College students and programming choices

As a student of a technology institude, as many people out there, I also had problems with my career. In first year, I had no idea what I would learn, and after graduation, what I could do. All I did, were gaming and enjoying free life.

In second year, my friends went to some tech courses, mostly related to networking. I remembered that my classmates handed others with documentation about CCNA, MCSA,… They talked about, networking was trending, and we could get high salary, successful career when go with networking courses. Every company need network department, especially technology related companies. We would easily find a suitable job, and it seemed like a bright furure was waiting for us. It was 2010.

Back in that time, I did not have any idea about networking, also, I did not want to take an exam, which would expire in next 2-3 years (those certificates mostly need to be renewed). Then I went to learn graphic design. Aw, Photoshop, After Effects. I just liked to have my photos retouched, blended and sometimes, I could make a complex manipulation which I could only see on Internet before (not kidding, visit my deviantArt here). I made a short movie for my classmate, for my highschool class, sometimes, funny and lipsync videos with motion graphics and VFX too.

However, everything changed when we were third-year student. We had more subjects, mostly related to computer science, algorithm, database, etc., and ofcourse, nothing related to VFX and motion graphics. My friends also no longer took care about any certification. We had to take exam, do homework, assignment and perform team-work together. Time flied. We had change to look around technology world. And we realized that so many aspects which we had not ever heard about, like big-data, scaling, high performance concurrency, mobility and cloud-computing. 2011 was also when Android were rushing into every corner in the world. Everyone installed Android SDK, downloaded Eclipse, started learning Java Core and made mobile apps. We had less time for gaming, but overload with studying instead.

In fourth year, everything was changed again. Now we were going to graduate soon. And everyone had to go with their own way. People worried about jobs, about offers, etc. We could easily find many many interested job offers on Internet, and most of them requires more than 1 years experience. Aw please, if you have just graduated, then how can you get experience? Some of my friends went to traing course in some companies, others took part in fresher training, like in FPT Software, others did their own business by make startup in gaming, Actually, some founded game studio and could easily do what they would like to do: make game.

Finally, graduation. Friendship You Can’t Keep. When you have to take care of your life yourself without help from parent, you will see life is too busy to live with. We work almost everyday, and spend weekend for sleeping. Sometimes, we go to homeland, or visit some old friends, even we go travel, for 1-2 times per year. Then we surprised that a year was over. Again, time flied faster and faster. Confucius said that, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”. However, we just can’t satisfy anything. We need money to pay for life, we need time to relax, we need to keep relationships, we need to go out and visit places all over the world, but we have to work almost all weekdays, then spend weekend for rest. And we do not have any free time to do anything we want.

That’s life, and you have read until here, you can see that I did not mentioned anything about programming languages, however, I want to give you one advice, maybe college or highschool students, who want to go with information technology or are ready to go, you will see many thing you don’t want to, and no future are made by pink.

Then, in next part of this post, I will give you an overview of programming languages and what we should choose for career, if we want to be a programmer. You are computer science student, the students and programming have closed relationship. And if I don’t want to be programmer? Then it’s find. Hope you find a job that you really love, then you will never have to work a day in your life.