Hi Pex,

Good question. As another guy who lacks any tangible degree in CS or related fields, I can tell you what I did from my own experience. I got into entry-level positions where I showed interest in learning to program and was fortunate to be given a chance to do so, so I could cut my teeth on real-world problems. So, one way would be to find a small business, usually a design house of some sort and basically do whatever you can to get in and help them out. Chances are, they have a bunch of tasks they want cheap labor to do for them instead of having a $100/hr developer handle them. Either way, its 85% selling yourself and 15% what you know. If you clearly have a passion for it, and convince them you are willing to do whatever it takes, included self-directed learning and extra hours to make your pay a good investment, you shouldn't have trouble convincing them you add value.

I wouldn't even bother going to agencies that are more established. If you can't seem to find one that fits the mold, then going online to pound the pavement is the next logical step.

Establishing your portfolio is another good way to give people an idea of your abilities. Get some actual examples of your abilities up online. Build something that can be played with. Right now, what you have are a bunch of acronyms, what you need are some basic tools showing your comprehension.

I understand real experience is what you are looking to accrue. In that case, you should PM me, so we can at least talk about what it is you can do, what you want to do and what I might be able to give you to meet your goal. I can be found on skype fred.bliss as well. I can show you more about what I've done and we can take it from there

Best,

Fred

Thanks for the response Fred! I have sent a Skype request and look forward to talking to you.

I am going to have to disagree with not contacting larger more established businesses, most times you'll find these businesses are in a more stable financial situation - meaning they will have funds available to take risks like this.

I had this conversation early this year with a friend of mine that was in the same situation, shes now working for a well established larger company with the very little experience she has, learning 10 x faster than she ever could due to the amount of knowledge around her and loving it.

Her Approach - probably wont work for everyone - was persistence... she went out and bought herself a bunch of laptop batteries, enough to run her laptop for upto 8hrs, selected the company she had decided she was going to be working for, showed up at their office mon - fri at 9am, ask if they had any vacancies, if theyd say no she'd ask if she could just type a couple notes in the waiting area and would sit their all day doing anything she could that was related to the job, a few weeks later one of the management team grabbed her and put her to work, free initially for a couple months and nowadays full time payed employment.

good luck pex

oh my gosh, I sure can... its all she talks about...

Shes doing 90% database work.. setting up databases, writing basic stored procedures etc with the aim to work on high end database driven apps in the future

Like SQL database work? And did she teach herself or go to school?

jiffyspop, what tutorials did you use to learn mysql?

yup sql database stuff, from what I gather its mostly taking the data and inputing it based on the head programmers requirements, ie the hp will draft an sql table he needs on a piece of paper and she creates the table from it. she calls it a PA with flare lol

no previous establishment training, learnt everything using a bunch of different online tutorial etc along with my 5cents and a few other friends we both have in the industry for about a year, shes quite computer savvy though and prior to having children was a secretary who 'apparently' was the go to girl of the 98's (windows 98 that is, lol her words not mine)

what part of the industry are you looking to break into?

This may sound like a cop-out answer, but I want to break into whatever part of the industry is in the most demand. I have been going through tutorials on different topics trying to get a basic feel for each. But I know I will be better off picking something and really specializing in it, I just don't know what the easiest one to get a job will be. If you have any suggestions that would be great. I found the mysql tutorial probably the most easy to understand, but it was basic, I am sure it gets much more difficult. However, I am extremely committed to figuring it all out. I work full-time, but at nights or any free time have been studying all the coding I can.

Everything in I.T is hot right now, employment wise. I dont believe it matters which area you decide on... your best bet imo anyway is to go with the part you enjoy the most, I know it probably seems like youre enjoying every part of what youre learning right now but I'll take a guess and say that there have been some things that you have stumbled on that have you telling yourself "I'll go to bed soon - then hours later youre still on that same topic" and other times you can barely get past the first paragraph of something. I would suggest making a note of whats keep you up at night and reviewing that list later down the track to see if any specific areas stand out.

[DELETED]

Check out MIT and other top colleges on Youtube, they have channels where they share many of their courses free to the public. You wont actually earn a degree or get any certificates but you will get some great education in programming and various other disciplines if you are interested in learning.

I would suggest learning computer logic and computer math as well as OOP.

Between PHP and ASP when it comes to corporate work you will find more openings available for ASP.net and microsoft server technologies. C# and pretty much anything microsoft, especially .net programming. If you are serious about earning a living in the corporate world then I would say go all out learning Microsoft and leave the open source world behind.

If you want to do freelance and get webdesign jobs then it is opposite, you want to focus on php, html, css etc... It really comes down to what it is you want to do, the corporate world and the freelance world are two entirely seperate things.

I would read job proposals posted on the various head hunter sites and see what their requirements are and the type of jobs being offered right now. That will help you decide which languages to focus on and what technologies to learn.