[nfbcs] Computer science major college question

Tue Jul 5 17:14:51 UTC 2016

one of the greatest benefits of the degree is what you have access to as a
student. The most important being internships. Every person I knew in my CS
degree from Arizona State that did an internship had a job waiting for them
upon graduation including me. Many of these are available for CS and IT
majors.

On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Deborah Armstrong via nfbcs <
nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> I enjoyed reading through this discussion. I would add that if your name
> is out there and you can demonstrate your knowledge of programming you can
> probably find an employer who won't care about the degree.
>
> But, if you are going to companies as an unknown, the degree is the only
> way they have of confirming your skills; same thing goes for a community
> college or even a MOOC certificate of completion.
>
> One job I got back in the start of this century was writing JAVAScript. In
> the interfview, the guy told me he wouldn't consider hiring someone without
> a degree, and I didn't have one. I told him that JavaScript wasn't a "real"
> language taught by academics and I would like to show him my skills. So
> using just notepad on a tiny laptop, I made a simple web page with a form
> and some simple JavaScript to verify the accuracy of the entries.
>
> What impressed the guy was that I could do it in notepad, even though I
> made a typo in the HTML that created a table. So he hired me, and then he
> tried to test other prospects by making them use notepad, which for
> sightlings who depend on authoring systems, didn't work so well. It was a
> borring job, I ended up looking a lot at other people's flawed JavaScript
> and fixing it, but there are worse ways to get a paycheck!
>
> The problem blind people have today as that many of the programming IDES
> aren't accessible, so especially as a beginner taking programming classes,
> you could conclude that you can't code, when in fact you just can't hack --
> in more than one sense -- the environment under which you are expected to
> learn. Many of us old-timers learned when the command line was king and we
> didn't need to futz with laying out objects on a screen, opening projects
> and dealing with anything graphical at all.
>
> For example, I programmed back in the 1980s, but you wouldn't want to hire
> me today -- my skills are deprecated! I was looking in to writing some
> Android apps and was unhappy that Android Studio is so inaccessible. Most
> of the courses require you use Android studio, so I'll have to teach
> myself, I guess with Eclipse. I also looked in to writing iPHONE apps, and
> after reading a wonderfully detailed article here
>
> http://www.applevis.com/guides/programming-ios-programming-os-x-voiceover/voiceover-users-guide-xcode
> On how to do this eyes-free, I decided it wasn't worth the effort -- had I
> been younger, I might have had a different attitude. I just don't have the
> requisite skills, like a knowledge of Swift to really follow this article.
>
> The difference for me is that I know I know how to code, and having taken
> UML a few years ago -- that's another sstory, I do have some understanding
> of design patterns. But at nearly sixty years of age, I'm not willing to
> struggle with semi-accessible stuff just to get paid to code again. If your
> first experience is with something that's semi-accessible, you could
> conclude you lack talent which might not be at all true.
>
> At the college where I now work, I think we've seen about twenty blind
> people attempt and fail at programming courses. I don't think anyone has
> succeeded yet, which is terribly sad, since I was a software engineer. I
> try to help them, but it's all integrated development environments these
> days and these twenty-somethings are so impatient. I wrote my own DOS
> screen reader in Turbo Pascal and assembly when I was their age, and I'm
> not any smarter than they are; I just have way more self-confidence --
> always have!
>
> If I was starting now, I'd take a year off from college, from any school,
> and hone my self-discipline. I'd master Linux, get hooked up with some
> open-source project, actively participate on forums, ask for mentoring.
> These open source projects always need testers, tech writers and other
> community support personell. If you focus on doing that while you read code
> --lots of code -- work on understanding what it does -- you can then
> approach some employers after that year and also begin to ascertain whether
> you need to spend the time and money you'll need for that certificate or
> degree.
>
> If you need money, take a year off and focus on writing apps. Get together
> with groups of local app developers; follow the above article; take some of
> the free online courses on writing apps, but just do it. You might sell
> your app and make enough money to help out your hobby lifestyle and you can
> then decide on the degree later.
>
> And while academics sneer at JavaScript, it's a great first language if
> you don't know programming at all, as is the Bash scripting language, or in
> Windows the built-in PowerShell language. Lots of free resources for the
> absolute beginner who wants to master these, and if you're a Powershell or
> bash whiz there are plenty of Jobs out there for you.
>
> We've been sold a bill of goods that you need a degree to succeed. That
> sounds sacreligious coming from someone working at a college, but the
> reality is that many people get the degree because they are afraid to
> pursue success without that lifeline!
>
> --Debee
>
>
>
>
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