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Today’s Top Tech Skills

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Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#331

Post by louis8799 »

jmartrican wrote: post #83

In Java I'm a big fan of using SQL directly versus ORM. To that end I highly recommend JOOQ. I library that allows for object oriented SQL. Its not ORM, so you still compose SQL, you just get a lot objects and methods to allow you to construct your SQL in an OO, and functional, programming type way. It also is a DB first approach. Where you construct your DB schemas and tables first, then use JOOQ to create objects t…

Not a 100% compatible substitution but Spark can be even more OO and easier to manage.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#332

Post by kamaal »

_bxg1 wrote: post #38
dharmab wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few competitors that have strong, static typing, great test tooling and broad library support.

I guess "great test tooling" and "broad library support" are subjective, but there are several contenders these days that I would say might fit those criteria

>>there are several contenders these days that I would say might fit those criteria

Even if you get the basic 'Batteries Included' part right, you still won't match up ubiquity in terms of being able to hire developers(in big numbers), common knowledge base, maintainability of code bases. Java code bases tend to be around for long. And people of all skill levels can get started with minimal handholding.

Also note not all companies have the revenue streams of top internet companies. And they can't afford to flush hundreds of millions of dollars, and man years of personnel time down the sewers to arrive at hiring the perfect candidate for the job. Almost always most companies need candidates who can get job done, for whatever salary they can offer. And they can't afford to rewrite their code every two years, so they care deeply about things like easy hiring, and code maintainability on the longer run.

Apart from these things Java itself is a great piece of tech, and has passed the test of time over so many technology trends.

If you are starting a backend project, Java is more or less the best and the top tech choice at this point, and has been for long now.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#333

Post by souprock »

sidlls wrote: post #280
Roboprog wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I live in the Sacramento area. Half the salary. Half the price for a house. Half the commute. Seems an even trade.

I thought that, too, before I had the income. Being able to max out my 401k and IRA contribution on 5% of my salary is a huge deal, and more than makes up for the difference in housing cost. I also live 5 minutes from work. People overestimate how much the COL difference really is and underestimate the significant savings advantages that come with living here.

I think you underestimate the COL difference because you are settling for inferior housing. Do you at least have a low-end house, such as 2000 square feet on a 0.25 acre lot that is all your own? Around here in the Space Coast area, that goes for $150,000. It can be done with a 5-minute commute.

Software developers get paid better than typical, so they can get fancier housing if they don't have expensive hobbies. See if you can afford the things my coworkers have gotten:

1. a house with canal access to a lake

2. a new McMansion (looked like 3000 to 6000 square feet)

3. 11 acres, building the house as desired (he got sheep and chickens for fun)

4. beach condo

5. a house with a boat dock on a large waterway leading to the ocean

I'm going to guess that at least 4 of those are impossible for you. The cost of 11 acres is particularly entertaining. I went for something a bit more modest, about 3500 square feet on 0.39 acres, but it is just 0.9 mile from work and I'm supporting a family of 14 on a single income.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#334

Post by commandlinefan »

iamsb wrote: post #21

I have always found this quite amusing that every company I have ever applied to for a job has SQL in required skills and yet not a single one of them has ever interviewed me on it.

I always get the same single question: “explain the difference between an inner join and an outer join”. They seem to figure if I can answer that, I know everything I need to know.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#335

Post by crematoria »

jkoudys wrote: post #319
abledon wrote: post #233

I got back into java recently and am appreciating how you can define an interface reference type super class then swap out the different data structure subclasses as their implementation. E.g. make a queue refer to either PriorityQueue or LinkedList. Or make a Map a HashMap or TreeMap. It kind of provides an "aha!" moment in deeper understanding of why there are so many Datastructures and why it actually matter to pi…

If you're looking to go lower (systems) level, or even if you're not, rust is worth checking out then too. It's the best experience I've had letting you require only the interface that does what you need, and it's also great at letting you make a type "from" something. e.g. you could require something be a HashMap, or merely that it can be converted `Into` a HashMap (a free action if it's already a HashMap).

Yep, sum and linear types are two of the biggest improvements of Rust over, say, C++. The third would probably be that it's a lot smaller than C++.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#336

Post by brightball »

dennis_jeeves wrote: post #329
brightball wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a trivia question. It’s directly related to GROUP BY and is a core part of standard SELECT syntax. I’ve never met somebody who has spent any amount of time writing raw SQL who didn’t know it. I’ve met a lot who overly rely on their ORM but “have done a lot of SQL” who don’t.

Brightball, how many years of coding/sql/developer experience do you have?

Going on 20

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#337

Post by SkyPuncher »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #221
SkyPuncher wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look up HAVING every time I write it. I just don't use it enough to keep it in memory as a first class concept. A quick google search with an example is enough to jog my memory. If I got asked about it on an interview, I'd be completely blank.

Exactly. "I use [x] all the time and know it well, so [x] will be a good filter for evaluating someone's technical skills." No. People do different work tasks depending on the project or company. Sometimes I'm knee-deep in SQL. Others in React. I'm often forced to do PHP. My familiarity with specific SQL syntax ebbs & flows with what I'm doing. There's no point in keeping something in your brain if you're not going t…

Exactly the same with me.

Need me to write an ETL. I probably can't crank it out in an hour like a data scientists, but I can get it done in a reasonable amount of time. I just need to do some major context shifting.

Have me write only ETL's for a week, I'll be cranking them out after the first few.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#338

Post by AlchemistCamp »

ianbicking wrote: post #214
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #73

I've always been frustrated by the promotion of this kind of list. Yes, it matters what the demand for a given skill is but that knowledge is virtually meaningless without also having information about the supply side! If 1,000,000 companies desire talent $foo which 2,000,000 workers have, it's not going to lead to as many opportunities or as much leverage as talent $bar that 300,000 companies desire but only 50,000…

There's also a question of skill liquidity: if there's a very low supply and a low demand - even though the demand might be multiples of the supply - it puts everyone in a tough place. The employee doesn't have the leverage they might hope for because finding a compatible employer is very hard.

Yeah, this is a huge, issue. Even in cases where there's high demand on all sides, the difficulty of evaluation, the difficulty of firing, etc lead to a lot of poor outcomes for employees and employers both.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#339

Post by dehrmann »

loftyal wrote: post #267
dehrmann wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Node.js was a contender but lost steam My guess is that Node.js either saturated the market of web developers looking to do backend, or people realized that type safety is a good thing, and JS doesn't have a good story for it.

It does, TypeScript, and I'd argue it's a better type system than Java

But it's an extra step in the build process, you still have to decide on TypeScript, Flow, CoffeeScript, etc., and I'm not sure if the Node runtime library gets the benefits of typing.

Re: Today’s Top Tech Skills

#340

Post by ultrasounder »

cushychicken wrote: post #223
smnrchrds wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a mechanical engineer. Mechanical engineering jobs ask for SolidWorks/AutoCAD/CATIA/Creo/etc experience, not just computer-aided design; ANSYS/ABAQUS/NASTRAN/etc expertise, not just finite element method; Fluent/CFX/OpenFOAM/etc knowledge, not just computational fluid dynamics. With the exception of OpenFOAM, all of these software are proprietary, largely non-interoperable, and expensive—like thousands to tens o…

>Outside of programming, this is the norm. The number of free and/or open-source tools available to a mechanical engineer or an electrical engineer are infinitesimally small and it is almost impossible to do a serious engineering project with only free tools. >Since this is quite lucrative for the companies making those tools, I can only imagine tech companies would be more than happy to lead us to a future where sof…

Fellow Sr.EE currently pivoting in to SW. The core problem with our fields(EE/ME) is that our resp tools vendors are set in the old ways of building shipping and supporting the tolls that are fundamental to our jobs. No open APIs to customize the functionality, modify the GUI or extend it to Automate( wouldn’t you love to automate updates to the CIS database every time one of your colleague adds a new component to it?.I mean the basic infrastructure is there but just no motivation as they know that their core user base is not really growing and doesn’t mind putting up with this crap. Hence all valid open source efforts like KiCAD have been sparrow fart. No real dent. But SW industry is driven by innovation that’s happening in the FOSS domain. Even the mighty MSFT and APPL have to a certain extend embraced OSS. It’s not in the best interests of cadence and Solidworks to do that. Because the market size for their tools is minute compared to say Visualstudio code which is free and is highly customizable.
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