What would you do if you were just starting?

[Lougle]

If you have no computer programming experience and just a normal exposure to computers, but want to do 'something' in IT to earn money, what would you learn? Assume that basic Excel (formulas, etc.) and basic ability to use command prompt to sort out technical issues is ok, but no knowledge of VBA, programming languages, etc.

Web content - UX - SEO - PPC, writing for online etc. Not IT exactly, but pays well and companies are crying out for these skills.

SQL

Hmm...writing for online could be interesting. I've heard of SQL, but only by name.

Chef, SQL, Linux, learn to write code.

Azure and/or AWS

Linux is an operating system, isn't it?

So if there are so many, does a computer programmer learn one or two and just take jobs that deal with that, or do they need to become 'multilingual' in a programming sense? Do the different languages sit in families, or are they all completely different?

Actually families is a good way to think about it, if you learned shell script you could quickly grasp perl or python, but C++ would still be a mystery & doing clever stuff in SQL a completely different steep learning curve. (showing my age with those references)

And yes life long learning is the expectation. The hottest language in 10 yrs time will be something we haven't heard of yet.

There are free online tutorials for any & all of these.

Thank you, that's really helpful. I guess that most programmers learn quite organically, picking up languages as they need them. As a 40 year old starting fresh it's hard to know where to start!

Languages also.depemd on if you want to be front end, backend, scripting. For front end take a look at freecodecamp

When you say, to earn money, are you looking at a career change here?
If so, you need to start looking at training courses.
If you just want to earn extra money, this probably isn't the quickest/easiest way to go about it if your current skills are simply basic. I speak as someone who had the exact same thought 15 years ago. If you are charging for your computer skills, you need to be able to do things that most people can't do. There is a lot of scope out there, but first you need to decide where your interests lie - programming, networking, web design or more business-admin related stuff with spreadsheets etc
Whatever you want to do, you need to make sure that you offer a professional service and have the skills to carry it out.
And if I was hiring someone to do that sort of work for me, I would want to know what sort of experience and qualifications they had. This is not to put you off, and there is certainly money to be made but it is not necessarily a quick way of earning a few extra quid

Should have added that there are lots of ways to earn money WITH a computer, that you can do from home, that aren't necessarily computing, so, from my own experience,
Proof-reading
Editing
Marking exam papers
Writing articles
This is just from my own background as a writer/teacher (I never did use my Computing degree really), but I am sure that there are lots of other opportunities in different fields

Thanks hazell. I know a fair bit of excel, picked it up quickly (but then, doesn't anyone?). I have a good brain for logical processes. I would like to do something that eventually allows working from home. I'm not looking to make money quickly, but also can't afford (either in time or money) to do a Computer Science degree or similar.

What about testing? Very process driven and needs a logical brain (with a bit of subversion!) . Can often be done free lance or flexible working and likely to be an ongoing demand. There are plenty short courses and they're not as expensive as doing degree.

Not so sure I'd recommend learning programming from scratch - larger companies have a preference for training school leavers at the moment and it's not quite the lucrative career it used to be.

I think I'd really enjoy testing. I have signed up to utest, which is a crowd testing programme, but if you have any other suggestions as to how I could get into it, I'd be glad to hear it.

I currently work in clinical audit, so I'm used to poring through clinical notes, trying to establish a chain of events. We have to be quite logical and analytical, applying a framework that is often slightly different to the framework that was applied when patient contact was made, so have to interpret events slightly differently, too.