Son 14 into coding - help

AndyPix wrote: »

Higher education is totally pointless for a career in IT.
After many years programming and consulting, I am now the IT manager for a big global enterprise.
I wouldnt look twice at a CV that has 3 years of university on it compared to 3 years actually doing the job at an entry level position.


Im not talking about vocational qualifications either, i am talking about real world experience in an entry level position.
Learning the job whilst on the job if that makes sense.


Experience in this game counts for everything

He will follow his own path and you are doing great by supporting him, Im just telling you my take on things as it will be someone like myself that he sits infront of when he applies for that job

Disagree completely. Yes experience is lot more valuable but it is not completely pointless what so ever. A lot of jobs in IT do require high levels of education, especially in a big corporate company. My company pays very well in IT but there's no way in hell I would have got this job with the pay I was on, without a degree, especially in early 20s.

A lot of Comp Sci. degrees offer sandwich years where the student works for a year, which is also very useful.

For what it's worth, I got into programming aged 10 on a borrowed ZX80, and quickly bought my own ZX81. Via all kinds of distractions I ended up working for a BIIIIIG IT company, then left IT to follow different directions. I mention this for context as I've consulted for huge cash and I've done it for fun and seen it all from a few sides.

The comment from Ringo about the difference between programming and software engineering is actually a really big one. At the moment I've no doubt he's hacking together bits of sample code, and getting results - results in limited cases, very likely getting results when things are going along the ideal path, but in terms of testing, error recovery, management interfaces, etc it's very unlikely he's got that stuff down yet. A lot of developers twice his age don't have that stuff down yet.

For now he's enjoying discovering that computers are slaves, but when he wants to step up, it's about planning, scoping, error handing and testing, code repository use, all the stuff surrounding the coding that separates the professionals and hobbyists.

Is he into Arduino? It's a really good way to become better at coding as the microcontrollers compilers speak C, but have additional libraries to simplify things at first, then you can go deeper to get get more out of them. The great thing with Arduino world is that for a few quid you can sense and affect the real world, all the sensor circuits etc are readymade to be compatible. Want to sense a candle going out and print the time to an OLED screen for some reason? Under a tenner for all the parts, all the code samples are written, and you're able to do it in an evening in your bedroom. Microcontrollers have limited programme space, so you start learning to be efficient, which is good practice.

If he's wanting to get a career in IT or as a programmer, suggest he looks at job adverts to see what skills are in demand, ie C#.NET are two of the biggies currently. This does change quite rapidly though so by the time he's ready to get a job it may have changed.

A degree can be useful but it's not vital, I worked in IT for ten years with no degree and it wasn't an impedement, but some jobs do specifically state they want degree level candidates.

When I was looking at going to Uni (1980s) most of the people I knew with degrees couldn't get jobs as the IT jobs wanted experience, so I decided not to go down the Uni route, but times change.

With the internet there are so many opportunities, so he will already have good experience by the time he is 18 (compared to peers) and the degree may not be necessary.

As an employer I'd rather someone with the interest and initiative to do what your son is doing rather than a graduate with reletively little experience. Very useful qualities in fairly short supply nowadays.

He may find a job in IT isn't as interesting as he thinks (been there!) so freelancing may be the way to go so he can pick and choose his work.