CCNA (Cisco)

[M.C]

Would there be any point in someone who doesn't have qualifications/experience in the field taking a CCNA course?

I was looking at a City & Guilds Level 3 ICT course and was offered the CCNA course.

My concerns are that it's too specialised and might be too complicated. I'm reasonably techie but hit a brick wall with stuff like coding, circuit design (if that helps gauge my level).

[Islander]

It's a very good course and will teach you about network addressing, the network stack, various networking protocols and the Cisco IOS operating system commands. There's no coding involved.

From memory the pass mark for the exam is pretty high and the exam itself is based around progressive adaptive testing.

[Easy-X]

I got a Cisco cert umm... several decades ago but knowing Cisco I doubt much has changed I wouldn't say you need to know coding as such but there's a certain mindset for these things. "Autist" is too cheap a shot but are you reasonable with maths, engineering, techie stuff in general?

For example, you say you can't handle coding but which languages have you tried? Half of it is figuring out the psychological makeup of the creators I started with this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/C-Programming-Language-2nd/dp/0131103628

...many moons ago and although no one really writes in C anymore if you can follow this book you'd have a gateway to quite a few modern programming languages.
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[M.C]

[xX-Alex-Xx]

[Easy-X]

[MarJay]

Waste of time if you don't use it regularly. It's SO dry, that unless you're messing with Cisco switch configs every day it'll be meaningless and very abstract.

I did the CCNA course on Udemy, and at the time I'd just finished a job at a company where it would have been useful, but I never use it in my current job and can I remember any of it? Can I heck.
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[Easy-X]

The Cisco specific stuff probably not but as Islander pointed out learning networking in general is a good thing.
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[Ayrton]

[MarJay]

[M.C]

[Islander]

[Islander]

[M.C]

[P.]

I learnt my networking stuff "on the job" which was definitely slower pace, but reading through the CCNA stuff online, its mostly items that I have learnt and make use of daily, along with nice reminders about stuff I sometimes have to press tab to remember the commands on the CLI

I spent about 7 years playing with switches, routers, firewalls and that and learning how to use them in my previous job and ended up moving elsewhere which used those skills at a higher level. I don't just touch Cisco now, but as Islander says, you learn a decent network understanding and how things actually work that isn't Cisco specific, which has let me transition to Fortinet, Juniper and various other big names which even having their own OS and config which is remarkably different, the actual networking principles are the same and will be across all networking kit.

If you find computers and techy things fun, the networking side can be fun. I love it.

Is it worth it... maybe, I don't know what the going rate for an engineer is but I am certainly above the "advertised salaries" from Indeed so don't use them as a true measuring stick, stuff like this would be good if you had a year or two exposure and actually got in touch with the automation type tools they ask about, making changes has never been easier however with your lack of enjoyment in any programming stuff, maybe not eh - https://uk.indeed.com/q-cisco-ccna-%C2%A360,000-jobs.html?vjk=f84f526dd3f03773

[xX-Alex-Xx]

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