will take computer
programers from arts and science degrees, as the ability to write
meaningful messages is required, and they may seek someone who has
broader experience, and can thus relate to the needs of their users.


-- 
Barry Smith
Email: sax (at) wychcraft.demon.co.uk <--  I don't want ANY spam!