[Gllug] VACANCY: Junior Systems Support

[James Laver]

On 6 Sep 2009, at 20:58, John G Walker wrote:

> I thought the reason that they taught Java was that it's the simplest
> language with which to teach object-oriented programming. In other
> words, it's not the language, it's how to approach a problem that's
> being taught. Not that I have any contact with IT teachers, so I might
> have got the wrong impression,

Ostensibly, yes. Practice is more than a little different.

Two years ago, instead of going to university (I had a place at  
Durham), I elected to come work in London. Lets see what I don't have  
to do:
- Run up 30 grand of debt
- Write java for 3 years
- Write code for some ridiculous baby-project that has no real-world  
application, isn't fun to write and frankly bores the crap out of me.

On the other hand:
- Working == earning
- Writing whatever code I feel like (provided that I can find someone  
to pay me to do so)
- Writing real world code that actually does things and has  
interesting problems to solve.

Frankly, I got bored in school when we were being told that computers  
have more hard disk space than RAM [1], which is a bit of a jaw- 
dropping 'no, really' moment. If I'd gone to university and sat  
through all of that crap, there's no way in hell I'd want to do any IT  
work beyond desktop support (and frankly the idea that I might want to  
do desktop support scares the crap out of me).

Of the people I know with genuine, real clue, about half of them have  
degrees. Attending lectures for 3 years does not make you good with  
computers, especially in these days when we have widely available  
internet resources for people to learn from.  On the other hand I'm  
interested as to what percentage of people with clue are more inclined  
to take a degree (coming at it from the other angle).

--James
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