[clug] Education options

[Alex Satrapa]

On 20 Jan 2004, at 09:56, Mark Harrison wrote:

> The course options so far seem to be:
> a) Spherion (Advanced diploma of business systems)

IMHO, not worth the $15,000 *or* the piece of paper it's printed on.

> b) TAFE (Diploma in IT - software development)

Best bet right there.

> c) UC (Graduate Diploma in IT - software engineering)

Didn't you say you wanted to *avoid* Windows?

These guys sold their souls to Microsoft years ago - when I was 
graduating, they were converting the last of their Linux labs to 
Windows.

Perhaps they've had a severe change of heart in the meantime, but you 
might want to just walk through Building 11 (Information Sciences and 
Engineering) and check what the lab machines are running these days.

> So, are there other options that I have missed?

Grab a book like "Dummies Guide To Perl" and learn a language. After 
that, grab "The C Programming Language" by Kernigan and Ritchie 
(preferably an edition that's been updated for ANSI C) and learn a 
"real" language.

Then grab a book on data structures and algorithms, and work through 
the exercises.

By this stage, you're at least qualified enough to replace an Indian 
programmer, but apparently IBM GSA and Telstra don't understand that.

Once you have a modicum of understanding of C and Perl, start applying 
for jobs. In the meantime, pick up an open source package that you have 
been a user of for so long, and try to figure out what you'll need to 
do to add your most-wanted feature!

Regards
Alex Satrapa

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to 
choose from"
     -- Andrew Tanenbaum