Career as a VB Developer

[mmt4331]

I have a question. I am 33 years old and have been playing around with Visual Basic 5.0 and 6.0 for three years now. I am a team lead in a mainframe operations group and I write some VB DB apps querying against an ACCESS database (not all the time though).

If I want to become a developer, what other things will I have to know to become one? COM, DCOM, etc.? On the server side, I only have experience w/ ACCESS '97 - none w/ SQL Server or Oracle. How in the world can I get a job w/out experiences w/ these databases?

One more thing...will a MCSD Cert land a decent job w/ little experience? Right now I'm making between $50,000 - $57,000 at my present job.

Thank you in advance.

Mark

 

[pivan]

Hi Mark:

Here is my two sense worth as far as developer career track.

You will need to make a couple of decisions.

First, Java, or MS. VB is that it is designed for small apps, small orgs, that need to be design and deploy applications quickly. No one that I know of is making any decent money off of VB. Its to easy to learn and work with and hence everyone and his sister are selling themselves as VB programmers.

Second, you will need to learn how to work in the Object Oriented programming and design world.

Third, you will need to know databases.
1)You will need to know data modeling.
2)You will need to know SQL
3)You will need to know the fundimentals of tuning a database.
4) You will need to decide if you want to work with Oracle or MSQL.

Throw in wearing the hat of a DBA, Systems Administrator, and Business Analyist.

OH...I forgot..somewhere along the line you will probably need to get time working with an application server. You might want to download a demo copy of Cold Fusion and write a couple of apps with it. This will give you a feel of what an application server does and its conceptually no different then your larger, more expensive iPlanet andWebSphere app servers. (Conceptually I said...).

Whew...!!

To get experience...take classes at University Extension.
Start coding in the language you want to learn, read..read...do lots of programming at home find places in your existing job where you can apply, use , work with these new skills. Get a copy of Personal Oracle from Oracle. Work with SQL and designing databases.

After a few weeks you should be comfortable enough with your newly acquired skills to leverage your background with your new skills to get a position working with them.

Check Dice.com and Netscape salary wizard for Job Descriptions and salary of the positions you are interested in. Tune your career path from their.

Hope this helps,
G'Luck
pivan
If not now, when?
If not here, where?
If not us, who?

Just do it!!

 

[mmt4331]

Wow! Thx a lot. Looks like a have a lot of work cut out for me if I go into this direction. Thanks again.

mark