Phillip Rhodes wrote:
Independent consulting is far from your only option. There are local firms such as mine who hire people to work in our LAMP environment. We use LAMP and a full object oriented development platform as a basis for the service we sell to our customers. Large companies including those like Yahoo, Amazon, and Google do as well.matt-nc wrote:
I have heard that L.A.M.P. is considered by some to be a skill set that will be coming into increasing demand. Specifically, I am wondering if I would have realistic expectations of being able to get any significant jobs or freelance work if I would develop expertise in that area only.
I'm not sure how much demand there is, in terms of "permanent" employment for those skills... maybe it depends a little on which
language (Perl | Python | PHP) you're using for the "P" in LAMP.
If you know all three, then so much the better. I have seen a few
job ads circulating on the local mailing lists and job boards
mentioning PHP, so there is at least some demand.
What you really might have some success doing is setting up shop as an independent consultant type, and do contract work custom building applications. In which case you could pitch the use of L.A.M.P. to your prospective customers, and use the advantages of the platform to help sell your services.
Or, would I find that it would still be necessary to have many other programming skills or a computer degree.
More skills are always good, and you should probably always try to
continue learning new things if you want to stay competitive. Degrees
are important to some people, not so important to others. If you're good at what you do, you'll probably be able to find something, even without a tech centric degree.
Degree is always a mixed bag, but I look for skills that are _supposed_ to be obtained in a degree (Data structures, OO programming, computing fundamentals like memory management, int vs. float vs. string, pointers) and more esoteric things like good coding practices, style, Design Patterns, Unit testing, and use of common external libraries like PEAR and PECL not to mention knowing how to use tools like CVS, Bugzilla, and Wiki's.
From someone who'll be hiring someone to join my LAMP team shortly, David Rasch Broadwick Corp. Lead Developer (919)459-1445 -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
