Good Time to be a Programmer

Curt Cagle, an XML specialist has a nice piece on the the Web 2.0 Job Boom. Curt thinks that there is a coming tech crunch.

There aren’t enough programmers to go around. Simple supply and demand … wages are beginning to rise pretty dramatically again, top people in the field have to get social secretaries to handle all of the cold calls and sales pitches, and companies outside of the IT sector are relying increasingly upon community software to tap into the developer base.

It is amazing how the popularization of a simple set of technologies called AJAX (which existed for a while but reached the tipping point with Gmail and Google maps) changed the landscape.

Who would have known five years ago that having strong Javascript skills today would get you a better job than having strong C++ skills?

But it is not just strong Javascript skills. It is a knowledge of wide variety of technologies like XML, webservices and the ability to work with lightweight programming languages like Python, PHP and Ruby.

Lightweight programming languages and agile metholodologies are replacing the over-engineered mega-project and twenty thousand class programming frameworks, turning programming into a cooperative venture where no one person or agency controls the whole network.

It definitely is a good time to be a programmer. With dynamic languages,  you can produce faster better applications. But more important, you can enjoy your creations being used. Programmers at Google,Yahoo, Flckr, Del.icio.us, Meebo, Technorati, Bloglines must be very happy people.

2 thoughts on “Good Time to be a Programmer

  1. Oh yea it is! Ajax has been around forever, but now that it has a recognizable name/label people are looking for ways to incorporate it into anything so it can “Ajax” (ooo’s ahhh’s). The odd thing, in respect to 2.0, is you find find there is quite a delay between the general public and developers in terms of acceptance. The data for us shows people respond better for simple, less intuitive, even ugly websites and interfaces. We’ll see how it all pans out!

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