Guest Author - Sandra Eggers

The plain and simple fact of business life is that computers run it. Thus, the need for computer programmers isn’t going away anytime soon. There may seem to be lots of people out of work these days, but there is still a need for qualified folks.

What that means is that if you want to succeed, you need to grow your career and expand the knowledge base of information that you can offer to a prospective employer. If you’re a Cobol programmer, you can be satisfied to do mainframe maintenance in an established Cobol shop, and possibly get lucky to be involved in a web migration effort, or you can learn Java or C and increase your marketability.

Based on a recent query of jobs posted on Monster.com and DICE.com, two of the most active job boards for techies, the skills in most demand are SQL, ASP, Java, C++ and VB. These top five skills comprised nearly 75% of the job listings at the beginning of 2003.

The TIOBE Programming Community Index, updated monthly, places Java, C and C++ at the top of their list, with demand for C# on a steady increase. The worldwide ratings, calculated by Google, suggest that these skills are considered to be mainstream in industrial, mission-critical software systems.

Don’t know C++? Don’t know what C# is? Java wasn’t even invented when you went to school? No matter. It’s never too late to learn. The web has a wealth of information to research for free, and there are some very good books on the market to help you pick up these new skills.

By virtue of being a computer professional, you are good at solving problems, which means thinking logically. That’s all a new programming language is. If you know one, you can transfer those skills to another, it’s just the syntax that’s different.

Take the challenge. Try learning a new language, and you might find that it’s not as hard as you thought.

Recommended Reading
C Programming Language
Java How to Program
Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes


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