Greetings all, I was hoping I could get some simple answers for an interview that I have tomorrow. Here is the scoop. I am currently in a fair paying job at my company, but am no longer happy with the career path that I chose. I elected to move into IT because I knew that it would be something that I could seek advice about from my peer group. I am currently in classes to be a programmer (C# certification). I have an interview tomorrow for a business analyst position. It's up in the IT department and I am hoping that it could be a good transition. However, I am extra nervous because I bombed my last interview upstairs (I didn't have the knowledge to do support upstairs, about a year ago). Can some of you pose questions that you would ask if you were hiring an analyst? I won't answer them on here unless you ask me to, but I don't know what questions are going to be asked of me, and I am woried that I will mess this up if I don't have some questions set up in advance. Anything you have I will take with gratitude, even if it's negative.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Thanks, man. You two are a wealth of knowledge! It's appreciated.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Thanks guys. Between those two, I think I have my answer. I appreciate the help from both of you! If I ever hear anything I will send it back this way Mike.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Thank you for the information, that was excellent. I apologize if I wasn't clear, I was looking to find better ways to retain what I am already learning as well. Any thoughts on techniques, or should I just keep writing my little programs?

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Greetings, I've posted once or twice already on different topics, and something came to mind today that I wanted to ask the group about. I'm nearing the end of my first semester of a certificate program at a local CC (C# certificate). So far I am having a great time, but something has become a concern to me lately and I wonder how you all address it. (I will finish Beginning Web Programming and Beginning SQL this semester and head into Beginning C# and who knows what for my summer semester.) In my real job, I sharpen my skills by taking on projects that I know nothing about, learning everything I can, and becoming the best at it that I possibly can. It's worked well for me in learning Excel, AS9100, and got me a few doors into Six Sigma and analysis. But I have found that since all of my college learning time is spent outside of work, I am exhausted when I get home and while I am interested, I am not retaining the information as well as I would like. I want to get out of these classes and be able to present myself to an employer with something to offer them. My friend says that the only way I will learn is to get out there and code. That's cool, I got that. What I am wondering is do any of you have techniques you use to accelerate your learning, beyond just diving into a code and hammering your way through it? I just can't see that as the most effective way to learn, but if it is, and your responses confirm this, then diving in is what I will do. So, any thoughts? Flash cards? Rote memorization? Anything else? Or just dive in as deep as I can and learn as I go?

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

It's funny, I was just talking to a friend about this today. I think it would be somewhat fun to go at it alone. I'm off to read the link.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Thank you everyone. I appreciate you clarifying this for me!

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Heh. However, I am new enough and the professor is teaching zero theory (which is frustrating). I assume he is being facetious, but it could just as easily be used technically and I wouldn't know...

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

I know what extraneous means, so I am not sure if you are being facetious or not.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

The book wasn't messed up, I added the terminating semicolons myself. That's what I wanted clarification, since it hasn't affected my outputs at all. The challenge I am facing is that when I started learning C# I had to learn the 'why' of what I was doing (a little theory to go with the practice). With this class there is no explination of 'why', just "do it this way". Meh. Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

I had a discussion with my professor, (who is an associate professor) and he didn't effectively explain terminating semicolons to me. I started self-learning in C# and am now in a local CC for a C# certificate. Part of the requirements is a Beginning Web Programming class. Love the class and am loving web programming. Here is my question though. In regards to the terminating semicolon, is there a time when you shouldn't use it? Specifically, I lost points in a test for the following: Write the format for an hotspot: (I wrote) Basically, I copied it right out of the book, but I got knocked off for the terminating semicolons. I don't really care whether I was right or wrong in my argument with the professor, I just want to know the right way to do things, so I don't screw this up when I go to work for someone. Thanks for your responses. Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

lol Marc, that's about right... ... for commercial flights. I work for a private jet company. There is a whole different world on the other side. I did a few series of flights on the aircraft (got really lucky to do so), and it was completely different. Try this instead: Drive from home to the closest regional airport (10 minutes for me). Pull the car up and drop the car off with the valet. Walk to the plane as a lineman takes your bags for you. Talk to the crew for a few minutes, and when you are ready, hop on the plane. 6 seats and no other passengers, pop in a CD, grab a vodka out of the galley and proceed to make your libation of choice. Watch whatever movie you want, or sleep, or read. Fly to within 10 minutes of where you need to be, and your car (or rental, or chauffeur) is waiting at the plane for you when you get off. I've never been envious of the rich until I had that experience.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Thank you very much! I really appreciate it!

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Greetings, I am working on a project that is way to big for me, but I thought I would try and tackle it anyway as an opportunity to learn more. Within my application I am trying to develop a static method that I can use to convert a time such as 1:15 (1 hour 15 minutes) to a decimal. I understand the formula, since I used it in Excel before. I need to take the input value from the user, pass it to the method, and multiply it by 24. This will give me the decimal value that I need. My question is strangly simple, and I am still just stumped by it... what data type do I need to use to get my user information into my method? It's just the colon in the user value that throws me off. Can I just take in "xx:xx" as a string value and then use "Convert.ToDecimal"? I'm sorry if I am not clear enough. If it's not, let me know and I will be happy to rephrase.

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

I would like to report that it is going much better than it was at the time I wrote this a few months ago. But I am finding that there is still a very strong opportunity to bit off more than I can chew, as I have done with my last project (an app for work that I am doing on my own time). I don't care what anyone says, I can see the value of classes that walk you in a structured process, and you get the opportunity to learn MVCs, and controller classes, and frickin design concepts for interfaces and databases. Right now I feel like my right hand is furiously working to make my click events happen in this program and my left hand is punching me in the face for thinking that this was going to be a quick transition (if not an easy one). Much respect to those of you out there. Learning this so far has taught me that it's not just syntax. It's designing the look, and creating the framework, and syntax, and after all that testing, and retesting, and staring at the screen going "...hmmm, I wonder why it's doing that?" Oh well, at least I am getting better about asking more specific questions and being more clear as to what I need to make my programs work. Not that that is worth more than a poop in the hand right now. :sigh:

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Will do! Thank you very much!

Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.

Greetings! I am sure many of you will read this and sigh, because this is the same question that I have seen a dozen times on here. I am going to approach this in a hopefully different way, so my simple question may be a bit longer than usual, but the core of it is "what do I do from here"? I have been on and off reading/lab programming for a while now (boardering on a year). It wasn't until a few months ago that I became a lot more serious about my intent to participate. I've started tackling the OOP understanding barrier, studying and testing ideas pretty much every night of the week. I have a non-tech degree (management) and I am a little older than the average programmer new to the field (30). I feel like my knowledge is progressing well, but I am still not quite ready yet. My language of choice is C# based on the recommendation of a good friend who is a senior programmer and a named company (I know the community is tightly tied together, so I would rather not say where). Needless to say, my best freind has become my mentor. We work on my code and dress it up so that I understand how my code can be better prepared. I feel like I will still need a year to learn up to a comprable level at the casual study rate. However, now that I am seeing a sort of path, I have found that I am programming more and more, and willingly stepping outside of the boundaries of what I know to see if I can just build random items. Here is what I know at the moment: Basic class structures, loops, arrays, and I am working on base classes in C#. This gives me the ability (tied with the VS developer) to create very simple but functional programs. I will begin to work on SQL and ADO shortly (probably another month). However, I want to really start stepping up. I think that I want to go into applications development based on the following facts: web development has a home in PHP and Javascript as well, and I am not really ready for that sort of versatility just yet. I realized that I need to keep focused on the .Net group of languages for a while. In order, I intend to expand my C# development skills much further and this is my primary goal, following with SQL(T-SQL), ADO, and then ASP in their respective .Net form. So basically I am a semi-functional beginner. But here is where I was hoping that some people could give me ideas, part of the challenge that I have discovered is that as a beginning programmer I am now stuck in a middle place. I am a little more advanced than the basic stuff like loops, so the beginn