Cartography and programming?

Question

Programming

Hello. I would like to know if it is possible to move from programming to the field of cartography and geography without obtaining a second higher education? To begin with, I would like to start doing cartography at least at the hobby level. At the moment I am working with databases, and therefore I would like to know what languages ​​and directions are most in demand in GIS systems and is my idea realistic at all? Where are such specialists needed and have you observed the experience of such a "change" in the field of activity? Well, if there are people with a similar hobby (cartography) here, then advise books on this topic.

Answer 1

I don't know what you mean by "go into the field", if you are a programmer, then you should not "go over", but specialize if you are interested. I say this as a person who is now closely involved in GIS systems - there is still little experience in this area, but just like you - there is a great interest and a well-founded sense of the usefulness of the projects being developed (as opposed to many other developments in IT). So just keep programming and learn the maps, starting with the simplest things. You will encounter a lot of things, for me the most difficult so far have been coordinate systems and non-Euclidean geometry associated with them. Actually, this is the whole geodesy.
With all this, I do not presume to call myself a surveyor, I am still a programmer, GIS is more of a specialization. There is nothing unrealistic in your idea, the area is large and in demand (especially now, when domestic information systems have finally woken up, wanting to translate more pre-revolutionary paper information into a digestible form).
You will need higher education (this is the law) only if you want to work closely with cartographic data - surveying, measurements, preparing documents and other things. Personally, I haven't needed it yet.
I can give you a bunch of abbreviations and technologies that I have come across in 3+ years (I'm a dotnett, so the set is appropriate):
1) PosgtreSQL + PostGIS - they sat on MySQL for some time, but then they moved the project here, they didn’t think about returning, after all, this is the de facto standard in GIS DBMS
2) NetTopologySuite - a dotnet clone of JTS - a library that implements the main primitives and processing algorithms geometry (point, line, polygon, search for intersections, touches, area calculation, etc.) - so far enough for the eyes;
3) NHibernate in combination with NHibernate.Spatial is the #1 ORM for us. We started development when EF was still walking under the table, but even now I would choose it, a very powerful lib, especially with the Spatial plugin to support mapping of Geometry fields
4) SharpMap - map engine. The quality is average, but given that it is non-commercial (LGPL), it will do just fine.
5) QGIS is a GIS system, an important tool besides Visual Studio.
This is our stack. Well, in general, you can still google: WFS / WMS, GeoJSON / TopoJSON, GeoServer (we don’t use it yet, we’ll connect it if we need a WFS server).