Is a degree needed to enter IT development (coding)?

royal1990

Basically, I am learning Java in my spare time in the hopes to build an App.

I do have a degree, but it isn't strictly in programming or computer science, however, I did cover html and css for website design.

I am hoping that in being able to build something and show it to an employer, I may be able to land a graduate level job.

Do you think my lack of relevant degree would deter?

I could potentially study a Masters (conversion course) in IT related subject.

Reply 1

Tootles

Original post by royal1990

If you want to learn to program, learn a language but also spend time thinking about tasks you don't think about often, and how you'd tell a computer to do them. Think about that often and apply it to as many tasks as you can think of, to as low a level as you can. Basically, flowchart life.

You don't need a degree to become a developer ("software developer," might I add, not "IT developer"), you need demonstrable skills.

Also I'd say you're extremely unlikely to just jump into an app-building job without prior professional experience. You'll be more likely to be doing webdev stuff, possibly interacting with databases and the like (that's what most of the dev work round here is, at any rate).

So I'd put Java away and get into PHP, C#, ASP.net, SQL... those lot.

The big question is: what kind of coding do you want to be doing?