Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Will You Update Your Technical Skills Inventory This Summer?
Proudrooster writes "As technologists, developers, and programmers it is essential to keep moving forward as technology advances so that we do not find ourselves pigeonholed, irrelevant, or worse, unemployed. If you had to choose a new technology skill to add to your personal inventory this summer, what would it be and why? Also, where would you look for the best online training (iTunesU, Lynda.com)? The technologies that immediately jump out as useful to me are HTML5, XCODE, and AJAX. How about you?"
This Ask Slashdot sponsored by: Dice.com.
This story submission feels like spam for lynda.com.
Those are not skills for this summer, those are skills for several summers ago.
to kill off the slow brain cells that are holding me back from synergizing my knowledge of vertically integrated mobile platforms in local cloud-based content management system datafication.
crazy dynamite monkey
Other than that, not irrelevant.
Lol, damn but do I love it when some high-and-mighty know-it-all makes such a novice mistake...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
People learn new platforms via reference materials, which brings existing programmers into their realm. This is especially true with Android, since it builds off of Java and to a lesser extent from the user & app-programmer perspective, Linux.
Learning to program, however, is a separate skill. I'd suggest learning Java, then applying what you've learned to Android. If you're good at learning on your own, then go straight into Android programming examples from Google's materials and learn both at the same time, sussing out any weird language understandings with Java references.
Im learning assembly language. It will never become obsolete unlike some high level languages.
Nah, go for the metal, I'm learning binary this summer...
0, 1, ok now time for some fun in the sun... ;^)
that way I can get all my work done while I sleep
I will be re-reading MSCE course materials. Sometimes I forget where to click.
This seems a rather mercenary outlook to me. You are asking for suggestions on how to spend your spare time with the goal of keeping yourself employed, without regard to whether you would enjoy the subject or process.
I'm all for goal-driven careers, but studies show that the most successful people are the ones who like what they do. It largely doesn't matter whether the skill is the most "in demand", it only matters whether the skill is in demand "enough". This is illustrated by successful people in (what we would consider) pedestrian careers such as furniture sales, property rental, or owning the local laundromat (which, BTW, is the most common way to be successful).
The first step is discovering what you enjoy. The easiest way to do this is to spend 1 hour in quiet solitude. This is unexpressibly difficult if you've never tried it - you need a situation which has no interruptions whatsoever (kids, phone calls, other people), and you need to stick with it for the duration. Solo long road trips, long walks, hiking, and biking work well for this.
For the first 1/2 hour your head will be full of day-to-day thoughts, reminders, personal maintenance, reviewing memories, and so on. After awhile, this will quiet down and your mind will start to wander. Whatever you think about most is likely your source of joy.
Figure out some skill that feeds into your joy, choose a project that requires this skill and which also feeds into joy, and resolve to complete the project by the end of summer. Write the goal down (this part is important!) with as much detail as you can, stick it in an envelope, and put it away for later.
Your brain has likes and dislikes, as well as a goal-setting mechanism that you can use to your advantage. If you want to be happy, you should start the process of being happy right now, while you still have leisure to do so.
(Oh, and to answer your question: I'm writing a paper on hard AI.)