Well, it could be: no fees or books required!
I had an idea this morning (on the way to a contract job that I hated and which has now been replaced by one to which I am looking forward very much!) that was inspired by a recent thread about redundancy and people wanting to / thinking about changing course in their careers: why not see if anyone is interested in a SingletrackWorld virtual class in IT – specifically in web development?
Web development because
a) There are quite a few folks on this forum who would be able to help if they felt like it,
b) All the tools required can be quite legally downloaded for free,
c) It can pay quite well,
d) Unlike, say, networking / helpdesk / hardware installation and support and most other things in IT it is very easy to demonstrate your skills at an interview: you can easily show an interviewer code that you have written, but it’s almost impossible to show someone a network that you have set up or some helpdesk work that you have done,
e) It’s easy and fun (well I enjoy it, anyway) and
f) Anyone posting on here who has a PC already has the tools to do it!
It would be very easy to set up a course to develop a website: maybe just a site in HTML and CSS with a bit of JavaScript, then moving on to a site in ASP.Net / C# / SQL Server (which happens to be my speciality).
I could do the HTML / JavaScript / ASP.Net / C# stuff and I know that there are other folks on here with PHP / MySQL skills, and yet more with Front End development skills and very likely more with a cross-section of all of the above.
All of the information you need to do this is out there on the web, but sometimes you need to have a specific project with problems to solve and aims to achieve and, perhaps more importantly, someone to ask questions of and bounce ideas off.
I know that this site doesn’t allow general ‘Paging SuchAndSuch’ posts, but maybe we’d be allowed to have ‘Paging XYZ: HTML Question’ sort of posts specifically for this project? A question for the mods?
Yes, you need a few lucky breaks to get into paid web dev roles – but I’ve had a few such lucky breaks in the past and managed to get from jobs I hated to doing something that I mostly enjoy and which does pay for some fun things.
