Hello, x86!

[CetniK]

Hello, everyone.  We have a nice group of users on this forum.  You guys are very warm, funny, and inviting.

I copied this survey from Melissa.

Name: Boris
Nationality: Serbian
How old are you? 18
Height: 6ft 5in
Where are you from? I'm from Serbia (Europe, on the Balkan peninsula).  Now I live in Chicago.
What do you do (school/work)? Both.
What kind of music do you like? I like a variety of music:  Techno, rap, alternative, and music from Serbia.
Do you have a girl (boy?) friend? No.
Are you in any other clans?  {EwR}
What's your favourite tv show? The Outer Limits.
Movie?  Too many.
Band? Bijelo Dugme (from ex-Yugoslavia)
Type of weather? Sunny and around 65F.
Subject in school? English and History.
Drink? Beer and clear liquor.
Author? Reymundo Sanchez
Sport? Basketball
Bird? Eagle.
Game: Diablo II, but I don't play anymore.
Web browser: Firefox
Anti-virus: BitDefender

If you want to know more, just ask me.

[Camel]

What do you do for work/school?

[CetniK]

Well, I just quit my job at Jewel Osco (grocery store).  I'm finishing my last semester of high school in December.  My friend, who is a programmer, came over to my house the other day and told me about his company.  He told me to learn OOP - Object Oriented Programming: .NET Basics, C# .NET, Databases (MS SQL, PostgreSQL), and ASP.NET.  So, I'm not sure if I want to go to college or become a programmer like him.

[Sidoh]

Why can't you do both?  I don't think you'd learn those specific skills at college to begin with, but I'm sure most universities have classes on .NET stuff.  There are some really invaluable and interesting things you'd learn at college that you'd probably never learn if you went right into the industry.  Plus, you're statistically more likely to be more (fiscally) successful if you get a degree in whatever it is you're going into.

[Blaze]

The Outer Limits are in fact awesome. 

[Camel]

Why can't you do both?  I don't think you'd learn those specific skills at college to begin with, but I'm sure most universities have classes on .NET stuff.  There are some really invaluable and interesting things you'd learn at college that you'd probably never learn if you went right into the industry.  Plus, you're statistically more likely to be more (fiscally) successful if you get a degree in whatever it is you're going into.

Database I and II are required at my college for even a minor in CS! I had a chat with my boss, who incidentally is an ME major, about how a database he designed a few years ago wasn't normalized to any reasonable level. He said he actually just learned about normalization a few weeks ago, and it was nice to be able to have an intelligent conversation about how to improve it. I re-designed it and wrote an importer, and am currently working on writing web services and a frontend for accessing the data.

There are no courses in .NET at my college, although you can get the whole package for free through the school. They bought it intending to offer a course, but then the professor that was going to teach it flaked.

[Sidoh]

Why can't you do both?  I don't think you'd learn those specific skills at college to begin with, but I'm sure most universities have classes on .NET stuff.  There are some really invaluable and interesting things you'd learn at college that you'd probably never learn if you went right into the industry.  Plus, you're statistically more likely to be more (fiscally) successful if you get a degree in whatever it is you're going into.

Database I and II are required at my college for even a minor in CS! I had a chat with my boss, who incidentally is an ME major, about how a database he designed a few years ago wasn't normalized to any reasonable level. He said he actually just learned about normalization a few weeks ago, and it was nice to be able to have an intelligent conversation about how to improve it. I re-designed it and wrote an importer, and am currently working on writing web services and a frontend for accessing the data.

There are no courses in .NET at my college, although you can get the whole package for free through the school. They bought it intending to offer a course, but then the professor that was going to teach it flaked.

It's offered here, but it's not required for a major.

Most colleges offer that kind of stuff.  Mine does too.  I've downloaded it, but I still haven't used it.