# What should I be when I grow up?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-be-when-i-grow-up/695326>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [August 11, 2014, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-be-when-i-grow-up/695326 "2014-08-11T20:15:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-be-when-i-grow-up/695326/21 "2014-08-13T00:57:17Z")

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Well, sometimes careers choose you - to some extent.

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**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-i-be-when-i-grow-up/695326/22 "2014-08-13T15:45:12Z")

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> [@PeskiPiksi](#):
>
> Awesome! Okay…so SQL. And Access…what else? My dad was a Visual Basic developer before he retired and thinks I should learn that…is that still marketable?

Yes, but I think Visual Basic is called .NET now. And I don’t think it’s a hereditary skill.

But being a developer isn’t just about taking a few programming classes. You also need to understand hardware, other software applications and languages, software development life cycle so on and so forth. There’s not a lot of room these days for mediocre developers in the US. Much of that work has been outsourced overseas.

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