Does anyone have any experience of the open university's Bsc Computing and IT and whether it's worthwhile? I'm working in logistics atm and need a distance learning degree orientated to web development with Java or .Net. Literally starting from scratch though I dropped out of a computer science degree about a decade ago and did a C&G in Visual Basic Programming. I've been doing some work for my company involving their oracle db and creating solutions for work issues such as creating complex excel sheets for logging of fuel transfers etc. Extended it into a primitive database with some sql lookups etc. Anyone I want to make a real change in career so seriously looking at this degree as a path to follow.
what is the exact career you want to move towards, web development? or database work, its not entirely clear from your post any specific area / industry you want to specialise in? backends, frontends or both.
I'm angled towards web development atm as I seem to grasp it well and enjoy it the most. I've been inclined to start a project for myself to develop a website based on my fav game Eve. My hope is to create a site that has a news front end, forum then expand into a member area with access to API features from eve. The idea is to use this as a platform to learn key skills like html > css > javascript / jquery > asp.net > SQL This in turn will provide skills to develop work based solutions such as an intranet site to log and analyse fuel movements etc. To my mind it'd be more generalist in web development to develop sites and solutions in works case logistics solutions. The uni course seemed like a practical way of doing this with the end result being a degree qualification that would aid me immensely (especially as my american wife wants us to go live there eventually). I'm limited on what I can do as I work 12hr shifts 4 on and 4 off day and night rotations preventing me doing anything that would require physical attendance.
Interactive media is what you want, its the design element of computing. It involves website building straight from code to using applications like dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors. Photoshop and Illustrator skills get polished up too. You learn all languages you listed above apart from SQL but to be honest once you learn some of them the rest will make sense and theres always plenty of online tutorials to help build your skills What you want to do is a great idea but as a first project its massive in scale and would put you off if you attempted straight away due to the amount of front end and back end stuff as well as regular updating and maintenance. My HNC course is over 1 year and am only in 2 and a half days a week. HND is over 2 and Bsc can be done in 3-4years but thats a hell of a lot of work. Thats how it works for me up here in scotland not sure where you are but would be similar id imagine.
Your language 'order' seems to be good, but I would switch out asp.net for PHP. It has more support with other operating systems and is open source. Asp.net will only run properly on a Windows server - which severely limits portability.
Sounds good I can always switch back later as I have all the books to study from. Just bought the brand new PHP and MySql quickpro guide from Larry Ullman so hopeful it is a good resource. The interactive media route sounds ideal as well but comes back to my limitations which is frustrating. The way my work operates is on a shift moving basis e.g. Mon - Tues - Wed - Thurs all 6pm to 6am then 4 off which is great but next rotation is: Tues - Wed - Thurs - Fri same shift 6pm to 6am with 4 off then it changes for two rotations to 6am - 6pm. So it makes it impossible to commit to a fixed attendance course as for 3 weeks approx. that date would not be feasible as I'd be at work. Work will also not make an exception to let me do it but same time I must have the job to support my family and can't afford to not do it. This means distance learning courses are my only realistic option and that severely limits what I can choose. It means choosing less ideal courses like UO's computing and IT just because it is non attendance based. I've yet to find a perfect course like your mentioned with all the skills that results in a bsc (which I'll need for the US) and is distance. It's frustrating but hey I blew my chance to do it the right way over a decade ago when I dropped out of my comp science course Edit: After further consideration I'd like to narrow down my interest to web development cross platform so perhaps the UO's course Java elements might be valuable afterall.
oOo if you want to do pure web development that will be completely cross-platform, then try HTML5. New standard but most browsers support it now. Then to take it one step further - ditch the 'old' Flash, use HTML5 video element or WebGL! It's pretty much OpenGL for Javascript. And now that it has support on browsers released in 2010 and up, it would be a useful thing to learn. It *might* even replace Flash and Java for web development.
