Finished studying to be a programmer - what to do next?

Question

IT education

Yes, that's such a strange question xD. Well, a little about myself. Possibly a trace. You can not read the paragraph, but it seems to me that it is much clearer what I want to find out.
StoryWe have a small city. There are not many residents, but thanks to one large city-forming enterprise, the city is developing steadily. Based on the needs of this enterprise, mostly working professions are in demand (electricians \ welders \ turners \ chemists, etc.). But some devil pulled me to study as a programmer :). He went to study at a local college, in fact - the main source of workers in the city. Well, and soon, as often happens, it turned out that the profession of a particular programmer is rather mediocre there. There was a good course in mathematics, fortunately there was a very strong teacher (however, I managed to oversleep half of the lectures), and everything related to programming and algorithmization was given strongly at a basic level. Those. to make it clear: for 4 years of study, the "programmer" of the college masters Delphi at the level of working with components, and the database in the form of MS Access. Also, at the lectures on the database, they taught some very old version of FoxPro. I myself was fond of Delphi at school, sawing some small programs - toys for myself, but in general, somewhere by the 2-3 course I got bored, and began to look towards other programming languages. Well, I've been looking at everything. And I managed to look at C ++, and Java (though in terms of developing applications for Android), a little C #, and even 1C (God forgive me X_x). But the choice settled on Python, because. the language seemed very convenient, and the presence of frameworks such as Django makes it exciting to master Web development, which you have not touched before. I read Lutz's book, a little Pilgrim, and of course articles from the Internet / habr. Django was studied on a couple of not very fresh books in Russian, as well as Django Book, documentation, and djbook.ru materials / translations of course. In general, I have been fond of this for about a year now, I still write all sorts of small things for myself, small sites (again, mostly for the sake of / for myself), tools, etc.
Well, now closer to the question. College education has come to an end. I passed the State Educational Standards, received a diploma, and now the question arose - what to do next? There is practically no need for programmers in the city. In part, it is more or less realistic to find a job as a system administrator, but programmers receive from 5-8 tr. per month at best, and then you have to look. It's funny, of course, but again, comparable to the work of a janitor, who gets the same amount from us :). An inner voice tells you that you need to either change your profession, or go from here to the city for more, continue your education at a university, and look for work in large cities. I'm more inclined towards the second option, because. like the profession. Well, the question is - what will Habr advise, how to live on?) The college gave a mediocre education, with which you can’t go far - what technologies, books to read for further development? And so what I know at the moment:

• Delphi (however, I think here you can still update your knowledge, the time has passed since the moment of active study).
  
• Python - at the level of the books described above. Junior gets it.
  
• Django is at the junior level, as is the case with Python.
  
• I got acquainted with HTML \ CSS layout, read a small book on JavaScript, jQuery. In general, without a frontend now, how can you not turn it anywhere.
  
• A little familiar with the clouds (GAE, Amazon EC2).
  
• As for databases, SQL constructions from the college based on MS Access \ FoxPro are still spinning in my head, although of course the data models in Django corrupt \ SQL as the language is gradually being forgotten. I also played a little with MongoDB, read the translation of a small book (in my opinion, one of the Habr users translated, but now I can’t find the links). But in vacancies, as I understand it, for the most part they ask for PostgreSQL, MySQL - someone will tell you what to master \ good literature?
  
• Well, with version control systems, in the form of Git, and GitHub also played around.
  
• English has never been purposefully taught, but since. The documentation is usually in English, but over the years I read the documentation at the very least.
  

In general, I now have at least 5-6 months of time that can be spent on myself / further development / plans for the future. I thought about continuing my education at the university at the full-time department, but because. I didn’t pass the exam after college, so paying for tuition at a paid department in large cities without work is very problematic. There is an option to go to a correspondence course \ try to move to Moscow (fortunately there is where to live for the first time), and look for a job. But here is just a question for Habr users - what exactly should I study to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, so that it would be easier to find a place? Some advise not to study at all, but to go and look for a job (they justify that on the spot, in a team, and on real tasks with experience comes much more than with books). I understand that the question is extremely vague, and yet - how would you act in my place, what did you advise to study, where to move on? Thank you.

Answer 1

English is for sure, it will speed up the learning of any language

Answer 2

1. Dump to a major city.
2. Find a job as a junior. I don’t care about the salary - the main thing is that more or less is enough for life.
3. Enroll in a specialized university for an evening program.

Answer 3

An interesting approach. For example, my question has always been like this: “What else would I learn in programming in order to solve this or that problem.” I mean, in programming, people often go from practice: they come up with something, and then they think how to implement it. And, it seems to me, it is worth coming up with some kind of project and doing it, simultaneously completing my studies in some narrow directions.

Answer 4

As an option to start working on some kind of project, you can opensource. Then there will be real experience, and a portfolio. And if everything goes well, then with time and earnings.

Answer 5

these are the specialists our universities are preparing.

Answer 6

“My father never went to college, so it was important to him that I go to school.
- I know this.
- I graduated from college, I call long distance and say: "Dad, I graduated from college." He says, "Get a job." At twenty-five I call him again and say: “Now what?”. He says: "I don't know, get married."
“That’s right, you can’t get married so easily. I'm like a thirty year old boy.
“Our entire generation has been brought up by women. Maybe we really need a woman? Is this the answer to our problems?
(c) Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
Get a job.

Answer 7

First, decide what you want to do in the future, and then think in which direction to develop.
I like to make sites in janga - well, so teach it, and at the same time MySQL, only then there is no sense in entering a university. Junior at the janga developer already has a chance to get a job right now.
I want to go to Yandex / Google / MS - then you need to enter a university and learn the same computer science: algorithms, data structures. From languages ​​- C ++ and Java, be sure to read articles about large systems in general and the concept of map-reduce in particular. To get even an intern in a team that will teach you this, with your current knowledge is unrealistic.

Answer 8

Work in a big city, gain experience. As you mature, move back and you will already be freelancing as a professional. Well, or maybe stay in a big one, but not everyone likes it :)

Answer 9

If you suddenly have plans to move to St. Petersburg, write to me in a personal, I'll tell you about our company. We have a lot of programs for interns / juniors, and in general we are very good :)

Answer 10

Without a frontend, nowhere, but if you don't need to maintain legacy code, you should master Elm - it's simple and allows you to develop the front very quickly. Well, the experience of FP will be useful.