Visual Basic is an application development language - no server required. Although it’s going to be a waste of time if it’s not Visual Basic.net, because anything that’s worth working on is moving in that direction.

Well, it’s certainly useful to have some pre-existing procedural programming experience before moving on to the massively alternative thinking that is OOP (used in VB.net and Java). And there are a ton of companies still out there running plain VB, so it’s not useless. But you know, Microsoft isn’t developing non-.net tools any more. On the plus side, you can probably find a copy of VB6 for cheap.

OOP is something that takes most people a considerable amount of time to understand well. Hopefully your Java class doesn’t ignore that aspect. It’s probably why you need the prerequisite Programming Logic.

I suppose that’s alright. I think it’s weird that they’re specifically mentioning Oracle, since Oracle costs $$ compared to, well, pretty much anything else. Even Microsoft’s SQL Server has a light version that is either free or packed with development tools (can’t remember, it’s been a while).

In this class, you’re likely to learn all sorts of things that you can’t do in practice. For example, MySQL is a very common database in the “real world”. MySQL doesn’t support the full SQL92 syntax (saying that Orcale does a better job is understating things a bit) and so when you try to run all of those fabulous subqueries that you can do in other tools, you’ll likely spend a day trying to figure out what’s wrong, and then how to do without.

Part of the problem with classes on computers is that they never teach practical use. Theory is good to have, and you need to cover the foundation well (Windows applicaiton programmers who don’t learn about the Windows API should be sent back remedially!), but there is practical experience that you can’t get out of school.

So realistically, these class topics are probably as good as you’re going to get anywhere. My point is that (and I’m sure you’ve noticed this by now) your formal education is only going to scratch the surface; introducing you to a small subset of what computer work is actually out there and the concepts involved.

The one weird thing you’ll find with this industry, unlike something like, say, home construction, is that you must learn new things continuously. There is always something new to learn. Could you imagine not being well-versed in HTML before the next crop of browsers is unveiled? It would be a nightmare of catch-up.

</rambling>