Education
phaidenbauer • 5 Feb 2024 •
Inspired by @jasonleow’s comment, I thought I write about my school days. Everything started in 2001, elementary school. Here in Austria, that’s 4 years. Followed by secondary school (which is nowadays called differently) of another 4 year or (I think) 8 years of “Gymnasium” (strangely translates to grammar school, I guess there is no real translation). Since I wasn’t good enough in mathematics, secondary school it was.
After secondary school, you are presented with several options. One year of “polytechnic school” where you’re going into “die Lehre” (again, strange translation with “the teaching”). Basically you start to work after the poly and through around 3 or 4 years you gain a profession (ex. mechanic).
Or, you could take up some kind of higher education school, so you can get eligible for university (“HTL” [“Höhere Technische Lehranstalt” -> Higher technical college], “HAK” [“Handelsakademie” -> commecial/business academy], and others). Or you can do the in between path and take a technical college. All of those schools have different topics and carreer paths. HTL/HAK and similar run for five years which conclude with a final examination by committee, after passing you’re allowed to go to university. The technical college takes around three and a half years.
I took the technical college about IT. So in those three and a half years I learned about basic operating system stuff (how schedulers work and stuff, low level functions, …); a little bit about programming; some CAD drawing; how to use lathes and CNC machines, basic welding; and electronics. Starting from Arduino and Microcontrollers up to SPS (PLC, programmable logic controller) and how to wire a house.
Most of the stuff was only superficial, but you got the basics in many areas. Although I hated the wiring stuff back then, nowadays, I’m thankful I learned the basics of it. I can open up an outlet without turning the power off, and know which wires to not touch to not drop dead. So that’s why I know my way around photovoltaic stuff too, also the internet is full of information to suck up on.
Comments
That technical college curriculum looks like it teaches a broad range of practical skills.
ChatGPT translates die Lehre as “apprenticeship training” but uses Gymnasium as is. It’s probably difficult to translate since different English-speaking countries have different terms and school systems. It seems to cover what we in the US call middle school and high school, which together is secondary school. In the US the gymnasium is a room where we play indoor sports.
@therealbrandonwilson Coding was in English :) We started some basic PHP and MySQL. But everything I know nowadays was self-taught. English starts in kindergarten, so one or two years before elementary school. To put more context in, I was six when I’ve entered elementary school.
@Winkletter Interestingly it kinda depends on where you take that college. Where I was, the focus for “IT” was broadly diluted. I know from former coworkers that other colleges had other focuses. But nevertheless, it was a solid base training in my opinion. My best friend works as Sysadmin nowadays and was in the same class as me.
Apprenticeship training sounds good. I always forget I could ask ChatGPT or Google Bard nowadays. And yes, comparing school systems seems to be highly complicated. As far as I know there is a sheet for European schools where every country is mentioned in, but I guess overseas is different (well, at least from what I know from movies). It probably needs to be broken down, what skill you learn when to be comparable.
Silly question, was the coding in German? Which phase did you learn English?