
CS graduate, no knowledge, 50K in debt.  Any advice is appreciated. - betterfuture123
Hello everyone,
I apologize ahead of time to the community, but this is a throw away account, maybe.  And I promise you that this is not a joke.<p>I'm a college graduate with a BS in computer science from a decent university.  I'm 50K in debt, and have almost no experience/knowledge.  I have some working experience and am currently working a very basic job.  Not much to it, though it is related to programming, and definitely has potential.<p>Long story short I just had an epiphany/life crisis.  I realized that I didn't really do anything with my life thus far, and I would like to change that starting right now.  I'm a farley sharp person.  I'm not saying that I'm at the level of a genius, but I can assure you I have more capabilities than I currently present to anyone, including my employer.<p>I have made it a point to try and make myself the best I can be, starting right now.  Not 'the best', but the best I can possibly be.  Already admitting to not knowing much, I'm here to request some guidance.  If you are here to only remind me of how big of a failure I am, please keep your peace.  Thank you.<p>I'm here to ask you, because I know that most of you here are very sharp and amazingly accomplished, so please treat me like a college freshman and advise me.
I would like for you to show me a few routes that would potentially spark an interest in me.  I find programming very amazing, but due to procrastination and basically wasting my life, I really don't know much at all.  Treat me like a 60 year old who just heard about computers (though I pray to God that I know at least a bit more than that).
I am definitely interested in programming, but I have not found something to be passionate about.  And we all know passion can move mountains.<p>Please advise me on where to begin, what to read, and how to learn.  I believe that to be a programmer one must think in a certain way and I'm hoping that I can work and build myself to think that way.  Maybe this piece of information would help; I'm a visual learner.
Also, please advise me on how I can begin to impress my employer and prove to them that I am a capable employee.  Any advice is greatly appreciate.  I appologize for making this a long post, but I've for once been sincere about this, I would appreciate it if you would do the same.<p>Thank you,<p>EDIT:
Thanks to gsivil!
I really just did enough to pass classes.  So most of my college is just a blur, but I do recall finding Operating Systems very interesting.
Looking at my bookshelf nothing makes me want to run to it, but I've always been fond of C++, Java, and Python.  Not because I've worked with them a lot, but because I've seen them do amazing things.
Please ask me for any kind of information, I will continue to add them here or below your post.<p>Thank you for being so kind.
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zck
Pick something small and write it. A firefox extension? An iphone app? A
website that randomly picks toppings for nachos? Some task with an Arduino,
since you are interested in hardware?

Just work on it until you're satisfied with it, or come up with a better idea
to hack on.

~~~
pdelgallego
This is a good advice but I would have said:

Just work on it until it's finish.

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geekytenny
"I can assure you I have more capabilities than I currently present to anyone,
including my employer"

"please advise me on how I can begin to impress my employer and prove to them
that I am a capable employee".....

You have the answer right within your text.... present more to your employer
(more of the stuff you have that he/she cant see now..) Go the extra mile in
all tasks.

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hasenj
What's your MBTI (Myers-Briggs) type? It can be of help in finding the kind of
work that's suitable for you.

Something else, don't rely on a job for experience. Most programming jobs
(specially if they're boring) sap away your experience instead of enriching
it; they make you a worse programmer than what you already are or what you
could've been.

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gsivil
I wish you the best. Since you already have a degree in CS and you like
computing you could be a little bit more specific on the topics and courses
that you relatively enjoyed. This could possibly help the HNers to give you
solid and useful advice.

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CyberFonic
I hope it was sex, drugs and rock-n-roll that had you so detached from your
classes. I'm finding it difficult to reconcile your claim of being rather
sharp and then having such a foggy notion of what your classes were about.

Couple of questions: How do you learn best? Reading, tinkering and learning,
being shown how to? What are you passionate about? - I mean outside of
programming, perhaps connected to the opening comment. Have you become self-
motivated? or still need a mentor to guide you?

I think if answer the above questions you might discover a path forwards. If
you share the answers with us on HN, then people might be able to chip in with
suggestions.

~~~
betterfuture123
it was mostly trying to manage paying for as much as i could on my own. My
parents made enough for me not to be eligible for FA, but not enough to pay my
tuition.

I pick up the fastest when I'm shown, but that doesn't really teach me much,
it only shows me how to do that one specific thing, so I usually learn by
practicing over and over, until I'm comfortable it.

I'd like to be successful, not sure if I'm passionate about it, or just afraid
of ending up a middle-aged guy with no future. I have become motivated to do
something, but unfortunately I still don't what direction to point this energy
towards. I hope that made sense. Please feel free to ask as much as you'd
like, after all, you guys are the ones offering to guide me.

~~~
CyberFonic
Most people will tell you that you can't be passionate about being successful
(whatever that means) nor about being happy. Passions are like: real-estate
(Donald Trump), sports and media (Ted Turner), human rights (Nelson Mandela),
the ecology (David Suzuki). I'm passionate about finding ways of using IT more
effectively and in ways to reduce our impact on our environment. Some people
are into flying, teaching, healing, etc, etc.

Now, it's our turn: What are you passionate - or at least very interested in?

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msutherl
The most important thing is to put yourself in a context that stimulates your
growth. Some examples: [1] start hanging out at a hacker space, [2] find a
friendly university research lab (this is what I do), [3] find a company that
is willing to train you, [4] dive into Ruby/Python/Lisp/... and start hanging
out with the club in your area.

Just being in the presence of other people who are working in your field will
inspire you, show you how to act and what to do, and lead to opportunities
that you can't imagine in advance.

You need to learn how to learn how to be a programmer (or whatever else you
want to be).

------
prog
Most open source projects are always short on contributors. Pick a project
thats of interest to you and start contributing documentation, patches, tests
etc. Be open to review feedback for existing project devs. You will lean a lot
and have fun in the process.

What to read would be related to what project interests you. If the project
needs C, read up on that. If it needs Python/Perl/Ruby read up on that.
Something like 'The Art of Unix Programming'
(<http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/>) is always useful.

Good luck :-)

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marceldegraaf
I would say: before forcing yourself into a profession or into activities that
you _think_ are good for you, try to find out what you actually _like_ doing.

Nothing is as devastating as having a job that you're not enthusiastic about
and, vice versa, it seems that people are usually more motivated to achieve
success when they're doing something they like.

You've graduated in CS, but perhaps you should look beyond the computer
related stuff?

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ig1
Have you tried applying to tech consultancies ? - they often hire non-CS
graduates and teach them programming from the ground up.

~~~
newyorker
Can you name some companies that I can look into for more info in NYC area?

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watmough
Tell us about a couple of projects you did that meant something to you.

~~~
betterfuture123
I enjoyed my OS class working with semaphores, shared memory, and some process
scheduling was fun.

I wish I had a chance to take a class that took me deep into computer
hardware, but unfortunately my curriculum didn't have any hardware focus at
all...

