Three tracks to become a software developer?

have a computer science degree? For example, let’s say your academic background is in accounting or finance, or you graduated with a journalism degree or a history degree. Is it possible for a student with that educational background to break into a software development career?

And the answer is absolute. The number of jobs out there is there exploding. There’s so much demand and not enough supply.

So in an environment like that, it’s certainly possible.

There are three major areas in IT that you can focus on. But, of course, it’s hard to focus on all three of these areas simultaneously for one of these three. But let’s start with the first elephant in the room, the apparent path, and that is a software developer.

Software Developer

The software dev track is challenging for someone with a computer science degree because it requires you to know a couple of different programming languages, maybe one or two. The most popular ones are Java and Python. Another prevalent one is PHP.

A candidate would also need to understand the overall technology landscape and front-end and backend. In addition, they would need to know a little bit of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and maybe a little bit of databases. So the breadth of knowledge for this path is pretty broad. 

So if you would like to get into the software development path, but you’re not a computer science major, I would recommend starting on a different approach.

The software developer patch still could be your eventual destination, could be your goal.

You can start from a different era in technology and transit into another area over time. Many people are doing this with outstanding results. You can do this as well.

If you don’t have a computer science background, it will take about two years of hard work to learn the stuff on your own and then hopefully be able to land a job.

The coding boot camps are great, but you need to have some prerequisite knowledge in some of these areas if you want to avail that knowledge.

Database track

The database track is better for someone who doesn’t have a computer science degree.

Because this is a focused area in technology and data is key, data is every the largest asset every company has very important, especially with what’s going on nowadays with Facebook and other social platforms. Data is key. It’s huge. And the databases are where the data is stored.

So what you can do is become a database expert in a language called SQL. This language is the primary language used to interact with databases.

So you need to learn one language, and it’s not even a programing language. It’s a data interaction language.

You can also learn a reporting tool such as Tableau with the SQL language. This is because there are so many job openings with Tableau and data analysis.

With this combination, the SQL and Tableau combination, you’re employable. How long does it take? For someone that can invest six hours a day every day for about three months? That’s what that’s all that’s required.

So three months. Invest six hours a day into SQL, master that technology, and then learn for one month, Tableau, and you’ve got it made, you’re employable.

It is the lowest barrier of entry into the software developer profession.

Once you’re comfortable here, you can always transition to another field. A lot of people do this.

If you want to build mobile apps, websites, desktop applications, you can learn to do that on the weekends when you’re employed. 

Get your foot in the door after three months of practice, get your foot in the door in database developer a role because you’re still a developer.

You could be developing reports and using the SQL language and then slowly transition into another field, a software developer for example.

Admin path

The third path is the admin path. And this is also a tremendous lucrative field. 

And the hottest topic within this domain is Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Services. But, again, this will take maybe a year to get comfortable with because there’s a lot of new development that’s going on in AWS, Azure, or GCS, and you should understand you should have a certain breadth of knowledge and that will take time to learn.

But it’s a very lucrative career, and there are plenty of opportunities. So you can get started on this track by learning software development, database management, and software development.

Once you become more comfortable, you can take the software development skills you already have and learn for one month on the weekend to learn software development with databases.

This software developer role will allow you to start learning software development with databases on the weekends, and you can further your career within software developer roles.

Learn software development with databases for six months, and you can eventually job search for a software developer role in cloud services.