What's the Best Tech Field to Learn, and Get Involved In? | Hacker News Reader

What's the Best Tech Field to Learn, and Get Involved In?

1 pointb3nji8 comments

My background is a smart buildings engineer. I've always followed the latest tech from a far, enjoying trying to learn a bit, here, and there.

Now, I'm wondering if I wanted a career change, would it be possible, and what would be the most advantageous to get into? Here are some thoughts, so obviously in vogue right now, others could be viable, maybe some not worth it at all.

What are your thoughts?

Full stack engineering UX design Big data engineering AI something Bitcoin lightning projects Network engineering Etc?

Is there some need to know skills as we move into these unprecedented, and in some cases, worrying times?

Is it even possible to change if your in your mid thirties?

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> Is it even possible to change if your in your mid thirties?

Yes! But you should anticipate an outcome where you bring some elements of your past career forward. I've seen some amazing career moves as a coach myself, but the best outcomes all brought forward some huge leverage points from the past, or involved going back to some past career aspects.

In some ways you could also say it's smart to take a break, try new things, and consider going back to your old career field with a new style and new mindset. Even if you don't use the new tech you learned, learning it can still change your existing career.

The modern-tech mindset is very much about idealism, which can be hard to sustain in engineering environments. So you may want to pay attention to the way your energy levels change with exposure to interesting new ideas.

If at all possible you should rank the fields in some subjective order, i.e. ranked by personal interest or logical application to personal goals.

Fwiw & good luck.

Many thanks, themodelplumber. Great advice!

You can change. However, don’t think about specific area like big data, ai, ux, etc. It is like me saying I want to get into construction and should I start in electrical, plumbing or roofing etc.

Start with learning fundamentals of Computer Science.

Are there any transferable skills? Can you think about some problems you face/faced as a smart buildings engineer. This is your advantage- so to speak - since you are already familiar with another area and can look into practical applications and problem solving.

Let me know if you want to brainstorm or if you want a primer on CS fundamentals and such.

This is a good perspective to think about, I didn't see it like that. It makes sense.

Computer Science is something that always pops up, is it expensive to go down this path, are there any "open learning" courses you can advise on?

There might be a few transferable skills, smart building involves writing your own software (albeit function block style), networking, and graphic design for the interfaces. We also have to use many protocols to interface various bits of kit together to get things chatting, and sharing the data.

I'd love to know more about going down a CS path, thank you.

There are many resources these days. And that is also part of the problem. Because organization is very important.

Some of the resources you can try are:

Path to a free self-taught education in Computer Science! https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

Foundations of Computer Science http://i.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html

MIT OpenCourseWare https://ocw.mit.edu/search/?d=Electrical%20Engineering%20and...

and so on.

Try to stay clear of coding schools, dojos etc.

However, it would work best if you have a project idea in mind. Abstraction is your friend. You don't need to be an engineer, but an engineering / problem-solving mindset is very important. There are quite a few well known programmers who don't have the traditional CS background, including yours truly. I self-taught myself and keep learning and writing programs. Feel free to reach out to me (my encoded email is in my profile)

These are great resources, thank you for taking the time to link them to me.

It seems there are a lot of learning stuff out there, it can be overwhelming. It's nice to have someone that has been there, and done it, especially not with a CS background.

I will certainly reach out if I get stuck, thank you!

You are most welcome. It is overwhelming. No doubt.

Start small and manageable. Build a webpage - on your local computer - that just shows your resume, for example. Assuming you don’t know much about HTML, you will learn how to build a html page from scratch.

Next try to understand how to make various sections in your resume expand or collapse. After that, change style. You see where I am going? Slowly you can build working clones of things you want to know how to build - Twitter clone, photo album/Instagram, Facebook, rideshare and so on (no backend initially- just raw pages)

Same with CS fundamentals. Start small, apply what you learn and continue to expand your comfort zone.

And if you can’t start or get organized (since there is lot of information and lot to learn) - ask for help.

I have helped a handful of people so far and I am really glad I was able to and that they found this very useful and helpful. I feel we need to be there for each other and learn from one another.

I'll get back to you in ten years.

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