Studying IT

Nuluvius · December 29, 2015

What is Red Brick exactly(I never heard anything about it, is it some kind of university)?

Edit: I just found out it is an university do you know how hard it is to get into it. I am from Austria so my native speaking language is german, but I love english so I wanna make a degree in english

If one is approaching them through the progressive education route i.e. straight from school then generally it's going to require strong grades and possibly other demonstrable achievements in order for them to justify offering a place out. However if like me your approach is unorthodox then the decision will also take into account one's maturity level and professional experience.

What do you exactly do meaning on which kind of projects do you work?(You do not need to go specific might be you cant tell anyonre. I just wanna get a gist of what kind of job I might be doing)?

Without going into the specific details I am currently enjoying a wide and very varied range of work. I see myself as a true generalist as I very much enjoy acquiring new languages and technologies. My current style of working benefits this as I currently freelance and also work permanent hours. My freelance work is based around higher level application development such as data analysis applications, data mining, big data and the presentation thereof. It's usually carried out in C#, WCF, WPF adhering to MVVM but there's also some micro service work that makes use of some legacy code in Delphi. My fixed hour work is all about robotics and control systems; there's lots of work in C/C++ implementing protocols both in an embedded environment and otherwise. It's generally highly multi threaded and the consuming side of things is usually implemented in C#, again in adherence to MVVM, although Java, Swift/Obj C has featured natively as well as via Xamarin.

I usually work adhering to Test Driven Development (TDD) in a highly Agile environment. Agile is all the rage these days and most companies worth anything as an employer to a prospective Software Engineer/Developer will try to implement some flavour of it. So I'd say that's one more thing to be on the lookout for when you try to find work.

An average week for me will consist of working from 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday with the weekend (and some evenings) spent freelancing. For me a 60+ hour working week is normal. If something goes wrong in either role then these hours will easily increase... I'd say it's not for everyone and certainly with just one job it's going to be far easier. I also have a family and I can honestly say it's hard at times especially when something goes wrong.

And at last but not at least. Do you think I would need a degree in Physics and Mathematics, because you wrote about alot of mathematics and physics stuff going on, on the higher levels?

It depends on what you want to do, how far you want to take it and what the company specializes in. In general however, no, I don't think you will need either. Even considering the Computer Science role, maths is needed but an additional degree in it is not really going to be required. Sure if you have money to burn then it will help but don't expect it to bump your salary up necessarily. Most companies will likely have multidisciplinary teams of Software Engineers and Scientists so you're almost certainly going be well covered in that respect.

Remember as well that I have dyscalculia - I am completely mathematically inept. In the (almost) decade that I have been in the industry I can count on one hand the number of times that I have hit a wall due to mathematics. Yes I try to actively stay away from anything involving heavy maths... but my point is that it hasn't stopped me doing well so far.

Still man you really are awesome. I do not know alot of people who would do this for some strangers on the internet.

My reason is because I had an unpleasant past. I try to assist because it's what I needed when I was in your place and I wasn't fortunate enough to have anyone to turn to for advice or help... If I helped, even a little then that's good and I'm glad. I'd love to see you do well and soar high in whatever career it is that you settle on.