MIS Major wanting to specialize in Web and mobile applications Developement

Hello,

I so torn between if I should continue on MIS or switch over to CIT. My question is of I decide to stay with MIS track what college courses and even certs that will give me the foundation to be a proficient mobile app and web developer.

I think someone in this forum suggested that I decided to stay on the MIS undergrad track, that i should try to become proficient in a technical area. Well the two areas that I would like to become proficient in is Web and Mobile app developent AND information security.

I just dont know languages, courses, certifications, technologies that i would need to get the foundation to specialize in these areas. I know for sure that these are areas that I would love to become proficient in. I was going to into CIT because I want to be proficient in these areas.

I understand that most time web apps and mobile apps connect to databases on web servers, do i have to take the CIT major to learn this or could I learn this by talking programming and database class electives?

Also is there any certifications that i can acquire that covers setting up servers and setting up virtualization on them or do I have to take the CIT degree route?

Im trying my best to keep my path in MIS but I have elective that i'm willing to use to the get the courses under my belt that will allow me to get on the web application development track.

Someone please tell me the languages, classes, and certs that will allow me to specialize in this arena, I don't want to be one those MIS majors with no technical specialty.

 

I work in an application development shop that does exactly what you want to do and secure coding is a growing need. So in that regard your desires are in line with industry needs at the moment. An MIS degree may not be your best option however, generally those of us around here with an MIS degree are more on the business and management side of the house. The actual developers and architects tend to be computer science majors, not information systems. As for learning development languages, right now .NET is hot and Java is a staple of the industry. The security certifications to look for are the Security+ from CompTIA for starters then when you qualify perhaps a CISSP certification.

Although college can teach you a lot of this, IT is more about what you can "do" than what degree you hold. If you stick to MIS or otherwise just want to learn some technical skills, I am a fan of the O'Reilly School of Technology courses O'Reilly School of Technology which tend to be cheap compared to college coursework.

Hope that helps.

 

I just wanted to say thank you so much for referencing me to the O'Reilly School of Technology website. It look like the courses there would help me a great deal in getting started. One of the main things I want to get into is starting webhosting business, hopefully these course can put me on the right track. What courses have you taken their yourself?

 

I think I'm going to give O'Reilly a shot when I finish up at Liberty. I ordered their HTML and CSS book a few months back and really enjoy reading it.

 

I've always been impressed with O'Reilly. Please come back and tell me how their training is, I'm very curious.

 

Building Mobile Applications / OpenCourseWare

https://wiki.cs50.net/Seminars

 

I’m shooting for the spring of 2012 to start with O’Reilly.