Posted: 10/5/2005 12:49:42 PM EDT
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Hi, I think I'm in the right place for these questions. I'm usually posting in the Women's Forum. What could a person who has about 3 hours a day to study/work plus a little more on the weekends do from her home in the computer field? Someone out there just spewed his drink on his key board I know, but let's just theorize that I have some real potential in this area (no genius, just potential). I'd like to learn a computer language and work out of my home. Have you any recommendations? Also, my math experience is lower college level and mostly geared toward biological sciences. |
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Depends on what you want to do. If you want to design drivers, or big-box software products like Quicken, Word, etc. then learn C++. Microsoft's .NET framework is good to work in, you can do a LOT with it and it's in demand since there is much quicker turn around for custom business applications. I personally started out with ASP and VB, then switched over to C#. Another thing to consider is cost. If you are going to do this on your own, and maybe do websites for people, PHP on a Linux machine is as cheap as you can get. It's powerful as well, but time to deployment is usually a lot longer than the .NET solutions. Server space is much cheaper for PHP/Linux. ETA: I have heard that not many people are learning COBOL anymore... it's easy and there is a demand for it since banks and other places that use a lot of reports have a lot of investment in it, and the original COBOL programmers are retiring. It's not for me, though. |
| I think msword has free source code that you can download off of msdns microsofts site I have done so you can look at the source and see if this is what you would want to tackle or not. java vs C++ all depends on what you want to do look into .net for internet solutuions and java is an iterpreted language while C++ is a fully compiled language. |
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If your a newbie, play with Java before C++. While Java and C/C++ are somewhat similar, Java is more forgiving. Of course Java and C++ are general purposes languages, there are some nitch languages you might (not) want to try. As for the math, don't worry about it. Edit: I think your question is as open ended as "I wana start shooting, what gun should I buy?" |
That's how clueless I am. Let's see if I can narrow it a little. And thanks everybody for your resourceful comments. 1.) I live in a rural area and want to work out of my home on a project basis. 2.) Can invest in software, etc. 3.) Want something in high demand that a company would be willing to outsource for. 4.) Have really good attention to detail when needed AND broad conceptual skills, so I'm not afraid of tackling a more difficult language. I like that kind of challenge and feeling of accomplishment. |
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Daydreamer. In my experience s/w houses won't 'outsource' to inexperienced programmers. As you are new at this and you want to do it from your house your best bet is to find small businesses (friends or family) that need some specialized package and create it. That kind of thing will give you experience and you'll have projects you can show off in an interview. Of course working for a major player in the industry and getting your name know would sure help  .Personally I'd love to be able to work at home, but in my sector of the industry you get Federal prison time for taking home the 'work related materials' that I need to do my job. 
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Totally anticipating businesses that use specialized software. Live near a big town with a large banking industry. Also could possibly outsource for companies that prepare materials for homeschoolers. Since I'm planning to homeschool my children, it could be a complementary arrangement. Would that steer me toward anything in particular? The company I used to work for used Visual Basic for a simple (no moving visuals) spelling program. |
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Two things to note. 1) Banking industry - all the financial industry (banking, insurance, stocks) have some realy secuity needs & concerns for their software. Reliablity requirements are going to be high. Alot of that industry is/was invested in large mainframes for their important stuff. Though I suppose they have been migrating to servers like the rest of us. 2) Homeschool Software. This is a great idea, while there are a bunch of good education software I see gaps in some areas (my wife and I homeschool our kids). I'd also suggest you get some animation skills if you want to make software for the younger kids. C++ builder would be a good language for non-graphic educational software with it's built-in drag&drop GUI tools, built in internet connectivity, and the ability to interface with Though you will also have to lean SQL (a standard database command set) to program the database portions. I like Builder because it's so easy to put together the GUI interface that will run the application. I can put together a prototype of the interface in minutes - it's really that easy. |
Looks like I better get to work! Believe it or not, I've looked at SQL while preparing (easy) tests on Access... It actually made sense. Do you mind IMing me with what you think the "holes" in homeschool education software appear to be? |
Ya might try small simple projects for small companies. Many times they just need a small program to automate some meanial "data entry clerk" type action. Programs of that type are simple and stright forward (though limited, as they do exactly one thing only) An example would be: Copy all files in the directory to this other directory. Do this at 2 am and only copy the file if it ends in 'q'. |
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you can learn web programming easily, and develop websites. 1.) install / play with Linux - price: free 2.) install / play with Apache on Linux - price: free 3.) install / play with MySQL on Linux - price: free 4.) install / play with PHP on Linux running Apache - price: free total cost: $0.00 spending 3 hours a day, you could probably get started working within a month. |
Linux is free if your time has no value. 
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I would study Excel and Access While I try to avoid the M$ products and use OO myself, many companies will pay good money to have a custom macro spreadsheet made up to process there internal data. My employer uses Excel to track gage caliberation. ( a ISO-9000 requirement ) And they use an Access database to log SPC ( statistical process control ) data. The guy who setup the Access database was paid like $70K and it was just a side job for him (he works in a non computer field for his normal 40hr wk.) MySQL is another area. Because adding a Linux box to the network can be much cheaper than a bunch of Accesss client licenses. HTML and even better XML scripting will be real up and comers. Java also might be a good side line - think of it as C++ lite. Java's best feature is that it can run on any platform. |
I have an excellent grasp of Excel and a fair, beginning grasp of Access (wrote tests for high schoolers for simple Access use)... Setting up a database can be a harrowing job, but $70K!!!! That should get someone a lot of product! Thanks for the database ideas, y'all. It's nice to know that there are so many possibilities. |
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C and C++ are very good bets. PHP is good and is starting to catch on. Perl is fun and very forgiving. Java is showing up alot more often now; IMHO its good for rapid development but performance isn't great. Seriously though, learn C++ and C. Once you learn a language, understanding others will be no problem. -Foxxz |