What I.T. Course is next ? Taking Classes

J.R. Hudson

J.R. Hudson

Spirit Animal
My brother-in-law just finished a community college course in HTML at the local community college. He is a Los Angeles School teacher by day iand is simply expanding his education (Has degree's in Accounting and Education)

He is curiosu as to what may be the next course he should pursue ?

Flash?

Dreamweaver ?

Coldfusion ?

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Any advice on what is hip ?
 
OUt of those choices, I would say Flash. Dreamweaver is just an IDE for HTML, and there s not much to "learning" it, besides what the manual will give.

Cold Fusion is so dead it's a mummy. Tell him not to waste his time.

Is he looking for basically front end stuff like you mention, or actual software programming as well?

If his goal is education, maybe just a CS degree, which will give him the basic foundations of it all. But if his goal is to go get an I.T. job, tell him to get a CS degree and Management and Business degrees. Cause so many low-level code-monkey jobs are heading to India. I do software for a living and it looks like much of my job is going to turn into managing those cats.
 
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I would agree, Dreamweaver and Cold Fusion would be a waste of time. If you know how to develop a site in HTML then you already can use Dreamweaver...the specifics of the program itself you can learn from the manual or online help. And, I haven't seen much call for cold fusion in a long time.

As desperate said, if he wants to stick to front end/design, then go with Flash, or perhaps a graphic design course. Also, if someone is really interested in pursuing web design as a serious hobby/career I would recommend taking a marking course or two, especially one geared toward print/video/web marketing.

If he wants to pursue back end programming then he could take courses in .net (microsoft's technology) or PHP. Although if he's not familiar with system programming, then taking a beginning programming course or two would be useful first.

Hope this helps,
Larry
 
John,

I have been in IT for over 20 years. If he really wants to make a career of it, I would definitely recommend he look into Microsoft ASP.Net. That is where the money and the jobs are anyway. He should also learn relational databases (like SQL Server).

My own brother-in-law switched careers entirely in his 30's. Taught himself programming and within 5 years had tripled his salary.

Chris
 
It's interesting to me how many people I run into that are into filmmaking that are currently, or previously, IT professionals. I've been in IT for 10+ years, Chris 20+, I know HansK is and there are many others here in the same field.

I don't know if it means anything, but it's interesting nonetheless. :)
 
I'm not an "IT professional," but I play one on TV... That is, I have been writing about IT in business for over 20 years, and for a long period focused specifically on writing about IT careers. So, my 2-cents worth: The next best course really depends on what he wants to do going forward -- is he simply trying to become a better user of IT or would he like to move his career into something more IT-centric?

Based on the degrees he has already, I would recommend he look at IT project management courses. If he focuses on how to analyze a business goal and how to apply IT to achieving that goal and gaining some kind of productivity increase or competitive advantage, and how to run the project in which the IT and business sides come together, he's golden.

To go in that direction, he would definitely need to understand enough about IT and the various systems, programming platforms, etc., that are available to be able to make decisions and talk effectively with the IT folks, to translate business needs into IT systems, and to bring the IT perspective back to the business side, but he wouldn't necessarily have to know how to program, etc.

The business-IT liaison is a hot area since, as Mark (Desperate Comfort) noted, so much of the actual programming is being outsourced. But finding people who can combine both the business/end-user perspective and the IT perspective is really difficult so those rare breeds who have both are really well positioned. A lot of IT directors have told me they find it a lot easier to teach someone from the business side about IT than to teach someone in IT about the business. That's a bit of a cliche, but since he already has the business experience, it would be one way to go where he'd be able to leverage all of his past experience and skills.
 
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