Want to learn?

[wxdqz]

Kelly, With my meager experience as a rookie VB/SQL programmer, I have toagree with everything the others have written,at least in spirit and mostly in word. However, the one thing I see thateveryone has neglected to mention is the quality of theinstruction. If you wanted to take a class, would you sign up for one witha teacher who knew nothign abotu the subject matter?That is essentially what you are doing if you try to teach yourself a programminglanguage, even if you already know a different language.Why not check out the local community colleges?? The college here offersC, C++, Java, and VB, and I can tell you from recent, firsthand experiencethat the qulaity of the teacher had a direct impact on how easily and howquickly I learned the language.I took C from a guy who is a C/C++ programmer for a living for the last 15years. He was excellent. The VB teacher has never made a living programming,he just taught himself how to do VB.It showed in the qulaity of his instruction, which was very poor. Fortunately,I already had a "technique" if you will for learning and programming whichIacquired from the excellent C instructor. So I was able to pick up the VBstuff more quickly than the pother students. I am planning to take the Javaclassses because the excellent teacher isin charge of those. Cant pass up an opportunty to spend 90 minutes twicea week with a guy who has been doign it for a living. I am certain I willlearn more aboutquality Java programming from him than I could possiboly learn in my sparetime teaching myself from books and my laptop. I think the same would holdtrue for you.Find a good teacher at a local school, use your experience to get him towaive any requirements for you, then milk the teacher for all he or she isworth.I cant believe the doors that are already opening for me here (Omaha area)just because I have a few months of VB experience with SQL Server. When Itell them I amadding Java classes on top of it, they cant wait to lure me away from mycurrent employer! If you do manage to tack on C++ on top of yoru VB and Javaskills, you will be makingtons of money in about 3 years. Incidentally, the excellent teacher toldme there are a lot of programmers, there simply aren't very many GOOD ones.A GOOD programmer cango from $40K to $70K in about 5 years.......in the Omaha area. Adjust thosenumbers according to yoru location and experience.Gary