Computer courses c++ language

Vitor

Entry level programming jobs are rare as hens teeth with AI and 'vibe coding' taking off. If you are wanting to work in IT I would suggest getting proficient in Wix, Squarespace and Facebook and start offering small businesses, clubs etc. help in setting up websites. These platforms have marketplaces where independents can bid for work.

It's not just the language you need to know but the APIs/frameworks for the environment be that Windows, React, Apache, Node.js, Azure etc.all of which are complex. Python and Javascript remain popular, Go is gaining too. 

WelshmansDaughter

You're probably going to hate whatever job you end up in if you don't put a little more thought into the process. 
Perhaps you could try some career resources first to better get an idea of what you would enjoy doing. Your local library will probably have a section on jobs and careers.
You definitely won't enjoy anything if you're broke or going into debt. 
If you work for the shambles organisation I think you work for, they do have an option for a career break if you can qualify for it. After you make a financial plan for retraining. 

kimwp

prowla said:

TadleyBaggie said:

C++ was the thing about 20 years ago, but Java and Python became more popular. I've been retired from software development for a while, so things have probably moved on again.

A company I worked for a few years ago concluded that Python & Java were too slow and shifted to C++.

For me, C++ was a big thing in the 80's!

Udemy do some good courses.

Another option is to look at prof. Malan's Harvard courses (CS50); they're now being run in association with Oxford Uni.

I did (the first half of) the cs50 python course, it's very good, easy to follow, with the course focussed on teaching the basics and then how to self learn on top of that to create programmes.

kimwp

WelshmansDaughter said:

You're probably going to hate whatever job you end up in if you don't put a little more thought into the process. 
Perhaps you could try some career resources first to better get an idea of what you would enjoy doing. Your local library will probably have a section on jobs and careers.
You definitely won't enjoy anything if you're broke or going into debt. 
If you work for the shambles organisation I think you work for, they do have an option for a career break if you can qualify for it. After you make a financial plan for retraining. 

This is a good idea. Start with what it is you like about your job (and any previous jobs or just things you do in life) and what you dislike.

robatwork

kimwp said:

This is a good idea. Start with what it is you like about your job (and any previous jobs or just things you do in life) and what you dislike.

I'm afraid after many years in the workforce the answer to the latter is always the same - people. 

gm0

Software development has always been divided into tiers of genuine deeper skill and workman like competence and crayon colouring. And some chancers stealing a living pretending they know how - a page ahead in the manual long ago - google AI and cut/paste recently.

Universities tend to like maths and algorithms as it is easier to turn into examinations. Knuth etc.

Back in the day when all this were fields - 1980s and earlier. This was expressed as three groups

1 People writing embedded and system software in assembler and C.  Or inventing it. Dennis Ritchie.  And wannabes who admired the 60s computing pioneers who did their own hardware and wrote their own operating systems.  Society runs on the 60s mainframe and upstart 60s unix stuff.  Still underneath the stuff written in fancier tools since.  Nerdville then.  Ignored now.  Yet stuff I did in the 90s as a system programmer is already in computing museums.

2 People writing or maintaining applications COBOL in a shell provided by others running in something written by the first group. Later on Java.  And web apps in frameworks - front end/back end. Databases - SQL.

3 And people doing "colouring in" configuration of function or process in applications and a bit of scripting yet calling themseleves programmers as though that was the same thing as 1 or 2.  Or Thomas Telford planning an entire railway or canal project is the same "engineer" as the guy who services your central heating boiler

All these activities could generate "pay" for hours of work done for the government or a business.  There is no hierarchy of worthiness.  A lot of the category one people were not paid well originally.  Being a hotshot in a startup that made it - came later.  Some won.  Many did not.

So there is no reason other than your own interests and demand for the skillset to choose one over the other.  Systems engineers know that it's 1,2,3.   I build it.  You write logic in it.  They set configuration flags.  

So what you find fulfilling about an IT job is the first thing to sort out.  Then supply/demand for that.

Roll it forward in time the software and framework names change.  The syntax/symbols change.  But the pattern remains

Knowing a single programming syntax is nothing much to cheer about.  
Knowing how to develop good code.  Is experiential not completely trained.  For many people it will involve learning by doing and probably more than one language and syntax as well. More important is doing projects and seeing the results of your better and worse choices.

A language to do first - for a career - should be modern.  Rising in importance. 

With growing demand. C++ is ancient runes at this point - harder than many to learn.  And if learnt - worthwhile in terms of level of understanding achieved.  A better test of intellect than some more "cooked" and protected programming environments.  But not used as widely as many others for small scale stuff.  

As it is only actually needed for certain things where it is closer to situation 1 - where only something like that will do.  With layers of (protective) bs stripped away.

You should learn how to do it now.  With modern IDEs and AI in support and what that means to being hyper productive today.  The good parts and the frustrations of imperfect ai auto cut/paste.  The day of the stream of consciousness, command line programmer emitting thoughts into vi or emacs onto fresh blank screens or a mainframe screen editor - and with satisfaction hitting a command line compile and having it come back clean.  Are ending.  Elves gone into the west.

The other useful job you can choose to pick up is not a new language. But a very old one - but still in use.  

There are applications out there. In unfashionable languages or systems. Or running in emulation (the category 1 folk have been at it again). Say full fat Java. COBOL.  OS/AS400.  ICL VME Cobol.  The people who worked on them when they were new are retiring or dead.  Some big expensive to build applications made it to now - and are maintained.   Niche. There are a few sysprog and maintenance jobs - for people with niche skills on them - until those applications are replaced or switched off.  Pre-internet and in a lot of cases not really in the AI training data set.  It could be trained. But in many niches - it won't be trained very well.

What you want to get out of it by way of stimulus
Opportunity - job types and pay
How to get that specific skill - oss, formal training, academic.  
Conceptual academic training is often heavy on maths and uses a not very useful at work language to do it in.  That may have changed but I don't see the incentive for it to have changed really.  To expose people to the computing concepts of 1.  You don't train them in level 3 environments.  2 or ideally 1.

robatwork

gm0 said:

There are applications out there. In unfashionable languages or systems. Or running in emulation (the category 1 folk have been at it again). Say full fat Java. COBOL.  OS/AS400.  ICL VME Cobol.  The people who worked on them when they were new are retiring or dead.  Some big expensive to build applications made it to now - and are maintained.   Niche. 

This in particular is very true, and I know it from personal experience. There are some massive (1m+ lines of code) Cobol systems still running plenty of businesses. Up until recently several bank back ends, and today a lot of retail and logistics are still running on Cobol. I guess it's a testament to the language that it just works well.

I'm also of the opinion that the success of a language is not just how good it is but how easy it is to maintain other people's code. Cobol even if uncommented is pretty straightforward, meaning a new developer can pick up a system well. Maintaining poorly commented C++ would range from nightmare to impossible.

Cobol developers are in mainly their 60s, or at best late 50s and hard to find. A brave move would be training in Cobol, but could be lucrative.

SiliconChip

robatwork said:

gm0 said:

There are applications out there. In unfashionable languages or systems. Or running in emulation (the category 1 folk have been at it again). Say full fat Java. COBOL.  OS/AS400.  ICL VME Cobol.  The people who worked on them when they were new are retiring or dead.  Some big expensive to build applications made it to now - and are maintained.   Niche. 

Cobol developers are in mainly their 60s, or at best late 50s and hard to find. A brave move would be training in Cobol, but could be lucrative.

I'm one, in my late 60s and retired although I stopped working in IT 17 years ago having done 27 years of mainly Cobol IMS DB/DC CICS/DB2 and had a second career in university research. Although I've been away from the environment for a long time now I would be very surprised if the banks and insurance companies I worked for have replaced anywhere near all of their mainframe code, so I'd agree that learning Cobol (or even Assembler if you're feeling brave) might offer an opportunity for a lengthy and high paying career.

robatwork

Would be interesting, if off topic, to know if any of the banks and large insurers are still running on Cobol. While you and I suspect it may be the case, knowing it from the horse's mouth should anyone involved be reading would be certainly on topic and helpful. 

I'd bet a lot of the snazzy apps and front end stuff is all new code, but the stuff churning out reports in a windowless office has several thousand lines of Cobol running it. Probably an Epson or Oki dot matrix printer too 

MeteredOut

robatwork said:

Would be interesting, if off topic, to know if any of the banks and large insurers are still running on Cobol. While you and I suspect it may be the case, knowing it from the horse's mouth should anyone involved be reading would be certainly on topic and helpful. 

I'd bet a lot of the snazzy apps and front end stuff is all new code, but the stuff churning out reports in a windowless office has several thousand lines of Cobol running it. Probably an Epson or Oki dot matrix printer too 

I can confirm many banks (and other financial institutions) do still have legacy systems running on COBOL.

Many (if not most) also have strategic roadmaps to move away from these platforms, but these are programmes of work spanning multiple years.