Opportunity

[Phil Waclawski]

As a CIS (Computer Information Systems) Faculty at Mesa Community College,
I am of course biased. I do feel that we offer a good education at an
affordable price compared to the universities. With CIS, we focus more on
actually coding/making things than theory. So, you won't build compilers,
but you will build working programs, web sites, databases etc etc.

Education is definitely shifting, and the "taught yourself" crowd has done
well since the early days :) I tell my students that they need to work on
some projects for themselves, or work with another group on code/etc.
Employers want to see what you have done. The degree is great, but if that
is all you have, you are at a disadvantage. And learn to network if you
truly want to get a good job.

I am looking forward to seeing how our first 4 year degree (Data Analytics
and Programming) pans out when it starts Fall 2023.

Phil W

On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 7:08 PM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

>
>
> Sounds like a good school.  I do not think my JC experience was a s
> good.
>
>
> On 2022-08-22 19:13, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> > On Mon, 2022-08-22 at 15:35 +0000, der.hans via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> >> Am 22. Aug, 2022 schwätzte greg zegan via PLUG-discuss so:
> >
> >> Community college won't get you all the way to CS or EE, but you can
> >> get a
> >> bunch of the non-domain specific classes that way.
> >
> > You wouldn't believe all I learned at Santa Monica Community College
> > (SMC) in the
> > 1980's. Most important, I learned the program architecture tool of that
> > era,
> > functional decomposition. At SMC I learned to design both Cobol and
> > Pascal programs
> > using functional decomposition. And by learning Pascal, I had a leg up
> > learning C,
> > Python, Perl, Java, Javascript, and pretty much every language that can
> > be used
> > procedurally.
> >
> > SMC taught me systems analysis, the art, science and procedure of
> > querying for user
> > requirements, incorporating them into the design, planning the
> > project, writing the
> > specs, and implementing them in code. As a freelancer, this gave me a
> > huge
> > advantage, because I could dig down to what the user/customer REALLY
> > wanted, tell
> > them whether it was feasable within time/budget constraints, and then
> > deliver the
> > software.
> >
> > I don't know if community colleges are still as good, and I suspect
> > California
> > community colleges are the best, and SMC is among the best of them, but
> > my
> > experience tells me that a few courses at a community college can
> > jumpstart your
> > career.
> >
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