<p>Is computer science about to get way more competitive? I want to go to school for computer science; however i feel like its not the type of skill you can just go to school for and start doing the job; like you could with an accounting degree or a nursing degree. It's almost like saying "I wanna go to school for music so i can be a musician". My sister started learning programming in her 5th grade class last year and is already making little animated games and web apps. The cool kids in high school these days are the ones who have their own apps or get internships at google.</p>
<p>I'm 22; and I wouldn't mind putting in the extra time to get to a decently high skill level; just worried i wouldn't be able to compete with this glut of quick young minds who have been doing it their entire lives. Is it realistic to hope to get a front-end dev job in your 30s with only 2 to 3 years experience? Worried the competition might drive down wages in the future and make it difficult to get any important positions.</p>
<p>It really depends what kind of skills you have. Currently there is a great demand for smart, qualified computer scientists, and the people who are trying to teach themselves coding in a few weeks so they can make a web page are not meeting this demand. Lots of people know how to code; few people are truly good at it. Becoming a smart developer is not something you can learn overnight: it requires lots of experience. Development can require understanding of low-level systems, math-heavy algorithmic analysis, and exceptional problem-solving skills. One well-known anecdote is that 90% of programmers can’t write a binary-search algorithm on their own. (Lookup “fizzbuzz” for more in this vein.) It’s true that many people are entering the computer-science/development industry, but strong candidates are still in short-supply.</p>
<p>That being said, you may more interested in casually learning the subject than into pouring into problem-sets and spending late nights debugging. To be honest, I don’t know very much about the job outlook for people who have just learned coding or and are don’t see themselves in the top-developer category yet. (I go to school with a lot of students who’ve studied CS for years so that skews my perceptions of the hiring outlook.) Job prospects are bright for people who are really good at development, but I suspect you’re right that the jobs requiring less experience are hard to get.</p>
<p>It is a bit alarming how many people are going into CS degrees. Maybe 4x as many as just 10 years ago because people are hiring now. But the jobs outlook is good and expected to grow. You can look that up the U.S. Labor Board publishes info online. </p>
<p>But I don’t agree that you aren’t ready to go into a job, like accounting majors are. Both will learn enormously on the job, but come with basic useful skill sets. Companies hire new CS grads all the time with nothing but schooling and maybe an internship or research project. There are levels of skill at it. Even though with music there are people who just get down rudimentary skill level it is likely enough for jobs. But if you are higher level you get the higher level jobs. </p>
<p>My own kid didn’t learn or do any programming except in college but ended up majoring in it and grad school in it. Just good at math, found she liked CS.</p>
<p>It seems like there is a boom in jobs available, partially because there were so few CS majors after the crash in the early 2000s. I have no idea, but wouldn’t be shocked if within the next 10 years there’s a major correction in the market combined with a massive increase in CS grads making for great difficulty in finding employment. </p>
<p>Don’t trust the BLS occupational outlook. They publish projections that people in the fields themselves consider to be highly unlikely. </p>
<p>Do you enjoy computer science? Computer science is not just programming. Someone could write code for decades without having great knowledge about algorithms or other CS subjects. Software engineering is relatively meritocratic. Having only 2 years experience isn’t necessarily a big drawback if you show the personality traits and skills that they want. </p>