And it's mighty hard to learn how to program with these hours
Attacking the problem one bite at a time may be a better way to look at it. You don't need to master programming to be valuable. But having an understanding of what goes on in development at any level will make you more valuable. Using your lunch break to do tutorials is a place to start. Learn a language that is used heavily in your field. Start looking at portions of your job that you can automate. Focus on writing solutions for those portions and it will free up time. Some of those solutions may start to look like products that could be marketed in your field. Even if they are not, you have still learned the basics of development and freed more time on your schedule. Both of which are worth the investment to learn.
This is a really good idea. I've been looking into visual basic macros for excel. Unfortunately, VB isn't exactly 'hip' or in favor anymore to anyone in the tech field. But I guess it's as start.
While not sexy there are some critical VB programs in existence and there are some companies that will pay top dollar for VB programers, it is kind of like COBOL now, it is not attracting new people, but the systems that are on it are important. I have a buddy that commands the best rates he has ever seen, in his career, maintaining VB apps. There is definitely a market for sunset technologies, it is the other, not talked about high pay market.
Comments
And it's mighty hard to learn how to program with these hours
Attacking the problem one bite at a time may be a better way to look at it. You don't need to master programming to be valuable. But having an understanding of what goes on in development at any level will make you more valuable. Using your lunch break to do tutorials is a place to start. Learn a language that is used heavily in your field. Start looking at portions of your job that you can automate. Focus on writing solutions for those portions and it will free up time. Some of those solutions may start to look like products that could be marketed in your field. Even if they are not, you have still learned the basics of development and freed more time on your schedule. Both of which are worth the investment to learn.
This is a really good idea. I've been looking into visual basic macros for excel. Unfortunately, VB isn't exactly 'hip' or in favor anymore to anyone in the tech field. But I guess it's as start.
While not sexy there are some critical VB programs in existence and there are some companies that will pay top dollar for VB programers, it is kind of like COBOL now, it is not attracting new people, but the systems that are on it are important. I have a buddy that commands the best rates he has ever seen, in his career, maintaining VB apps. There is definitely a market for sunset technologies, it is the other, not talked about high pay market.