Posted on 09/04/2013 12:51:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
More than ever, companies need coders. And while tech firms do the bulk of the hiring, the demand for programmers spans industries and only seems to be growing.
From writing basic HTML to building complex logic into mobile applications, the ability to smartly craft lines of code continues to be one of the most in-demand — and often, well-paying — skill sets one can have.
(See also: Why This Guy Quit His Sports-Radio Dream Job... To Write Software)
So what skills are the most sought after? That's an ever-fluctuating, somewhat difficult thing to track. Normally, we'd avoid turning to a single source for such data, but its very nature makes Indeed.com an ideal place to look. The job search site aggregates more than 16 million listings from a wide range of sources, so it's fairly comprehensive.
It may be almost 20 years old, but the object-oriented scripting language is still going strong. After existing for years as a general purpose programming language, Ruby got a huge bump from the advent of Ruby on Rails, the hyper-popular Web development framework. Since the rise of Rails, the two have practically become synonymous, but Ruby has plenty of applications as a general scripting language.
Microsoft's server-side Web development framework is more controversial than many of its peers, in part because it's a Microsoft product. Still, its ability to build dynamic sites and Web applications is favored by many programmers and, more importantly, the organizations who hire them.
AJAX is actually multiple technologies bundled into one. Asyncronous JavaScript and XML was first popularized by Web applications like Google Maps and Gmail. The ability of websites to retrieve data in the background without reloading the page is something we now take for granted, but it was groundbreaking stuff a decade ago. Today, using a conglomeration of HTML, CSS, JavaScript (or JSON) and XML to build asynchronous Web apps is still popular, and the job listings prove it.
For a 30-year-old programming language, Objective C is looking pretty good. It's the core of development for both of Apple's operating systems. Its roots in Mac OS X go back to Steve Jobs' days at NeXT and it's at the heart of iOS. Considering the the platform's enormous popularity, it's no wonder that Objective-C is coveted by employers across industries.
PHP is huge. The open source, server-side scripting language runs on more than 20 million websites and powers high-profile sites we deal with every day, including Facebook and Wikipedia. Any blog, news site or other website built using Wordpress or Drupal is making use of PHP as well. It's all over the Web, even if you can't see it by clicking "view source."
Python is a general purpose programming language that can be used in a variety of ways. Known for its clean and efficient code, Python is used by players as notable as Google and NASA. It's also what Dropbox is written in. In fact, the technology is so important to Dropbox that the company hired Python author Guido van Rossum away from Google late last year.
Dropbox isn't the only one hiring Python talent. There are currently 19,455 Python job listings on Indeed.com.
Perl was very popular in the 90s for its ability to create CGI scripts that beefed up the functionality of early Web pages. But the dynamic programming language — sometimes called the "Swiss Army chainsaw" of languages — is capable of a wide range of feats. In addition to Web development, it's used for things like system administration, building desktop apps, game development and even bioinformatics.
C has been around since the early 1970s and remains one of the most widely-used programming languages. It may lack the sexiness of the latest Web development frameworks, but C is what lots of operating systems, kernel level software and hardware drivers are made of.
Not to be confused with C or C++, C# is an object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft in 2000 to compete with Java. Programmers will debate the merits of one language versus the other until the end of time, but tyhe fact remains that employers are hiring C# programmers like crazy.
XML is everywhere. The markup language is used to define structured information in a wide variety of contexts. On the Web, it forms the basis of RSS and XHTML, it talks to databases and is paired with JavaScript for AJAX interactivity, among much else. It's even extended beyond the Web and has found its way into the heart of desktop applications like Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign. The list goes on and on. And so do the job listings.
Like its predecessor C, C++ is used widely in operating systems, desktop apps, developing games, hardware drivers and much else. C++ has a reputation for being more complex and inefficient than some of the alternatives , but it is nonetheless an incredibly widely used and important programming language.
On the Web, JavaScript is what makes things interactive. This is especially true now that the rise of tablets and smartphones has bumped Flash from its once-prominent perch. Whether it's trendy frameworks like jQuery or the JSON data interchange standard, companies need JavaScript-focused talent like never before.
It's only natural that the language at the heart every Web page would be in high demand, even as native mobile app development and back-end cloud technologies command bigger ad bigger chunks of IT budgets. In fact, as tablets, smartphones and cloud-hosted services proliferate, the importance of the Web grows along with it. The conglomeration of Web technologies known as HTML5 is all the rage at the moment, but hypertext markup is more than a fad. It is, and will remain, the skeleton of the Web for the foreseeable future.
Java certainly has its critics, not to mention some well-publicized security issues. But the object-oriented language remains in heavy demand and used for a wide range of purposes. It can't possibly hurt that Google uses Java as the basis for Android application development, a sector that isn't likely to slowdown anytime soon.
NoSQL databases might be getting all the attention as of lately, but more traditional, structured databases are still going strong. Thus, SQL, the programming language for querying, manipulating and managing relational databases is in high demand. Considering the sheer volume of data being generated everyday, it's no shock that having the ability to help manage it is such a marketable skill. There are currently more than 98,000 SQL jobs indexed by Indeed.com.
No mention of MSFT .net?
Java - The New COBOL.
Replaced by C Sharp?
#4 is getting to be very important, knowledge of JQuery is becoming a must.
dot net is the most sought after where i work
It's number 7: C#.
It's a representation of data.
XML and JSON should be grouped together. I
Seems like C sharp and ASP.NET should be higher.
We are a .Net shop.
Just being able to sling some code together in this language or that language - at least from where I sit - is not going to get you that dream job. More typically you have to have some additional expertise in some specific subject area - be that embedded systems, web design, computer graphics - the list can go on and on. Just because you can write a while loop or a for loop in .Net (if such a thing is even possible lol) is probably not going to be enough in and of itself.
#7 and #14, C# and ASP.NET
Just what I thought - no need for being able to write comprehensive, cohesive, and attainable REQUIREMENTS! ;-P
I don't feel like expending a lot of effort to become good at 2005-era corporate-style Java or C# is the way for a young developer to go right now. There is a big change looming ahead, and companies will be forced to stop paying big money for big, complicated, in-house projects. They are going to start demanding quick, cheap wins and that means web technologies, Open Source, the LAMP stack, and project teams of disposable programmers and temporary analysts.
Just use an Indian tech writer to scribble down a few of the CEO's brainstorms and you're done - what's the problem? :)
RE: No mention of MSFT .net?
C# is on the list. You can’t programming in C# if .NET is not installed.
I'd agree, but you also have to say the same thing about HTML.... As someone who is in software development, I cringe when people say they can "program in HTML"...
But the article was about "programming skills", not languages, and being able to represent data as XML (either by hand or programmatically) is a skill.
And you can cross the line with XML with XSLT.
PHP is amateurville. I can’t imagine a first rate pro website being written in it.
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