I\'m 16-years old, and due to being placed in accelerated programs during my who

Question

I'm 16-years old, and due to being placed in accelerated programs during my whole academic career, I just finished high school over the holiday season. For the past year or so I've been teaching myself web development (front-end, more specifically), and want to go into a career in the field. I have a front-end internship all lined up for the summer (some places don't offer them year-round, I guess), but I want to continue learning between these two periods. More specifically, I want to learn some server-side development so I can understand the interconnection between the front-end and back-end better.

My question is, would taking on a programming certification program at my local community college teach me anything, or is the information too outdated to be relevant whatsoever? PHP is the server-side language covered in the certificate (it also covers JS and CSS). I feel like in self-teaching myself I may have skipped over some fundamentals of JavaScript, and I'd really like to have a solid understanding of the language from both a syntax and philosophical perspective (i.e. understanding advantages, distadvantages, etc).

Explanation / Answer

"Certification" programs are very different than more traditional forms of education, such as advance high school classes or college courses. They emphasize specific, narrow fields of study over broad, fundamental understanding, as well as favor rapidity over thoroughness. Such courses generally teach you one specific system in detail, such as a particular network protocol, or a certain company's proprietary system. They have their uses if you really want a job that requires that very specific skill, or otherwise want a boost in that area for some reason. However, they are not a substitute for a more in-depth education.

Programming is a science where you need to know the fundamentals. You may THINK you don't - you may think they you know everything you need to know in order to be practical and able in a rather short time - but this is a dangerous illusion, and it is common. Basic programming necessary to do basic things is actually very fast and easy to learn - good programming, however, requires intimate knowledge on the subject. In college, the first semester or two will teach you programming, and the other seven or eight will teach you how to use it appropriately.

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