If you want to see what kind of work is available, the best thing would be
to go to employment web sites like monster.com and see what jobs are
available.
In my case, I own my own contracting company doing contract programming. I
currently have only one contract. I'm writing custom controls for the
framework used in a clients suite of commercial apps. It's definitely not
entry-level work. The people I work with all have many years of experience
and are, with a few exceptions, very accomplished developers.
As for whether or not you need to be an engineer, that depends on the job. I
personally don't have a degree. I dropped out a semester short of completion
for money reasons, and entered the work force and have never looked back.
When I came into the field, knowing WHAT a computer was, was more important
than whether or not you had a degree. It's never mattered since. I don't
know how entry-level are treated in general on this point these days. I've
been in the field long enough that nobody is even going to check if I have a
degree anymore.
But like I said, go to a job site and see what jobs are available. That will
give you a better idea than doing a survey here.
There are a huge variety of programming jobs available. Here are just a few
things I've done in the field:
Telephone billing software
RF Engineering simulation software - Used to design cell phone networks.
Figured signal propagation, interference between towers, traffic analysis,
etc.
Army Logistics software - Used to calculate what equipment can be put on
which ships and planes to deploy troops.
Hotel Management software
Inventory tracking & management software
As you can see, there's a bit of variety. If you ask me, one of the coolest
things about being a software developer is when you get a new job, you can
usually learn about a completely new field (RF Engineering, Telephone
switches, logistics, hotel management, inventory management, or in the case
of my current job, developing custom controls).
Pete
"drgonzo120" <dr********@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
i would love to program machines, but do i have to be an engineer for
that ??? and can c# be used to program machines ??? or is c++ more
widely used for that kind of stuff ??? or java ???
thanks dudes, trying to find my way in the woods