[NTLUG:Discuss] Direction Recomendations
Greg Edwards
greg at nas-inet.com
Thu Jul 20 22:12:39 CDT 2000
The one thing that has been said throughout this thread that is most
important is "what are your goals?"
I'm a consultant (Software Engineer) and every few months I have to look
for another job so I have to keep up on what's in demand. There have
been many trends that have come and gone throughout my career and there
will be many more. A couple of years ago everyone said that if you
didn't have C++ your career was over. Now its Java. I've written
production code in Assembler, C, C++, Pascal, Basic, SQL, Tcl/Tk and
Shells of several flavors.
I am a Computer Scientist (BSCS) but I traded in my study of computing
for a career in Software Engineering in 1985. One of the problems I've
seen over the years is the mistake that many make in thinking that
learning a programming language is the way to make a career in this
industry. If you want to be a programmer then that will certainly get
you a job. If you want to have a career that gets you involved in the
real interesting problem solving aspects of systems you'll need alot
more. If you have the patients to do it get a BS or MS in Computer
Science or Software Engineering. I recommend CS because it'll open the
door to SE but not visa-versa. I would at least recommend that you get
some training in programming principals and logic.
I won't debate the pros and cons of different languages since each
language has its strengths and weaknesses. I will say that C is my
primary language, and language of choice, but then again I've got a
toolbox (mostly in my head) of solutions that resolve almost any
argument for using a higher level language. I do have a major objection
to the statement that processing speed dosen't matter!!! But then again
I've made alot of money re-engineering systems that were just too slow
because they didn't consider speed to be important.
As far as languages that are hot in the Unix world:
Web based work - HTML, C/C++, SQL, Java, Perl, shell programming
Scientific - C, Fortran, APL (yep its still out there)
Systems - C, shell programming, Tcl/Tk
Applications - C/C++, Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python, Java
IT - C, shell programming, SQL
Sys Admin - Perl, shell programming, Tcl/Tk
Embedded - C, Assembler
Unless your going to do windows skip basic. If you are going to do
windows VB, C++, and Java.
--
Greg Edwards
New Age Software, Inc.
http://www.nas-inet.com
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