Failed University twice. Hopeless..

Hey check Udacity one year nano degrees, such as iOS development, android development, business analysis, web development.

You could complete it 3 months.

You could study an online degree via the open university and you could pay monthly studying any degree you wish.

You've got experience and build a portfolio of 5 solid projects in chosen languages. And then apply for those entry level junior developer positions.

For a job in the meantime there is plenty of picker, packer, warehouse operative jobs available if you go to agencies.

Good luck

Is this something you've done? I was thinking of possibly spending time to make a portfolio since i am unemployed and don't have much to do since no one wants to hire me o.o

I'll look at online courses or open universities to see what they're like but I currently have no money.

Apparently there is Student finance for any courses I wish to take that aren't necessarily university.

Yes I've done the same and embarking on freelancing.

You have experience so that's a positive. Most developers got their first job through a portfolio. A few months ago I was looking at entry level/junior c#, Javascript, php, Java jobs and 70% of these developer jobs don't require a degree.

Javascript and it's frameworks is the future and in high demand so is C#.

Check out the Udacity nanodegrees, you will learn and have a portfolio of 5-6 high quality projects so you will have a porfolio and even if you don't get a job in that language you could transfer it to another language.

The Udacity nano degrees are £150 per months and they have offers.

As for money there is plenty of picker, packer, warehouse operative jobs available if you go to agencies.

I'm not sure about student finance so enquire about that.

Good luck

Look up Codeclan, Makers Academy etc if university doesn't work for you, or if you can, self-teach.

Unfortunately, some university staff don't grasp that they're there to provide a service, which you're paying for (whether at full price or not is another matter but nevermind that.) Otherwise, what's their point?

I'll take a look. As I said to the other guy, I feel there's lots of free information online to be able to program and build a portfolio but I work best when semi-taught and challenged with some kind of schedule.

I guess it would be a great start to self teach and motivate but it's difficult when you don't know what it is you need to know.

I mean there's lots of ways to go about it. It's down to your budget, preferred learning style, aptitudes, time you have to invest in it etc. Self-teaching may work very well for some people and it will be the cheapest method. I'm currently contemplating whether to do a 1 year conversion MSc or one one of those code bootcamps. I know some mates at work who've been to them and found them really useful, but I want to go a bit deeper and gain a wider understanding of comp sci besides just coding, which the Msc might help for.

I get you. Comp sci Is very broad and i feel is easiest to learn at uni. although what you learn isn't a lot of detail, It's mostly self learning regardless. If you have the motivation, I'd say you would be best looking at subjects within computer science then taking the time to learn as much as you can about each individual subject.

But as you say, there's a lot to consider, the best way for you to learn and the time you have. I think i'll spend tomorrow exploring my options.

What area of Compsci is it you're interested in? AI Robotics, Networking security, computer systems...

AI appeals to me the most, but I'd also like to get a deeper understanding of the tech behind blockchain technologies. I mention comp sci because these MSc courses tend to focus on software development but compress in enough modules so that 1/3 or so (depending on course, optional modules etc) is devoted to comp sci. Whereas coding bootcamps are far more specifically focused on software development from what I've seen of their curricula. No doubt you can self-teach, but personally I would prefer a more structured learning environment and having the benefit of the piece of paper.

Don't let your finances be the reason why you're not studying on a course - you can usually still apply for loans even if you've had a loan for other courses in the past and been unsuccessful. You can find information about help with learning costs here: https://www.gov.uk/career-skills-and-training

Have you considered seeking an apprenticeship? Have a browse through the UK Govt apprenticeships website and see whether you find anything interesting - I had a quick look and found several software development apprenticeships, so there may be something you'll be able to apply for: https://www.gov.uk/apprenticeships-guide

Also, consider taking a look at edX - there are a lot of good (completely free) courses there written by global top universities, and many by companies like Microsoft too - https://www.edx.org/

If you have a lot of spare time, then a fantastic way to get yourself some relevant experience is to donate your time to an open-source project. Open source projects can sometimes seem a little daunting as a newcomer, but that's because it requires you to follow the same steps you might find in a commercial environment too - learning how to use some unfamiliar software, debugging and working in somebody else's unfamiliar code, maybe working with poor documentation, needing to communicate with the project owner and other contributors, figuring out how to use github or other source control. All of these are perfect topics to put on your CV and talk about in a programming interview because they're the kinds of things you get on a day-to-day basis when somebody hires you into a full-time development job

Have a read here in case it's something which might interest you: http://www.firsttimersonly.com/

Lastly, if your goal is to find a job working in software development, keep that objective in your mind and don't lose sight of the skills which employers will want you to have. It doesn't hurt to try to look at requirements for junior level jobs; you can even apply and seek feedback from them to learn more about what their expectations are, then see how that compares with your current skills. You need to reach a point where an employer is willing to trust you with an opportunity, so it helps a lot to understand where your weaknesses are so that you can work at improving those.

Being competent and confident in a programming language is essential, as well as knowing how to apply the standard libraries fromthat language, but it's also important to understand other related concepts in detail too such as OO programming/OO Design, then other related skills like SQL and data modelling.

Make sure you have at least one strong, non-trivial, demonstrable project that you've spent a considerable amount of time working on - this should be your showpiece; something you're proud to show in an interview which convinces the interviewers that you can do the job. You'll presumably be teaching yourself a whole range of different tools, and ways to solve problems, or work with different libraries/frameworks - your showcase project should try to cover a decent chunk of this.

Beyond that, the skills which you need to succeed in software development are about problem solving - more specifically, reasoning about why something is a problem (understanding root causes or getting to the core of that problem) then applying your skills to get the "right" solution to that problem. You'll spend a lot of time reading, understanding and working with problems related to existing systems and existing code, making changes or adding enhancements to a "live" project.

While your analytical, technical and problem-solving skills are undoubtedly the most important thing, but make sure you've got the "soft" skills too - employers like people who are strong communicators, who bring a positive attitude into their work life (and don't bring their ego into the workplace), who have attention-to-detail, enthusiasm, a willingness to learn, and who know how to work alongside other people in order to get a job done. It's not uncommon to find technically competent people who make themselves unemployable by appearing to be unmotivated, poor communicators or just appear to lack general professional skills.

Thank you very much! I'll check out those links and come up with some kind of plan. I have looked at apprenticeships and applied but they seem to expect as much as normal junior position. i think C# is the best place to start as I have knowledge in it and I know how to program in it. I'll work on building my skills, researching, working on projects and into open source stuff too. I have used github as a cheeky way to stop twitch ads, no programming in it but just using programs others have created and adaptions to twitch 5 (I think it's called) which allows you to interact with twitch, streams their live streams and ETC.

If you were me, what would your first step be to learning? I was thinking about a short course online, maybe an open university or finding something free online and building on what I learn. https://www.edx.org/ seems a good place to start/

Again, Thank you

Yeah, edX has got a lot of free C# stuff on there, nearly all is courtesy of Microsoft. - This will give you a lot to work with for now. The nice thing about these are that they're self-paced, so you aren't going to be tied down to deadlines, and free, so you're not going to be getting into even more student debt (unless you want to pay for the certificates, in which case they're still not that expensive, although I am not personally 100% convinced that certificates are really necessary - it is always possible to demonstrate your technical ability in other ways.).

If you haven't already, the first thing I would do, is download and install some tools on your computer:
- Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition (Same as professional edition, but with a free licence for home users, students, lone programmers, etc)
https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/

- SQL Server Developer Edition (Same as the standard edition, but free for developers)
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/sql-server/sql-server-downloads
Make sure you install the "management studio" as well as SQL server itself - it's a separate download - lots of Microsoft tutorials tend to use SQL server for various things. In particular, C# courses often use tools which allow you to read and write data to/from SQL server, using C# code, (and without actually writing any actual SQL either, although knowing SQL is also handy.).

Microsoft seem to have invested a huge amount of money into their edX courses, including some courses for C#, .NET and other related stuff. I haven't personally enrolled on any of these (I already work with C# and .NET anyway) but I use a lot of Microsoft's online resources for C# and .NET (MSDN, Channel 9, etc), so I would be very surprised if they were anything less than high quality.

Some of them may be more or less accessible than others though - I would make sure you're good with the prerequisites before you start any of them. This is probably the order I'd look at them in:

Firstly, make sure you know how to use the Visual Studio debugger (The reason I mention this is that universities are terrible at teaching this - possibly one of the most basic skills when it comes to programming, yet people routinely graduate with a CS degree from University having no idea what a debugger is or how to troubleshoot broken code...)
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/ide/getting-started-with-debugging-in-visual-studio

OO Programming in C# course (Seems like an intermediate C# course - there's a basic course too, but it sounds like you already know the basics):
https://www.edx.org/course/object-oriented-programming-c-microsoft-dev204-2x-0

Data Access in C#:
https://www.edx.org/course/data-access-c-net-core-microsoft-dev258x
(This teaches some really important aspects of C# - particularly LINQ and lambdas, which will blow your mind - in a good way - if you've never used those before...)

Asynchronous Programming in C#:
https://www.edx.org/course/asynchronous-programming-c-net-core-microsoft-dev235x
(Pretty much essential in the modern world. Nearly any C# project these days involves multi-threading and asynchrony)

C# Data Structures and Algorithms - Classic technical job interview knowledge:
https://www.edx.org/course/algorithms-data-structures-c-microsoft-dev204-3x-0

SQL Server. Not directly related to C#, but C# is the language of choice for a lot of companies who build large-scale database-driven systems. These days it's hard to become a programmer without getting involved in some database stuff:
https://www.edx.org/course/querying-data-transact-sql-microsoft-dat201x-0

Server-side Web API programming using C# and ASP.NET Core:
https://www.edx.org/course/build-web-apis-using-asp-net-microsoft-dev247x-0
(Note: ASP.NET is no longer just for people who want to create websites - the technologies which are used for running web servers are increasingly being used for other things like mobile apps, business systems, cloud-based services, etc.)

More advanced C# course using ASP.NET Core:
https://www.edx.org/course/program-a-server-side-application-using-aspnet-core
(There's a more web stuff involved in this, but realistically speaking you can't really escape some exposure to web technologies these days.. If you reach this point, you're doing well)

This one looks interesting - a non-programming course about problem solving and logical thinking. I have a feeling it might have examples in Python because it seems to be related to their Python course. To be honest, if you can understand C#, Python isn't a stretch, and the programming language isn't as important as the critical-thinking mindset of how to solve problems:
https://www.edx.org/course/logic-computational-thinking-microsoft-dev262x-1

Lastly, this one - it's a bit of an "odd one out", but since you mentioned that you'd used github, here's Microsoft's "Writing Professional Code" course.
https://www.edx.org/course/writing-professional-code-microsoft-dev275x-1
This course actually looks (to me) like perhaps the most important one of the whole lot. Looking at its content, it's the kind of stuff which makes most students think "Huh? so what? who cares? Zzzz - boring!" because it seems to cover all the stuff which Universities never teach you, and you won't truly appreciate until you're actually in a job writing code. Then again, it's all stuff that employers really, really care about. It includes git, but also stuff like code reviews, unit testing, coding standards, etc. Maybe more of a "how to be a programmer" course than "how to program".

Also, if ASP.NET isn't your thing, and you'd prefer to use C# to write an app for an Android or Apple device, have a look at Xamarin for writing mobile apps:
https://university.xamarin.com

Finally, if you get through all of that, then you're in a good position, but then there's all the rest... https://www.edx.org/school/microsoft