In the midst of fears regarding a double dip recession and on-going worries about the Eurozone crisis, we must console ourselves with the fact it’s not all doom and gloom; at least not for technical folk. Highly skilled developers and coders are still very much in high demand, and by 2018, Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts are expected to see a 53+% increase in salary, with Computer Software Engineers close behind with an anticipated 34% increase in salary.
Requirements for these kinds of jobs obviously vary depending on whether you are in charge of the ‘front end’ or ‘back end’, but nonetheless, every company loves an all-rounder. So it is with that in mind, our Technical team want to advise you on the core skills they (or any other tech company for that matter) recommend you may wish to brush up before that fateful first phone interview.
If you are going to apply for any technical job whatsoever, there are certain key terms and skills we would advise you to be familiar with. Below is a list what we deem to be the seven most important and our reasons as to why.
Browser Compatibility: Behind each browser there is a different rendering engine which means the same HTML (or CSS) code will appear differently on different browsers (and operating systems).
HTML/DHTML/CSS: Over the last few years however HTML has evolved and ‘table layouts’ are not as appreciated these days. We would advise you therefore to be familiar with DIV layouts. These don’t have to be complicated, instead they must be simple, aesthetically pleasing, but most importantly, contain valid code. Many developers use HTML validators to check their code is well formed. Errors in your code disappoint anyone that knows their trade- so be sure to focus on this and don’t even think about applying for a job without sound knowledge of this area. You should also be aware of developments within HTML5. Following its immediate predecessors HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devicesCSS enables you to abstract away your styling from your content.
JavaScript: Javascript is used to manipulate elements on the page and you will be expected to be able to write a simple function to manipulate the DOM (Document Object Model). Additionally, there are further libraries such as jQuery, Prototype or Mootools that speed up developing the code – most sites these days do not use just Javascript, they use one of the above libraries – so in the majority of cases this is a requirement. Once again, you don’t need to be an expert, but you must know how to work with at least one of these libraries.
APIs: Working with different APIs is very much in demand. Facebook, Twitter, Google and Paypal’s APIs are arguably the most popular right now, especially given the dramatic rise of social media integration into websites. APIs allow you to display content on your website that comes from a different provider and also enables you to add rich functionality to your application without having to write the code. The flipside of this is if you have useful functions in your code, you may wish to expose these via your own API. APIs are generally exposed via webs services which used to be fairly complex (SOAP) but have become simpler to write and consume in recent times with the arrival of RESTful services. We cannot compare the APIs because, for example, if you want to add the Facebook ‘Like’ button to a site it is a single line of code, whereas if you want to set up recurring payment via PayPal (or any other payment system), this is much more complicated as it involves encryption keys. Try and be familiar using as many different APIs possible as you there is no doubting you will need to use at least one at some point.
Object-oriented programming: Object-oriented programming can best be described as a programming paradigm; a methodology of programming adopted by a programmer. OOP provides greater flexibility and easier maintenance across large systems and can sometimes make understanding and analysing complex procedures a lot easier. You should understand the concepts involved including objects, classes, inheritance, delegation, interfaces and polymorphism.
Frameworks: Frameworks simplify your job as a developer and speed up the process of developing the code. In general, they are a set of libraries that allow you to focus on your logic – if you use Frameworks the task should be much simpler, more scalable and easier for another developer to understand. You don’t need to write as much code; instead you can focus on how it should work. The most popular Frameworks these days are MVC frameworks such as Zend and Symfony for PHP or SpringMVC or Stuts for Java. It’s a good idea to be familiar with these or at least the MVC concept. You may also wish to make yourself familiar with some common ‘design patterns’. They are a set of accepted coding best practices that help you structure your code in the best way to tackle a given task.
Language (PHP, .Net, Java, Perl, Pyton, etc): The most popular these days for web applications is PHP; it’s simple, lightweight and open source so it costs nothing, but it can also be very powerful. If you want to manipulate data in the back end, you will probably need to use one of these languages. It could be for very simple purposes such as web tracking, additional API codes or A/B testing, but the wider your skill set here the better.
Databases: In most cases, at some point you will need to store data. Therefore you have to be able to design a database and then write SQL queries, insert and update those queries (CRUD-Create, replace, update, delete). Most companies use my MySQL, mainly because it’s lightweight, open source and fast. In the past, people used commercial databases such as Oracle or Sybase but these are falling out of favour because you cannot use them free of charge. You should also have some knowledge of ORM tools. Object Relational Mapping allows you to easily access data in the database as objects in your code. You may also wish to brush up on the features such as Translation Control and Connection Pooling.
So there you have it, our top tips on what we deem to be the 8 most important skills potential tech employers will be looking for. If you think we’ve missed something please get in contact. Alternatively, if you like this article, please feel free to share it and spread the word. Thanks and bye for now, The our company Tech’ Team.
