What is the best degree for IT?
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@Draco8573 said:
@scottalanmiller I understand that I will be 25, but the thing is while I want to learn and want to get better. And you are right schools are a little behind the time. And while I can figure things out my brain doesn't work like the rest of yalls. I don't learn like everyone else. Sometimes I just have to have things explained to me a certain way or it just goes right over my head and if I was all by myself I would probably be lost. For example I had a calc class where the professor was decent but I just wasn't understanding what he was saying so i went through like 8 professors that put their lectures on youtube till I found one that made sense to me. I have a pretty bad strain of ADD, because of it i have very bad short term memory and so like I said it helps when I am able to walk up to someone and ask questions.
That makes sense - do you have any examples of learning methods/styles that have worked particularly well for you when learning other topics? There are a wide variety of online courses and classes out there for online IT learning, so if you have the motivation you should be able to find one that works for you. The best part: they're all cheaper than college!
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Plus books, resources like PluralSight, etc.
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@Draco8573 said:
@scottalanmiller I understand that I will be 25, but the thing is while I want to learn and want to get better. And you are right schools are a little behind the time. And while I can figure things out my brain doesn't work like the rest of yalls. I don't learn like everyone else. Sometimes I just have to have things explained to me a certain way or it just goes right over my head and if I was all by myself I would probably be lost. For example I had a calc class where the professor was decent but I just wasn't understanding what he was saying so i went through like 8 professors that put their lectures on youtube till I found one that made sense to me. I have a pretty bad strain of ADD, because of it i have very bad short term memory and so like I said it helps when I am able to walk up to someone and ask questions.
That is the best part. Forums like ML are great and providing many people perspective on a given topic/issue.
If you don't understand what you're reading in a book, create a post - see what kind of responses you get.
Also, don't limit yourself to just one forum. Branch out. Be uncomfortable. This is kinda a must. If you're comfortable, you're probably not learning.
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@Dashrender said:
Also, don't limit yourself to just one forum. Branch out. Be uncomfortable. This is kinda a must. If you're comfortable, you're probably not learning.
Great way to put it.
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@Dashrender said:
That is the best part. Forums like ML are great and providing many people perspective on a given topic/issue.
This really cannot be overstated. In a class what are you getting, one teacher who likely does not and possibly never has, worked in IT and ten to twenty kids who have little perspective on IT all speculating about what things are like today, could be like tomorrow, etc. When there are forums with hundreds or thousands of working professionals available to have those same discussions and learn from the people not just doing stuff today but building the stuff for tomorrow!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Also, don't limit yourself to just one forum. Branch out. Be uncomfortable. This is kinda a must. If you're comfortable, you're probably not learning.
Great way to put it.
You can ask @scottalanmiller I post things that are wrong from time to time (mostly because I was lazy and didn't confirm something), but his calling me out makes me go and confirm what he is saying. This uncomfortable moment is a learning one.
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Same things happen to me all of the time. It's the constant challenging each other, presenting new ideas, discussing them, kicking them around that makes us all keep improving.
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well i do plan to build a home lab when I get the space(i live in a really tiny room so I will have to throw a lot of stuff out to have the room) and when I can afford stuff. but I do think I am going to stick with school and get it done.
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@Draco8573 said:
well i do plan to build a home lab when I get the space(i live in a really tiny room so I will have to throw a lot of stuff out to have the room) and when I can afford stuff. but I do think I am going to stick with school and get it done.
FYI, you can buy some server space online for as little as $5/month, though You'd probably need to spend closer to $20-30 get get what you want with something like Digital Ocean. They offer servers in the cloud. You spin up what you need, used them for testing, then blow them away and lower/kill your costs.
This also teaches you real IT. As Scott said, typical IT Admins don't really touch servers much. The mange them from afar. This would be great experience there too.
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@Dashrender yeah don't have the money. But my work is going to be throwing away some old pcs and server parts ill see if i can get some of that.
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@Draco8573 said:
@Dashrender yeah don't have the money. But my work is going to be throwing away some old pcs and server parts ill see if i can get some of that.
This is a good example of making a trade off. School costs money, you are choosing it over a lab. I'm not saying that that is right or wrong, just that it is really important that you recognize that school appears to be costing you a lab, which in turn costs you experience.
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@Draco8573 said:
@Dashrender yeah don't have the money. But my work is going to be throwing away some old pcs and server parts ill see if i can get some of that.
Perspective again.
That $5/month gets you a server to build something on. then nuke it and do something else. More money means more at once, but not required for all things.Old hardware? How much electricity that going to cost you. Think about it. Power up an old server and just feel the heat coming off of it. So not only do you have the power for the system and monitor, you also have the power to your HVAC in the house running more. The costs are real. The math is fairly simple to work out.
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Not that you won't have any lab. But, for example, at your same age I built a home lab with a few Compaq Proliant servers, some networking gear and about five desktops (mix of Windows and Linux.) Considering that that was the 1990s, getting those things was a really big deal compared to today. Relative cost is much lower today, availability of equipment is much higher and you have broadband to work with, I had dial up and even that was rare at the time. I had to tie up my only phone line to be on line at 33Kb/s, if we could hit that. Often we were at 19Kb/s.
I was working a normal, minimum wage style job working my butt off to put that stuff together. I studied from books and did everything very "hands on."
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@JaredBusch said:
Perspective again.
That $5/month gets you a server to build something on. then nuke it and do something else. More money means more at once, but not required for all things.And you can work on it and turn it off when you are done. If you are too busy to be using it, turn it off and pay nothing.
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@JaredBusch said:
Old hardware? How much electricity that going to cost you. Think about it. Power up an old server and just feel the heat coming off of it. So not only do you have the power for the system and monitor, you also have the power to your HVAC in the house running more. The costs are real. The math is fairly simple to work out.
Solution? Only run servers in winter then turn down Central Heat source
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@Draco8573 said:
@Dashrender yeah don't have the money. But my work is going to be throwing away some old pcs and server parts ill see if i can get some of that.
Check this out! $50 in DigitalOcean credit for students, along with a ton of other resources that will help you get started doing tech stuff.
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@WingCreative said:
@Draco8573 said:
@Dashrender yeah don't have the money. But my work is going to be throwing away some old pcs and server parts ill see if i can get some of that.
Check this out! $50 in DigitalOcean credit for students, along with a ton of other resources that will help you get started doing tech stuff.
That is awesome. Don't forget that Amazon has a free tier too!
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And cloud provider experience is important for your resume as well.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That is awesome. Don't forget that Amazon has a free tier too!
With lots of loopholes, they almost always find a way to charge you.
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In my experience, it has been pretty straightforward to stay within the free tier as long as I stick to one EC2 instance at a time with <30gb attached EBS storage.
Learning to use AWS would definitely be a marketable IT skill - here's a rundown on what you can use the AWS services for. The AWS console is a lot to take in at first, but you can do a lot with it just by learning how to manage EC2 instances. You can also run one small instance for free for the first year you have your account - which is probably all you would need to get some good hands-on experience building servers from scratch.
I started learning how to manage virtual servers on DigitalOcean. The interface was much easier for me to learn how to use because it's entirely focused on building virtual servers... unlike AWS, which can do about a billion different things with its dashboard full of options. You also have the ability to load up a variety of pre-configured servers on DO, so if you'd rather skip learning how to install an application at first you can dive right into messing around with it.
