Need to decide what to study when I go to school.
Posted by brandon_fernandes47@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 9 comments
I recently decided the time for going to college is now. I would like to start working towards a career within CS. However I have questions. Really I'm looking for guidance and what to expect.
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What safe career options do I really have? Safe meaning finding employment is not often a huge struggle. An example of this (At least in my mind) is game development sure sounds great (and is actually what I would do in a perfect world) but what are my chances of landing a good paying job in that in a reasonable amount of time?
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What fields are in demand right now?
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What did you find fun to study?
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Which classes would be beneficial to take in addition to my required ones.
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Most importantly what should I learn now to get myself ahead of the curve? I'm learning JS right now but am at the point where it's no longer a question of individual syntax but the concepts behind programming as a whole
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Lastly does anyone have any advice on keeping pace I often fall behind in classes if I don't understand something (and then we build of that thing I don't understand) now I'm 4 lessons back trying to get my bearings back.
PoMoAnachro@reddit
Such a thing does not exist. Not really.
Some careers can be more or less in demand and have more or less competition from your peers, but safety will always be relative.
This is kind of general career advice, but you kind of have to pick one of Hard To Learn, Hard Work, or Hard To Make a Living. The market is always going to find an equilibrium, so if it is a job lots of people can and will do you're going to get paid shitty and there won't be much job security (Hard to Make a Living).
So if you want to actually make a living, you gotta pick something that is either hard enough work that most people don't want to do it, or hard enough to learn that most people can't learn how to do it.
If you want to go the hard work route, the trades are right there calling your name.
But if you want to go the hard to learn route (which I assume you do if you're interested in programming!) you need to find what you are good at - what's the subject that you see your peers struggling with but you're pretty good at, either due to natural talent or a solid work ethic? That's what you want to zero in on. You want to aim to be the top 10% of the people doing that thing, whether there are 5 million people doing that thing or 500. If you can't be in the top 10%, keep looking until you find something you can be (or work harder if what you need to close the gap isn't talent but instead effort).
I know a bunch of out of work software developers. I also have one friend who went to college to study painting and has a solid career able to afford living in a major city doing work for movies. Do I think "painter" is a safe career choice? No. But she was talented and she worked really hard.
I think a lot of the frustration some people coming onto the job market are facing is they thought they had a "safe" career in that they could just kinda learn the basics and be solidly mediocre and still get a paycheque. And that really only happens in boom times. We are not in boom times yet. So use your time at college to figure out what you can be excellent at and dial in on that.
brandon_fernandes47@reddit (OP)
My thoughts exactly thank you!
Foreign-Artist8198@reddit
if you want something “safe”, web dev or backend is way more reliable than game dev — that field is pretty competitive. right now, JS/web, cloud, and data stuff are all in demand. You don’t need to pick perfectly yet though. to get ahead, focus on fundamentals and build small projects — that helps way more than just learning syntax. and falling behind happens to everyone. What helped me was slowing down and really understanding one thing before moving on.
brandon_fernandes47@reddit (OP)
Thank you for the advice!
cool_the_f_down@reddit
Agreed with the giy above, I heard game dev is a super toxic environment as well. Maybe just do it for passion (this is what I've been doing, though mostly just to learn)
dwoodro@reddit
What I find interesting is that “game dev” gets all the limelight. And people often forget about the tens of thousands of other programming applications that exist.
Never see anyone really recommending “go into financial software”, or “os drivers dev”, etc.
You can have a quite successful career in software development without ever touching a game.
lifeistoolong_007@reddit
cs student here so take this with a grain of salt but web dev and aiml are the most in demand right now honestly game dev is fun but jobs are super competitive for keeping pace i struggled with the same thing i just stop and fix the one thing i don't understand before moving on even if it feels slow and JS is actually a solid start, just start building small stuff with it instead of only learning syntax
BeginningOne8195@reddit
It’s normal to feel lost at this stage, just focus on building a solid foundation and picking one path that interests you for now, you can always adjust later once you have more clarity.
brandon_fernandes47@reddit (OP)
Thanks for the advice!