Hi all,

I am new to programming and this is my first post. I also chose to post on this forum because I saw it had the most people viewing and I am looking for some insight. I do not have any sort of IT degree and am about to graduate college with a degree I want nothing to do with. If I spent the next year working towards different IT certificates like it was my job (8 hours a day) would I be in a reasonable position to get a decent IT job? Or does a degree in a computer science hold so much weight that certificates won't matter without it? I'm looking for any and all advice ... I'm just a 21 year old trying to figure out what to do. Please help, thanks.

While a degree will get you in the door better than nothing, it is not the end-all be-all of the industry. In fact, my brother doesnt have a bachelors degree and he makes six figures in IT.
If you are dedicated and versatile you can make it anywhere. In lieu of a degree I would suggest certificates and participation in a large, community based project where you can design a module that has impact to users at large. This shows your credibility to potential employers, your ability to work within a group with people who depend on your work, as well as gets your name known among people who may, at some point, become your coworkers.
You can also start to take online courses as a start to an education to show the intent to your potential employers - MIT has its old curriculum available online for free (open courseware is what I think it is called).
One more thing to recognize is that the fact that you have a degree in something (even though it is not CS/IT) will go a long way to your credibility.

__________________
My personal site: Utilities for text processing, debugging, testing and plotting

Having a degree tells employers that you at least have the "stick-to-it-ivness" to complete something, so taking a chance on hiring you is better than chancing it on someone without a degree. Many times, that's the only reason why a company wants someone with a degree, even though the job may not require it.

If you want to get into programming, there really aren't a whole lot of certifications you can get. Java is the only programming language I can think of that has a certification. So if you want to do programming, just do it. Pick a language and pick a project then teach yourself how. The only way to become a better programmer is by practicing. Once you have some skills and knowledge, take a look at some of the open-source projects on Sourceforge and look at the code. See how others program, then try your hand at fixing some of the issues on the project's "todo" list. Or just ask people you know if they have any programming or automation tasks they need developed.

However, if you want to get into the "IT" field, there are more things to it than just programming. Obviously there is web development, which can range from web programming to web site design and graphic arts. Information systems deals more with implementing well-designed networks and other "office" type situations. Enterprise IT deals with large scale computer systems; quite a different beast from small and medium businesses. And of course there's always tech support.

Many of those areas have certifications you can get, such as A+ for tech support. You can get certifications in certain areas, like operating systems or networking technology. And the computer security field has many certifications available.

Basically, you just need to decide which part of the IT world you want to work in and then figure out what you need to do to achieve that goal.

__________________
Start Programming with Python-A beginner's guide to programming and the Python language.
-------------
Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.