Do you have time to do Schooling? What about at night (part time)?

Quote:Original post by Oluseyi
Spend your free time practicing your programming skills - write programs that challenge you to improve your knowledge of algorithms and design principles - and apply for entry-level programming positions. Many places do not require a specific education for entry-level programmers, and consider demonstrable ability more important.

Good luck!

I second that! Talking from personal experience, most of the skills I developed were during college when I used to read and practice whichever way I could. The rest I got through working in an entry-level programming job after graduating, but most of the core skills were already there; what remained was more usage than concept.

Quote:Original post by rzetlin
This thought has crossed my mind, but I don't know what are the next programming courses to take.

I don't need to take basic programming courses because I have already done the basics already. I already know about for, loops, printf, etc.

I need courses that allow me to develop fully functional programs, not mickey mouse programs like "Hello World".

I don't know how to bridge the gap between the basic programmer to a full fledged programmer.

Personally, I don't really like courses -- that's just me, though. That said, I still think a better use of your free time would be to try and write programs and challenge yourself by finding out how to do all the things that you can't do right now. Browse/search the internet, ask questions on forums (but sensible questions, please, and only after you've spent enough time searching and you're convinced you can't find anything new by further searching), and simply keep trying.

Since you're past the basic concepts and the "Hello World" programs, try writing more complex programs. One idea would be to create an address book, then see if you can add some useful functionality like searching, sorting, filtering, etc... That's just one example, and I'm sure you yourself can come up with a dozen others. You might argue on the point behind creating such things, which obviously doesn't add much to the world of technology, especially that my guess is that you are still working with console programming; but you wouldn't believe how educational it was to write such programs, and the amount of experience you get through trial-and-error in the process. After you're very comfortable expressing yourself in code, you might want to start learning how to work with something other than the console, such as GUI applications.