Re: Need advice for school.
Re: Need advice for school.
Really not familiar with Illinois education system .. but in many states there are 2 year community colleges .. they usually offer PRACTICAL courses and you can start there. Lower cost and you can find out which way you want to go .. and day or night courses. Worth looking into.
Re: Need advice for school.
If you want to do a full 4-year program. the University of Illinois system is very prestigious and you would be able to pay in-state. Maybe look at UI Chicago?
Re: Need advice for school.
if u just want to understand programming better, why cant u just walk into the lectures? there are no bouncers :-# shhhhh
Re: Need advice for school.
many colleges allow for auditing classes (just walking in, no credits), many also offer the classes and programs online. or a combination.
Re: Need advice for school.
Thanks for the ideas. UIC would be my best bet, but online classes might fit my price and schedule better. Any online school to consider?
Re: Need advice for school.
I personally don't recommend paying for an online school for a degree. In fact, there are a lot of online resources and courses for learning programming and computer science for free! These are taught by real professors at world famous universities.
https://www.coursera.org/
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.udacity.com/courses
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
I you have self discipline and a passion for computers, then I can imagine you'd be able to learn everything yourself from the resources above.
Re: Need advice for school.
I appreciate the advice and encouragement to all who replied. I am very happy to start with the links provided by JDShu. This is a good place to start.
Re: Need advice for school.
Another vote for free online learning. If you just want to gain an understanding or hack away at your own programs/web apps, there's no need to go to school. There's a ton of free learning resources, as the creators of most of the languages want as much uptake as possible.
School would be good if you want to do programming professionally on a team, otherwise learning on your own is OK.