Programming as a career change?

1 points by zumtar 8y ago ↗ HN

My sister-in-law has asked for my help about a possible career change.

Her current field is social science, and has a masters degree in politcal science, she's worked at NGOs and in acedemia and has recently moved into a marketing/communications company where she isn't overly happy.

She asked me for advice on how to retrain as a programmer, she likes the idea of one day being a "digital nomad" (as she is in her early 30s and has no real ties to the place where she lives).

As she speaks multiple languages and has a good eye for design I think she'd be good as a technical person who can interact with customers and use her social science background to her advantage.

She is interested in web-development (but has no experience at all) so I suggested that she should first participate in some sort of self-study UNIX course, and then move on to a scripting language of some sort.

Does anyone else have any good advice that may help her?

4 comments

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AnimalMuppet 8y ago ↗

To me, a self-study UNIX course does not look like the ideal starting point for a journey to web development...

(I don't know what alternative to suggest, because I don't do web development. But UNIX seems pretty far away.)

zumtar 8y ago ↗

Thanks for the comment, I'm a long time UNIX user (since the early 90s) and because I see the majority of web-applications running on *NIX systems, I, personally think a grounding in UNIX is quite important. I could be wrong though, so I'm all ears to any suggestions for her.

flyaboveothers 8y ago ↗

I'd have to agree with @AnimalMuppet.

Unix is not where I would suggest someone to being if they're new and going for web dev.

I suggest maybe some course on simple html/css first. And then, a course into JavaScript.

cimmanom 8y ago ↗

I'd suggest an online course or bootcamp. Not because graduates of these courses are immediately employable (they're not), but to get an overview of what needs to be learned to be a web developer, and how much interest and aptitude she has. After that, I'd recommend a deeper dive into whatever aspect most interest her, in order to develop employment-ready skills.