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I had an analogous experience at your age, but about 40 years ago. I spent that time learning skills that most programmers of that era found difficult, but that
by tomcam 4y ago
I had an analogous experience at your age, but about 40 years ago. I spent that time learning skills that most programmers of that era found difficult, but that I liked. My thinking was that without a degree I'd need something marketable enough that they'd overlook my non-education. (At that time the things I learned were assembly language and compiler writing.) It was a very successful strategy.
Don't take these examples literally, but maybe I might try to be the best Rust programmer I can because it's thought to be a hard language to learn. Since you like networking maybe low-level Posix networking in C, or websockets. This are probably bad examples because I'd do a seriously deep dive into what jobs are being advertised that look interesting to you, which ones pay more than average, and which companies you might prefer to work for.
A related strategy was that I only applied for 2 or 3 jobs at a time, because I looked for companies I thought I'd like, and which I thought I could serve well with my skills. When I got to the interviews I would have a genuine interest in the company and could ask informed questions about areas that intrigued me.
- fsociety 4y agoThis is great advice and led to success for myself coming from an engineering degree with no programming courses.
- kobotigo 4y agoInteresting. Thanks. I will look more closely at what these positions actually want. I thought about rust before, seems like has potential for growth and hype is building. I was discouraged by previous advice that it’s rough introduction language and that it will take longer to make any projects that would convey competence absent credentials or experience.
- legerdemain 4y agoHeads up: there are notoriously few Rust jobs, and they're mostly in crypto.
- tomcam 4y agoI agree. I tried to emphasize that these were just examples and that OP needed to do real research. Although I still claim that if you level up enough you can snag one of those rare available gigs. Back in the day compiler jobs didn’t exactly grow on trees but I did get them with exactly zero formal training.
- csomar 4y agoHowever, there are many more jobs that can be done with Rust in Linux networking. The company probably won't care much (especially if they don't have legacy code in C) if you want to do it in Rust.