College Major advice wanted. Now Hiring.

[Shomari]

Anyways I'm considering a career in network administration or something of the like. What major should I consider? (My current major is art right now and bleh.) Any and all information regarding this would be helpful. At the current moment I'm attending a community college. What should I be doing/planning, etc?

[SM-Count]

Computer science major and take a lot of net classes. Though net admins always start in IT entry jobs.

[EvGa]

Computer science doesn't seem like the correct direction if all he wants is system admin? My CS degree doesn't require a single thing related to admin/security/etc. My IT minor (which is also offered as a more in-depth major) is full of system admin, network admin, security, database etc classes that would be perfect.

Edit: **Missed your bit about "take a lot of net classes". (Idk how, it's one sentence...) I could see that working well. CS + admin electives, or in the case they require a minor, do an IT/Admin minor.

[Grandpa]

CIS Degree and CCNA industry certification is offered at the community college level.

Here's a link to a local (Washington State) community college that offers that path, but it's one of four in WA state and I'm sure there are many other Cisco Academies that offer Associate of Science Professional/Technical degrees and certification pathways.

Whatcom Community, WA State, USA

[Shomari]

all right cool thanks guys.
what are some good resources where I can start learning some of this stuff already?

[SM-Count]

What's your programming background?

[Shomari]

What's your programming background?

nada. I'm looking to pick this stuff up.

[SM-Count]

Use this:
http://www.ibiblio.org/g2swap/byteofpyt ... index.html

to do this:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-e ... fall-2008/

Congrats, you now have 1 semester of MIT CS classes under your belt.

[Shomari]

Use this:
http://www.ibiblio.org/g2swap/byteofpyt ... index.html

to do this:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-e ... fall-2008/

Congrats, you now have 1 semester of MIT CS classes under your belt.

thanks SM

[Mirosuke]

nad?! c'mon, we are from the internet! you should know something! spit it up

[Shomari]

nad?! c'mon, we are from the internet! you should know something! spit it up

Well I'm starting late lol.

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Also what are some good IDEs?

[EvGa]

For which language?

I like Eclipse for c++ and java. I don't write much code in anything else...

[SM-Count]

eclipse with pydev plugin is good for beginners, if you're serious about cs you should learn vim, makes coding a lot faster, I'll even give you my vimrc.

[Shomari]

eclipse with pydev plugin is good for beginners, if you're serious about cs you should learn vim, makes coding a lot faster, I'll even give you my vimrc.

I'll try both out.
And that vimrc would be helpful.

[SM-Count]

For the latest gvim, you'll also need wombat.vim in your colors folder under vimfiles: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1778

vimrc:
http://www.mediafire.com/?12a2setlt1z76o7

[Shomari]

thanks SM
and lol at the undo levels.

[KillAndChill]

Could also look into computer engineering. Took a couple of very useful network classes.

I would recommend you learn C first using only a text editor. Once you're good with C, move onto object oriented programming using easymode IDEs.

[William-CL]

Anyways I'm considering a career in network administration or something of the like. What major should I consider? (My current major is art right now and bleh.) Any and all information regarding this would be helpful. At the current moment I'm attending a community college. What should I be doing/planning, etc?

Computer Science. No need to go to a 4 year for this, a Community will save you a lot of money + you get more one on one with the Instructor as the classes are smaller.
At the community college I'm in, they have a Major designed specifically around networking in the computer science division. Your best course of action would be to contact a counselor and ask about this.