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[OOBeginner]

Good evening,

I was wondering if I could bend the ear of a few professional programmers for there opinion on where I should go next.
I am a sales engineer by trade but I started programming to make our companies new product selection software. I had to program in VB6 as the use of variants was required to use our suppliers dll and I couldn’t use C++ as the purchase of MSVC++ wasn’t sanctioned as we had a copy of VB6.

I always wanted to be a programmer and I feel I have a knack for it. In fact I want to progress for a full on professional. I have aimed to learn C# as I thought it would be a good language to learn and I always wanted to learn the C syntax. I have worked though the basics from the “Programming C#, 4th Edition by Jesse Liberty” but I am not sure if I am ready. I haven’t finished the book as I learn rapidly through trying and implementation not reading what someone else had done but I have mastered the basics.

I am reluctant to leave my job as it is very stable with good progression possibilities. But I don’t get to design programs and code all day which would be my ideal profession. I also deal heavily in project management so designing programs is as enjoyable as coding. I dream about programming and now see everything as objects and how I would define them. I think I have it bad.

In my VB6 programming I have heavily focused on Object Orientated programming. I am clean and concise with good notation and I use a lot of functions and subroutines to avoid reusing code. I try to be as professional as possible in my approach. I have experience in SQL, VBA, complex engineering algorithms and file creation.

Any advice from any professionals would be appreciated.

Thank you,

[WingedPanther]

If you want to build experience, you could contribute to some of the projects at SourceForge - Download, Develop and Publish Free Open Source Software. It will let you test your skills, work with others, and build a resume. Doing some freelance work would also help.

As someone who codes for a living, I would be somewhat suspicious of hiring you to do coding. VB6 is extremely old, and doesn't transfer well to VB.NET/C#. I also work with many people with a lot of SQL experience, and find that I can surprise them with what's possible on a regular basis.

I don't say the above to discourage you, but to suggest that there is probably a LOT to learn, yet.