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Help someone interested in Software Development

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  • 27-06-2011 12:22pm
    #1
    JohnP199
    Registered Users Posts: 180 ✭✭


    My brother has just done his leaving Cert and has a few days left to finalise his CAO. Im trying to help him find a few decent courses. He wants to do a course in IT. He doesnt really know anything about programming but thinks its a career he wants to get into. Anyways is there anything online he could read/work on to help assess if coding is something he is capable of?


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    #2
    Placebo
    Registered Users Posts: 8,070 ✭✭✭Placebo


    software development courses, do not really teach much coding. Its more about designing and writing specs for a software. But either way anyone can write code. You don't need to be a genius. If he gets his required grade in the leaving cert [X points and B or whatever in maths] then he is 100% qualified for the course.

    I did computer science and software engineering in maynooth, we did fair bit of programming. You dont need to be a genius at maths but a good math base will help. Anyway i have friends that graduated and work for banks etc etc now, not everyone turned out to be a code guru.


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    #3
    8k2q1gfcz9s5d4
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,616 ✭✭✭8k2q1gfcz9s5d4


    Placebo wrote: »
    software development courses, do not really teach much coding. Its more about designing and writing specs for a software. But either way anyone can write code. You don't need to be a genius. If he gets his required grade in the leaving cert [X points and B or whatever in maths] then he is 100% qualified for the course.

    I did computer science and software engineering in maynooth, we did fair bit of programming. You dont need to be a genius at maths but a good math base will help. Anyway i have friends that graduated and work for banks etc etc now, not everyone turned out to be a code guru.



    The level of coding varies from course to course. I did my undergrad in Sligo IT, and did a masters in NUIM. Did a bit of demonstrating on the undergrad course while I was there. The two under grad courses were very different, but great courses. Not sure how much coding there was in 2nd 3rd and 4th year in NUIM, in 2nd, 3rd and 4th year in sligo IT, half of our subjects were coding subjects, with C# and MS SQL, but in first year, there was not too much, actually around the same amount as in first year in NUIM (I used to demonstrate that module :) )

    OP, I think most software/computing courses assume that first years have never seen a line of code before. I never seen any code before i went to college. Coding is the most important part of a software developemt course, when you go for your first job interview, you will probably be asked a lot of quetions about your final year project. BUT, one thing I noticed when in college, if you are good at maths, you should be able to program. Programming is all about problem solving, like maths. This does not mean that if your bad at maths, you cant program, or that there are hard maths on the corses! The guy who finished top of our class in sligo hated maths! Hope this helped!


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    #4
    ImpossibleDuck
    Registered Users Posts: 1,154 ✭✭✭ImpossibleDuck


    I'm in the same position as your brother except I'm sure I'm doing SE. From what I've heard, they would rather if the first years had never programmed before because they could have picked up bad programming habits that are very hard to unlearn due to the repetition of programming. I've done a little bit of C++ programming just to see what it was like.

    So if he wants to do it, there is absolutely nothing holding him back.


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