Computer Programming, Its Educational Requirements, And My Future Career After My Graduation

The purpose of my topic is to inform you of my future vocation, computer programming, and give a description of the skills and necessary requirements I will use to enter my chosen field. I will also provide information about additional education, training, and certifications that I will require in the future; as well as information on the labor market. As computer programmers are the builders of the computing world, we have the ability to work within different industries which relate to computers. We can have positions such as software developer, web developer, IT specialist, and data analyst. As a result, I choose computer programming because it gives me a variety of options for finding my future vocation and this field is more practical than other fields. Also, because every program is kind of new and unique it is impossible to get bored because you always need to challenge yourself. It also provides a great opportunity to work from home or work as a freelancer. To inform some information in this report, I gathered information from the Georgian college website and salary expert website which I put more details in the reference page.

Discussion

Computer Programming

Programming, coding, or developing consists of knowing understanding different programming languages, solving problems with algorithms, designing applications, testing, modifying, and debugging codes.

Skills and abilities

I think the most important part of computer programming is the ability to learn different languages and keep up to date your knowledge of new languages, platforms, and technologies. Aside from a knowledge of languages, there are numerous soft skills software developers must learn to become successful. For instance: Critical thinking, becoming more detail-oriented, troubleshooting, time management, decision making, and so on.

Requirements needed to enter the computer programmer field

Based on the information I gathered from Georgian college website, entrance to the program requires an OSSD or equivalent with grade 12 English (C or U) and any grade of mathematics (Cor U). Also, this program is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program. Thus, for starting the courses your laptop hardware should meet these specifications: Intel i5 processor or AMD equivalent, 8GB of memory (16 GB recommended), 250GB hard drive (SSD recommended).

Additional education

In my point of view, computer programming is competitive and in high demand. As a result, if you want to advance in your career it would be better to continue your education and get a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Moreover, it is suggested to get multiple certifications for various platforms, and languages.

Labor market information:

Based on the information I retrieved from a salary comparison website, computer programmers, on average, should be making a base salary of $45 hourly, and $97,207 annually in Canada. The chart below shows the average salaries of software developers in the Us in January 2020. The bar chart divided software developer salaries by skills into 9 distinct programming languages. On top of the list, we can see iOS, Android, Phyton, and Java Script are the greatest for earning with over $110K annually. Also, the chart represents a C# programmer as the lowest one in this trend with earnings of over $72K. After all, you can see the most popular language with the highest income is iOS and Android. The next bar chart illustrates the trends in the software developer salaries in 2014 by region. As can be seen, in Silicon Valley computer programmers made more money than nationally or within California. This trend followed by California with over $100k between system developers, and application developers, and in that city web developers earned $75k. Therefore, Silicon Valley is the best region for earning more money among software developers.

Summary

All in all, my report informed about my future career, skills, abilities, education and certificates that I need to advance in this field. Computer programming contains many challenges and is a field focused on solving problems. According to the wide range of opportunities within the computer industry, computer programmers have numerous choices for work, such as software developer, web designer, computer operations and system analysis. This major is fascinating to me because of its many challenges in troubleshooting, and problem-solving unique solutions in the form of computer programs, this is what motivated me to choose this field. In addition, it gives you a variety of work options to choose a career. Including the options to work from home or as an entrepreneur. Working as a professional in this field, we should always prepare and study in order to be up to date with the newest technologies and languages. In order to get a better job in this major, its recommended to get a bachelor’s degree in computer science. When considering the labor market in Ontario, pay rate highly depends on your previous experience as a developer, however, on average we have the potential to make around $45 hourly.

References

1. 80000hours. (2014). Software Engineering at Large Tech Firms. Retrieved from:https://80000hours.org/career-guide/reports/software-engineering-at-large-tech-firms/
2. Daxx. (Jan2020). Software Development Trends. Retrieved from:https://www.daxx.com/blog/development-trends/it-salaries-software-developer-trends-2019
3. Georgian College. (n.d). Admissions. Retrieved from:http://cat.georgiancollege.ca/academic-regulations/admissions/
4. Salary Expert. (n.d). Salary report for a computer programmer in Ontario, Canada. Retrieved from:https://www.salaryexpert.com/salarycalculator/report