In search of advice

Kobalt

I am looking to leave the medical field and pursue a degree in computers - particularly software development. I have an AAS for healthcare but have never taken any programming classes officially. I have fiddled with PHP, HTML, and JS for a long while now and am planning on using the resources such as CodeCademy, Khan Academy, Udemy, and Udacity to my advantage in learning some languages beforehand. I will be working 3-5 13 hour shifts every week so I will be unable to attend a B&M college.


The advice I seek is this: Is WGU a realistic option due to my lack of experience in programming? Do you have any recommendations for more learning resources?

Thank you.

zaleonardz

Run Forrest... Run....

Seriously... You need to see if you fit programming, very few actually do, and some cannot live without it.

a, Take an entry level weekend college course and see if you like it

b. Download express edition of Visual study, and start self studying, if you find yourself after 20 min each day "this is hard" then dont bother, if you look outside the window and see its 5am and you gotta get dressed for work, your a mushroom, and would be perfect for this, strike a balance between and you actually may have a career.

Remember that if you skill yourself in web applications, you can actually give out copies of your work via a hyperlink, or show an interviewer on your phone.

Do not quit your dayjob yet, self study, online examples, you can practically google everything, right from your first "HelloWorld" to assembler programming.

Next big decision as well, cause this is key, programming in what, for what. Do you want to write graphical applications, game engines, web site with activeX,DotNetFramework, Java. All of this info is key, as it will determine your future.

Before you make the decision, you have all the tools available free of charge on the internet, with Microsoft Visual Studio available in shareware downloadable from the Microsoft site. You can be a programmer by tonight...

robS

MIT open courseware and others offer some full CS degrees online for free.

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Kobalt

zaleonardz - I greatly appreciate your advice! I spent half the day on the 25th, all of the 26, 27, and 28th going through Codecademy... I never realized how awesome it felt to sit down, spend a while typing, and CREATE something that could interact with the user! I felt awesome with just the little I was doing. At no point did I think it was 'too hard'. The places I was hung up on I simply took a few minutes break and came back at it and worked my way through the issue and resolved it! Programming kinda reminds me of my logic puzzles that I adore, honestly. I finished JS, CSS & HTML, PHP, and most of Python. I made the mistake of waking up at 4am today and working on my Python instead of sleeping like I should have because I am working a 14hour night shift tonight. I am about to set up my laptop to continue every chance I get, too. I have also been slowly collecting Udemy courses when they are on sale so I will go through them as well. I am considering starting this fall so I have plenty of time to study ahead!

Honestly, I intend on remaining in my field working 1-2 nights a month even when I have a SD job. I am leaning towards mobile development because it is such a large field and I have a couple apps that I am going to work on to have a portfolio ready for potential employers to see. I will also do as you suggested and have a web portion in my portfolio. I was thinking of creating a game like Legend of the Green Dragon that uses PHP and maybe making it into a downloadable app, as well. That way I can show that I can cross platform. Perhaps that would be useful?

robS - Thanks for that! I have that saved for after I finish up my Python!