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If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

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Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#131

Post by Thiz »

izolate wrote: post #39
Thiz wrote: post #21

Cordova is the future and the future belongs to those who prepare for it today. Learn Cordova.

What makes you so sure Cordova is the future? Curious.

Code once, run everywhere.

Discoverable, searchable, updatable, all the good qualities of a web app with the power and speed of a native app.

Of course you need HTML, JS, CSS and the whole web stack, but the good thing is everybody already knows it. Standards are good.

Apache is behind it, also Google, Firefox, Ubuntu, everybody benefits from a standard way of developing apps once, but very specially users, and coders.

It has to be the future, it will be no matter what, no barriers will be high enough that a great idea can not overcome.

Cordova is that idea.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#134

Post by Silhouette »

macspoofing wrote: post #108
crazygringo wrote: post #86

If you're looking to maximize your choice of companies to work at, one piece of advice could be to focus on front-end instead of back-end. I'm equally proficient at front-end and back-end, but the last time I did a whole bunch of interviews, I advertised myself as a front-end programmer (since there aren't too many full-stack positions around). Why? As a back-end developer, you're limited to picking companies that ma…

>It's just JavaScript, JavaScript, JavaScript. No it's not. Because JavaScript the language is so bare-bones, you need to supplement language deficiencies with frameworks and libraries. So you go and pick from a menu of Backbone/Marionette, Angular, ExtJS, Ember, Kendo, jQuery or etc. - some of them work together, some of them don't. Most of those get you part of the way there, you may still need to pull in things li…

Because JavaScript the language is so bare-bones, you need to supplement language deficiencies with frameworks and libraries.

Since when? It's perfectly possible to build web sites/apps, even large scale ones, using no framework at all. Pick a handy utility library, whether it's jQuery or Underscore/Lodash or whatever, and get coding.

I don't know where this idea that you somehow have to build web apps using some humungous framework came from, but I hope it relocates that rock and crawls back under it. In the history of programming, very few frameworks (as opposed to libraries) have stood the test of time.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#135

Post by shawndumas »

macspoofing wrote: post #108
crazygringo wrote: post #86

If you're looking to maximize your choice of companies to work at, one piece of advice could be to focus on front-end instead of back-end. I'm equally proficient at front-end and back-end, but the last time I did a whole bunch of interviews, I advertised myself as a front-end programmer (since there aren't too many full-stack positions around). Why? As a back-end developer, you're limited to picking companies that ma…

>It's just JavaScript, JavaScript, JavaScript. No it's not. Because JavaScript the language is so bare-bones, you need to supplement language deficiencies with frameworks and libraries. So you go and pick from a menu of Backbone/Marionette, Angular, ExtJS, Ember, Kendo, jQuery or etc. - some of them work together, some of them don't. Most of those get you part of the way there, you may still need to pull in things li…

I am stuck in a hiring war-room for the last 2 weeks (two to go). [1]

We are using jQuery/EmberJS/Bootstrap/Grunt. Everyone of the FEs agreed that experience in any JS MVC was acceptable. [2]

So while I agree that it's not JS, JS, JS but it's not quite as bad as what you're saying.

--------

[1]: We were having a problem getting front-end people so they had managers put 15 front-end engineers on the task full time for a month. Our mandate is 30 engineers in 30 days.

[2]: sdumas [at] yahoo-inc [dot] com if your looking!

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#137

Post by lmm »

camus2 wrote: post #63
taude wrote: post #47

1) Any high-level language that runs in the Java VM. Because 1) there's tons of open source libraries 2) syntactic sugar for devs 3) operational stability of the VM 4) flexibility of running it on both open source and closed source OSes meeting a variety of business requirements. 2) A scripting language for gluing your operations together, for quick and dirty services, prototyping, etc...: Python 3) JavaScript.

Is there a C# on the JVM ? it would be awesome.

Not as such, no. Java (particularly post-8), Kotlin, Groovy, Ceylon and Scala cover various pieces of the territory that C# holds in .net-land.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#138

Post by gonehome »

bad_user wrote: post #87
gonehome wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose in your case you're choosing between two bad options. The iOS app is an example of how much better a native app can be from the web app - and the new paper app even more so. I remember the android one being terrible when I had android phones a couple years ago - but I thought that was because it was basically a wrapper around a web app.

You kind of missed the point. What if history repeats itself? What if iOS will in the end fail in the marketplace, reducing its share to a single digit? What if Apple continues against all odds to develop and support it, like it did with the Mac OS? What if you'll still use it? Wouldn't you be happy then that there's a web interface available? And from a developer's perspective - you could say that you want to target…

That is a good point and I don't disagree with it.

I suppose mine was more targeting the difference between mobile native applications and mobile web wrappers.

Facebook's web interface for 'real' computers is great and companies that don't have one would probably benefit from one for the reasons you mentioned.

On the mobile side though I still think native applications are worth the investment and that'll be hard to change unless the web apps can actually offer similar design and performance.

I'd love to be wrong though.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#140

Post by RussianCow »

Silhouette wrote: post #134
macspoofing wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's just JavaScript, JavaScript, JavaScript. No it's not. Because JavaScript the language is so bare-bones, you need to supplement language deficiencies with frameworks and libraries. So you go and pick from a menu of Backbone/Marionette, Angular, ExtJS, Ember, Kendo, jQuery or etc. - some of them work together, some of them don't. Most of those get you part of the way there, you may still need to pull in things li…

Because JavaScript the language is so bare-bones, you need to supplement language deficiencies with frameworks and libraries. Since when? It's perfectly possible to build web sites/apps, even large scale ones, using no framework at all. Pick a handy utility library, whether it's jQuery or Underscore/Lodash or whatever, and get coding. I don't know where this idea that you somehow have to build web apps using some hum…

If the point is to easily be able to find work (which was the parent's emphasis), then yes, you need to learn the popular frameworks. No, it's not required for building your own web app, but companies use them, so they'll expect you to be familiar with them.
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