On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:04 AM, Bryan Sant <[email protected]> wrote:
> Those who know me, know that I'm the biggest Java bigot on the list.
> However, I'm noticing more and more that employers are willing to pay
> well for a variety of programming languages. Where I work now I
> program about half the time in Java (the skill I was hired for), and
> the other half I program in Ruby (Rails 3), JavaScript (Node.js), Pig
> (Hadoop), and of course shell scripty stuff. It's fun. Wondering if
> this multi-language trend was specific to my company, I've checked out
> some other high-paying jobs in the area and they've wanted everything
> from Ruby, C#, C/C++, PHP, Objective C, Python, and of course Java. I
> think you can make good money using any language, so long as you rock
> at it. Though, you can't go wrong with strong Java skills -- it still
> tops the market for now.
>
> I think it's good for everyone to know a little Java (just to be
> familiar with the platform), but if I were starting out now with no
> specific skills in any given language, I think I'd go with Python,
> Ruby, or JavaScript. In short, just pick a language that you enjoy
> using, and really dig in. You can't go wrong.
Heh, I have some vague memories of flame wars with you involving Java,
so I'm glad to hear you're branching out and enjoying more of the
variety in the programming language world!
Javascript would indeed be a good language to learn. A few years ago,
it was a half-baked language with some nice ideas but some nasty warts
and terrible implementations, all tied to web browsers. Now, there
are several extremely high-tech implementations, lots of mature
libraries, and uses growing outside of the web browser space. A lot
of money is being invested in javascript by a lot of big companies!
Python and Ruby are currently doing pretty well, but I'm guessing that
they may end up niche languages again like Perl within the next decade
or so. No offense, Perl guys, but it's not the go-to language it once
was. Nothing wrong with that, my favorite languages are way less
popular than Perl. ;)
Another language to watch out for is Lua. It's widely used as a
scripting language embedded in a larger C/C++ program. It's minimal
but pretty powerful, and has a very fast implementation. You don't
hear a lot about it, because it's generally used inside another
program, but it's inside a LOT of programs!
--Levi
/*
PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net
Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug
Don't fear the penguin.
*/
