Hello,
I am considering a shift in my career away from system/network administration (have been doing this for two years, jack-of-all trades type position in a company with < 100 employees) towards application development/software engineering.
Since there are no development jobs at my present company, I would need to find a new position at a different company.
My background is pretty scattered, I have about 4 years experience overall, 2 in my present position, and 2 in a job testing routers and network nodes using various protocols (dealt mostly with TCP/IP/VLAN with minimal scripting/programming work). I actually have a liberal arts degree, although I was a CS major for a year.
I have been out of the programming scene for about 4 years now. I have a few questions:
1. What languages are good to learn, I have about a year of C++ experience from four years ago? And what I am asking is, what languages would my C++ experience lend itself to, and which of those are currently marketable?
2. How should I bring myself up to speed on a language to the point where I could get an entry level development job?
3. How do I break into an entry level position, most of which require at least a year of experience with whatever language I will be working with?
Thanks for your guidance.
