What skills should a programmer have nowadays?

Question

I have been programming using PHP, Javascript and have been a designer for a few years in a company. I am thinking of leaving I am wondering what skills do I need to have nowadays to become successful.

Answer 1

All you need is a finished study and capability to learn new things easily. They can't expect you know everything they tell you to do. But if you can learn well, that's going to be fine.

That's what i have been told in university. I think it holds true.

Answer 2

A portfolio of your work, lots of pictures, very short descriptions. PHP isn't as popular in the corporate world, but it does exist. You might want to consider learning JSP or C# ASP.NET to keep your options open.

Different companies have different needs, webdesign shops will be focused heavily on design and how fast you can make a site (usually using a framework). Corporate apps will be concerned with things such as bug fixing, testing, support multiple languages, using 3rd party controls.

Answer 3

It really depends on what you intend to do.

I believe the following skills are important for all types of "programmers" regardless of their chosen language.

1. Accurate Estimation. Giving your boss accurate estimates makes their job easier, which makes your life much easier.
2. Communication. Being able to communicate effectively to everyone you work with is a must.
3. Knowing when to ask for help. Like you wrote, you can't know everything. I would rather have a developer ask a colleague for help, than try to spend days coming up with a solution.
4. Design Patterns. Every developer needs to understand basic design patterns.
5. Know a good scripting language. Perl, Python, Ruby, Bash, Powershell...take your pick.

Answer 4

Learn test driven development and unit testing and have solid knowledge of a few javascript libraries.

Answer 5

You seem to be inquisitive and interested in learning. That's qualification #1; things change fast in this field, and only the life-long learners survive.

Next step would be to scour job boards in your area (Monster, Craigslist, Joel On Software Jobs Board, etc.) and keep track of the skills you see coming up a lot. That's probably a fairly good representation of what's "hot", at least near you.

Then, you can check here on stack overflow by tags (e.g. PHP and javascript) and see if the kinds of questions that people are asking make basic sense to you (not that you need to know every answer, but if it sounds like Greek, you're probably not ready to get a job in that subject).

To more directly answer your question: there are web jobs out there for PHP and javascript, though a heavy dose of CSS and Ajax probably wouldn't hurt if you're going that direction. A design background will help if you want a general "webmaster" type job, but note that those are often NOT programming-oriented jobs, because most stuff you can do on an average website is typically better done with an off the shelf CMS (you don't usually need to reinvent the wheel unless the web site you're doing is highly functional in some way). As other posters have said, C# / .NET is probably good if you want something more corporate.

The real question is: what kind of work do you like doing? What makes you happy? Find that and do it well, and you'll get a job. :)

Answer 6

If you already know PHP and Javascript, ensure your CSS and MySQL skills are up-to-scratch. The four make a nice package.

Answer 7

In web development, at least (where I've mostly worked) there's often a division between front-end and back-end skills.

I'm speaking of coding here, so by "front-end" I mean things like css and javascript. There's often a fuzzy line here between design and coding, so people working on the front-end often have a bit of coding skill, a bit of design skill.

Back-end tends to be more java, or .net (most common for web, at least by the job ads I've seen) with a bit of python, ruby, php, and other. Likely the skills in the latter will more often land you in a smaller place. It's been my observation that the back-end skills are likely to pay a bit better. You might do well to look for somewhere where you'll do a bit of the front and a bit of the back and look to transition to doing more of the programming-type work.

Of course "success" is a very personal thing, so please disregard everything written above, and best of luck.

For some actual hard data, here's one site that ranks languages by popularity in job postings (there are others) http://www.langpop.com/

Answer 8

I think one of the best assets a developer can have is to know how to use Google. Stay with me here.

I've worked with people who just don't know how to search for pre-existing solutions. When faced with any software project, I've found that half of the problem is solved by simply knowing what to type into Google. I know of the existence of a lot of different technologies, how they're intended to be used, and general chatter about them that I've read on other people's blogs, but I've never actually used them and maybe never will. But when a problem that fits their description comes my way, I know what magic words to type into Google and what to start learning next for that particular project.

The other half of the problem is deciding what to take away from those Google results. CodeProject is a fantastic site to explore, and sometimes you'll hit an article that addresses your problem head on. Sometimes, you'll be able to use the provided code directly in your project (I did this with a Windows Forms LED digit control that I got there), but most of the time, you'll just take away the ideas of the article and use it as a guide to apply to your project. Sometimes you'll look at an article and decide that the person doesn't know what they are talking about. Being able to assess the quality of, use, adapt, or simply be inspired from existing blog articles, libraries, and snippets is an invaluable asset. You don't have to understand all of it--you can't know everything, you have to draw the "magic line" somewhere--but it's important that you're able to tell what looks well-written and what looks slap-dash and error-prone.

So, to that end, my best advice is to just load up your RSS reader with feeds from people who are working in the technologies that you are interested in. You don't have to read every individual posting, but you'd be amazed at how much you can pick up by just zooming by them all and glancing at the headlines each day.

To me, things like the programming language aren't really that important. I started with C++, dabbled in Java, worked for two years in PHP, and have been living and breathing C# for another two. You can learn a programming language in a week. But learning the frameworks and idioms commonly used with that language, however, can take years, so for any such framework you can be sure that there will be some jobs somewhere involved with it. After bouncing around for awhile, you'll find one that you like (mine is the .NET world), but you'll still know your way around the others. So pick your poison, but keep reading to stay aware of what's out there. A well-indexed programmer can easily become a well-rounded one because he'll know how to go about tackling new problems that come up outside of his comfort zone.

Hope some of that makes sense.