8 Hot Software Skills To Keep Your Career On Track
Looking for work in tech right now? Looking for ways to expand your role at your current job? I've put on my prognosticator's cap for a look at which software is worth your time. You'll find content management systems, 3D modeling, and programming frameworks in the mix. If you're a hiring manager, it's worth a look to see which software is being used, and where.
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We know that there are relatively few "bad" technology skills out there, but there are some skills that might be more useful than others in today's job market. In particular, there is of-the-moment software that happens to be in favor among enterprises these days, and beefing up your knowledge of these could behoove you if you're looking to make a career move. If you're a hiring manager, it's worth a look to see what software is being used, and where.
I've put on my prognosticator's cap for a look at which software is worth your time. You'll find content management systems, 3D modeling, and programming frameworks in the mix.
Before we dive into the list, though, let's set some expectations. Some of the software examples you'll find here are frameworks, some are applications, and straddle the line that separates the categories.
Here's another thing: How to determine if something qualifies as a software, rather than a programming language? Here's how I drew the line: If something is used in support of a programming language, is an application, or is a utility, then it's a software rather than a language. I know that there are products that dance along the dividing line, but since I put the list together, I got to make the decision.
If you disagree with the choices, I look forward to our conversation in the comments section below.
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To support my decisions about which software to include in this list, I interviewed Alvaro Oliveira, VP of talent operations Toptal. Toptal is an online talent marketplace that connects freelance designers and developers who it has screened for experience and competence with companies looking for talent.
Oliveira said companies have many reasons for seeking those with talent in the software we've chosen here. These can include speeding up the development of enterprise applications, or a desire to add features to mobile apps. If there is any common theme among the technologies chosen for this list, it is the relationship many of them have to Javascript.
Asked about that, Alvaro said, "It's insanely popular, and I only see it getting bigger."
Let's get started. Once you've reviewed the software we're highlighting here, I'd love to know what you think of the list. Are you using any of these technologies? Are there others you expected to be on the list, but aren't? Tell me all about it in the comments section below.
For many people, building a website means working with WordPress. But for some, Drupal is the CMS of choice when a new site is on the agenda. That's why Drupal is on the list.
Drupal is an open source CMS supported, and now developed, by a very large and active community. Based on PHP, Drupal began life as a messaging system developed by a Dutch programmer. Now, it's become the basis of heavy-duty content management systems used by organizations as large and diverse as the Weather Channel and the White House.
"We've seen more and more large companies and enterprises using it, some even replacing Sharepoint with Drupal," Oliveira said.
The other thing moving Drupal forward is that it's not merely a platform for words. "Drupal 8 is very fresh, keeping the same Drupal spirit and totally renewed. It's also being promoted as a backend for applications," Oliveira said.
The big problem with the Internet is that it's so darned big. Even individual company websites can be, in the words of one famous presidential contender, "yuuge!" When you need to find a particular something on a website (or collection of websites) you need a good search function, and a rapidly growing number of companies are turning to Elasticsearch.
Elasticsearch is based on Apache's Lucene, an open-source package of text search code and functions used by many organizations on its own. Elasticsearch extends and enhances those functions, especially in ways that bring dramatically larger sites and data sets within the range of solid search times. Skills around search engine are important across the board. Skills in Elasticsearch seem poised to be a significant aid in finding a gig.
If you want evidence that games are becoming more and more important in the tech world, you needn't look any further than the rise of the Unity 3D Engine among technology skills companies are looking for in new talent. Market dynamics make it seem almost certain to continue growing.
Unlike many of the technologies on this list, Unity isn't the result of an open source project. Instead, it is a product introduced and developed by Unity Technologies. Now a decade old, Unity is known as a 3D rendering platform that allows a game to be developed once and deployed across a wide variety of platforms, from mobile devices, to game systems, to desktop computers. Originally released for MacOS X, Unity is now one of the most commonly used development systems in the gaming world. The rise of Unity tells the IT industry that games aren't merely for fanboys anymore.
With Node.js, I begin the series of technologies pointing out what a big deal Javascript is in the enterprise. News flash: Javascript is a very big deal in enterprise application development.
There are many people (including several who have commented on articles here at InformationWeek) who don't see any scripting language, including Javascript, as acceptable for enterprise-class applications. For thousands of companies, though, Javascript is a valuable part of their Web application development process.
Node.js tells us a lot about the popularity of Javascript, Oliviera said, "[Javascript] is insanely popular and I only see it getting bigger. People want the experience with Javascript to get better. Some people say that Node.js is part of the front-end stack when it's really a backend technology."
Oliviera cited Walmart as an example of what Node.js can do for a company. "They created a front-end layer with Node.js that powers a lot of their apps and allows them to handle things like Black Friday without having to rewrite their systems."
Node.js offers the framework that handles incredibly high transaction volume. Oliviera pointed out that Node.js takes all the requests and passes them to Walmart's legacy systems, making for a high-volume, powerful transaction processing solution. That flexibility and scaling explains why Node.js skills should be growing in popularity.
Ember.js is the second Javascript framework to make my list of fast-growing technology requests. An open source project with a very active developer community, Ember.js is built, according to the Web site, around a set of integrated templates and incorporated common idioms that help enterprise developers be more productive and create more complex Web pages.
The Ember.js Javascript framework has been adopted by companies including Nordstrom, Chipotle, and Square, so its ability to support large, high-volume websites is well established. One of the great advantages of the Handlebar integrated templates Ember.js uses is that they self-modify when the underlying code changes, reducing maintenance costs and the possibility of errors due to mismatched code changes. It's a powerful set of arguments for Ember.js when Javascript is the choice for Web application development.
With the next technology on the list we leave the world of Javascript for the realm of PHP. If you're looking for a framework with which to develop advanced PHP projects, Laravel might well be your answer. Someone with Laravel experience then becomes a valuable addition to the team.
Laravel is an open source project originally developed and still principally managed by Taylor Otwell. According to his site, Laravel is intended for "web artisans." It's a framework that supports developing simple, elegant code by teams or individuals. Laravel comes into its own when the project involves a relational database backend or the need for more readily deploying and maintaining applications than raw PHP provides.
Oliviero had this to say about Laravel: "Laravel has become the most popular framework for PHP. For the new projects it's standing out as a framework using a lot of popular files." He pointed out, "Some of the projects are related to Ruby on Rails, bringing that technology to the PHP space."
If you want to learn about the framework or meet other Laravel practitioners, there's Laracon, the annual meeting of the tribe. It's hard to beat technology that comes with a party.
Not a big fan of either Javascript or PHP? Then Flask could be right up your alley, since it's a framework written to support programmers working in Python. Flask is the least rigorously developed technology in this list, and is in many ways the most minimal. But it has become popular among developers looking for a micro-framework that supports extensions for a wide variety of data connection and handling. Simple, fast, and undemanding, it's a combination that has led companies such as Pinterest and LinkedIn to add Flask to their development arsenals. It's the sort of skill that Python programmers might do well to add to their list of saleable skills.
When you're looking for a technology with a big backing, it's hard to get bigger than Google, and Google is the birthplace of AngularJS, an open source Web application framework for client-side rich-media Web applications.
When you're looking for a technology with a big backing, it's hard to get bigger than Google, and Google is the birthplace of AngularJS, an open source Web application framework for client-side rich-media Web applications.
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