Have 6 months of free time - what should I learn

Learn COBOL.

With 8-10 hours a day you could easily become the most prolific and accomplished troll on LRC. It will look great on your résumé

anon troll wrote:

With 8-10 hours a day you could easily become the most prolific and accomplished troll on LRC. It will look great on your résumé

You're underestimating the quality and experience of lr trolls.

Unix, SQL, Java. In that order.

Learn a new language. That is in my eyes better than any technical skill.

There is a website...

duolingo.com

... which offers free language lessons structured similarly to Rosetta Stone software. I believe they teach English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. Choose one you don't know, and learn it. My fiance and I are considering going to Lake Constance in Germany for our honeymoon and I am currently making great progress learning German. I hope to be at least conversational one year from now, but I don't have 8-10 hours per day to work on it. An hour per day on something like that for 6 months should make you pretty much proficient.

Skills that are relevant to your job but niche-y might come in handy. The professor who is going to be guiding me through my MA is on sabbatical next semester, and I believe he is planning on learning some new software for the cognitive research we conduct in our lab. He could just consult with someone with more computer software knowledge (programming, in particular) but is instead choosing to familiarize himself with it. These skills make you more well rounded at your job.

If your only goal is picking up a skill that will make you extra money, computer skills are a good way to go. You can audit classes at your local community college for next to nothing that will teach you the basics.

Please let us know (via this thread, maybe bookmark it and bump with updates?) what you choose to do and how your progress, and what results you see. I would be curious to know. Thanks!

Take a look at what's coming up soon on Udacity, EdX, Coursera. Pick a couple of courses that interest you or are relevant to the kind of work that you'll be doing.

I'd travel and learn a few coding languages.

Learn the technologies of the new web. At 8-10 hours a day, after a couple of weeks you could build a basic website. After 6 months, you could create a new message board to replace Letsrun.com's. I'm just kidding.

JavaScript at Khan Academy

https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/programming

HTML5 & CSS3 at

http://www.html5andcss3.org/css3history.php

HTML5 at W3C

http://www.w3ctutorial.com/html5-tutorial/html5-home

I think your two best bets are coding or Mandarin, if you don't know those already.

8-10 hours, thats more then enough time to learn this particular skill i have in mind for you. Its a very unique skill that i don't see being preformed anywhere in the US. Its what they call Erotic-Pan-Handling. This will actually take about 5 minutes to learn, you'll earn thousands of dollars within a week! Don't worry either, your not required to take your clothes off at all. Check out this site to explain everything...www.theartoferoticpanhandling.com

Roughly what does your contract job involve?

In what area of the country/world are you located?

Learn a programming language. Specifically, JavaScript.

Hey thanks for all this advice it is great and pretty much what I was looking at anyway.

I'm leaning towards Html & spanish to start.

I'm just curious as to why Javascript? I thought it was outdated? (but then I know nothing about programming)

And yes I will certainly keep everyone on here updated on my progress and maybe even build a website that you guys can all look at and comment on.

So what about C++? I heard this was a "hard programming" language that may be more useful in jobs etc.

might be JK wrote:

I think your two best bets are coding or Mandarin, if you don't know those already.

I know both, and coding/programming is much more valuable.

There is a certain amount of signalling value in knowing Mandarin, but all it means is that you have to live in China, or spend a lot of time there, which is not at all desirable.

If you can code, you can live anywhere, and your skills are transportable. Most of my friends who live in Greater China feel like their foot is nailed to the floor. It is terrible on so many levels.

might be JK wrote:

I think your two best bets are coding or Mandarin, if you don't know those already.

No chance will he become even halfway decent at Mandarin n 6 months.

Lots of people suggesting coding / javascript / etc.

Start here:

http://codecademy.com

Ok all! Thanks for the great suggestions. It seems overwhelming that I should learn a bit of code. I actually have been using wordpress.org (not that .com BS) a bit to design some sites but know nothing about programming but definitely a skill that is mobile and I could make a bit of cash on the side while travelling in Thailand or australia or wherever would be amazing.

So below are a summary of suggestions. From the very little I know about programming and monetization and what I have paid people to design websites for me I would say the most valuable would be : Html5, CSS3, SQL in that order.

However Javascript came up a lot but I figured that was outdated and only used for those shitty little video intros on old / poorly designed sites.

Thus far my decision for 6 months off is

1 – HTML

2 – Spanish

3 – Training

But I can be easily swayed! I will start an official blog on Thursday so still have time to change it. I feel I can have full focus on 2 skills + training given the time I have.

Cobol – Old programming language (not sure if this is a joke or not)

Unix - – Ok so I am not sure what any of these are but I think unix is a programming language for the actual design of computers – not sure how “real world handy this would be.

SQL - SQL is a database language, can anyone go into more detail?

Java - I also thought Java was outdated? Why Java?

Html5: This to me seems the most relevant and able to monetize

CSS3: this could be a good one as I have thought of going into GIS and I heard they use “C” type programming (whatever that is) can I have fun designing stuff with this though?

New Language – duolingo.com : this sounds promising. I am totally leaning towards Spanish since I only know English I think this is a good starter and given the amount of time I have I could be reasonably fluent in 6 months. I would love to learn mandarin but I think it could be overwhelming and I may become a little frustrated.

Udacity, EdX, Coursera: not sure what these are? Online courses? Are they expensive or useful, anyone know?

Also is it worthwhile/ would I be able to be proficient enough to utilize my new code skills to upgrade my resume or make a little money on the side consulting if I train full time at this for 6 months.

In my head I picture genius coders who started building programs at 8 years old as the guys that can make good cash. Not some 28 year old who has only done it for 6 months but maybe that is enough time to become proficient and make a bit of coin (some trades that make good $ only take 6-12 months to learn the basic skill)

I should say I do enjoy site design and was decent at Math in high school and university. [ actually I was really good at Math 12 (100%) and matrix algebra/ stats in university (95%+) but sucked at calculus (like 70%) ]