Hi ladies and gentlemen and ladies,
Today work handed me some lemons and my job as of next month no long involves travel and I won’t be doing what I want to be doing for the most part. I’m pretty devastated by the news; despite the fact that the transition is technically a promotion, it’s just not what I want to do and I wasn’t given an option to decline.
So now I’m looking at making lemonade with these lemons. I’ve always wanted to go back to school for Computer Science but I haven’t been able to do to work. Now that I’ll be working normal hours and not traveling and I have the time to get back in the game.
However I’m not sure if it’s worth the investment as far as money is concerned. A degree would be fantastic but I think my merits could carry me if I could really develop some skills. Basically what I want to get out of the degree is a more formal understanding of Software Engineering. Right now I write web-apps in Python/Django and I also know PHP, various SQL languages, and some other bit things.
I am not confident in these skills as enough to secure employment. I want to learn to write apps for the the desktop, not just the web, which would require me to learn Objective-C (interested more in the mac side of life) at the very least.
The other aspect I need schooling is formal software development techniques. I can develop the actual programs, but I don’t know why things work the way they work. All the nitty gritty things beyond “this works and this doesn’t” elude me.
So do I need to go back to school for this or can I teach myself these things through books and practice?
I’d really appreciate some help because I find myself at a crossroads and I’m lost.
