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If You Want To Code From Home, Learn JavaScript
itwbennett writes "Earlier this month, remote-work cheerleader and Basecamp developer 37signals launched a job board called WeWorkRemotely.com that is, you guessed it, devoted to telecommuting jobs. At present there are only a couple hundred jobs listed on the site, so you'll still have to use other job boards as well. (Dice, SimplyHired, and Craigslist all have filters for finding remote working jobs.) But here's another thing that will help you land a work-from-home gig: Learn JavaScript. ITworld's Phil Johnson looked at a number of job postings for software developers open to people wanting to work remotely and then compared the frequency with which a number of popular programming languages and technologies were mentioned by the postings to determine the top tech skills for telecommuting jobs. Not surprisingly, the ubiquitous JavaScript topped the list, being mentioned in just over 20% of these listings. Other languages and tools used for the web are high up the list as well: jQuery at #3 (12.5%), PHP at #5 (9.5%) in the fifth spot, iOS at #8 (5.6%)."
Or properly learn C++, move to DC and get your 120k working for defense contractor
Get on those sites, and you are competing with 3rd world wages.
But you can work from home, for $2 an hour.
"Employers looking for JS coders to work from home more than any other language" is not the same as "Programming in JS gives you the best chance to work from home."
They look similar, but one does not imply the other.
I suspect that the majority of lower paying and temporary work-from-home programming opportunities involve Javascript.
However a senior Software Development Manager at Google recently confided that there is a significant demand industry wide for Python programming skills. Apparently several of the high end computer and smartphone/tablet gaming engine companies are also seeking qualified Python programming capabilities, as is noted by a senior IBMer, and for scientific research -NASA and many other technology and social sciences fields. Furthermore, expert Python programming skills command considerably higher salaries than for Javascript.
wanderson@nac.net
"Job Postings" are not a good measure of actual jobs. Most of these postings are spammy fishing excercises done in bad faith. Hundreds apply, no one gets the job.
I am tired of using multiple plugins just to make the web usable.
You don't need a plugin to run Javascript, actually the more it is used to replace flash or whatever, the less plugins there will be.
Sig? Heil
...seems to underwrite this opinion. Maybe JavaScript is the language most requested, but how many people on the board already profess skill in it? You might do better to focus on a lesser used language if the ratio of (people already versed in it:jobs asking for it) is more favorable. Tsk, tsk.
You don't need a plugin to run Javascript
Yeah, I need a plugin to NOT run Javascript.
JS can be used to replace Flash?!?
The enemy of my enemy.....
I believe he was referring to Javascript plugins to handle cross-browser incompatibilities. If that's the case, then it isn't JS that's the problem. It's the vendors.
>Javascript is the reason why the web is a PITA
No. The DOM and REST is why Javascript+DOM+REST is a PITA.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I disagree.
The problem is IE. That is old IE which can not do HTML 5, CSS 3 animations, JIT JS, or any of the other things.
Google Chrome experiments? All these are advanced. Also google IETest Drive ? Even IE 11 is ok finally again. Corps and grannies using XP and IE 8 is why you need plugins as ther ei sno way to make something pixel perfect in Chome as well as IE 6.
Technology is progressing. Just on phones now and if enough people upgrade more often it will put pressure on Grandma and the corps to modernize so we all can have a better experience.
http://saveie6.com/
...ubiquitous, in-demand, and guaranteed to cause brain damage to any aspiring programmer who learns it first.
Web programming jobs are highly remote-work oriented and a basic knowledge of javascript is required for just about all of them. If you're a purely client side developer, clearly it's important.
Outside of that though, saying "Javascript EXPERT! Eleventy-billion years experience!" does absolutely nothing for a server side developer unless that job happens to revolve specifically around Node.js (in which case the job will probably just say Node.js).
Know a server side language well, deeply. Know databases. Basic competence with Javascript is all that is required outside of that. If you don't know any Javascript, it will probably disqualify you for most web position but on the scale of determining factors it's probably around a 2 in terms of level of importance.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
Have gnu, will travel.
You don't need plugins to use javascript. You are confusing javascript with a javascript library like jquery that has plugins. They aren't needed. A lot of sites however, use a javascript library. Even your beloved slashdot or stackoverflow is using a javascript library.
Not surprisingly, the ubiquitous JavaScript topped the list, being mentioned in just over 20% of these listings.
You keep using that word, I don't think It means what you think it means.
I'm a UNIX systems administrator with 30 years of continuous industrial-strength experience in Silicon Valley.
I've been living outside the San Francisco Bay Area since 2005 - when it became too expensive to raise a family with just two incomes.
I've been sleeping in my van and showering at a gym for EIGHT !@#$ years. And driving 300 miles, each way, every weekend, to see my kids ands wife and bask in the warmth of my family.
Recently I've been seeing hourly wages for contractors fall to a level I have not personally seen since the early to mid 1990s - twenty years ago.
- $35/hour for people with 3-5 years experience and multidisciplinary skills
- $50/hour for people with 5-10 years experience, etc
This, despite the cost of gas, food and rent having escalated dramatically - I would conservatively estimate the cost of everything *else* has doubled.
There is no question in my mind that the value of DOWNTIME has not decreased over the past twenty years. The value of the work I do is as valuable as it ever was - maybe moreso.
From this I infer that the compensation I should be receiving for the work I am doing should be substantially greater than it actually is.
Were I to be brutally honest with myself I would be forced to admit that I have saved my employers millions of dollars in cumulative downtime every year.
I'm tired of being cheated and I am angry at those whom are doing the stealing. They are criminals. Why am I being punished?
Lowering the price of gas will not dissuade my anger. It only increases my anger - because the control over gas prices only reaffirms the thievery, anew.
I speak for many.
When possible stay off the client side code.
Not sure I follow the research. Almost all software development jobs list JavaScript as a skill, even ones which have nothing to do with using it. Almost every job I've seen in the past year throws JavaScript into the list of skills. So if the ITWorld droid just filtered software jobs, then of course most of them will have JS as a skill. Typical job posting: "Skills: 15+ years CICS, MQ Series, and DB2. 10+ years C# and ASP.NET. Perl. JavaScript." For this to have any validity, there would have to be a control group of development jobs that don't require JS, and I can't figure out what that would be since most postings list JS whether it's a real skill need or not.
"Recently I've been seeing hourly wages for contractors fall to a level I have not personally seen since the early to mid 1990s - twenty years ago."
"Recently I've been seeing hourly wages for contractors fall to a level I have not personally seen since the early to mid 1990s - twenty years ago.
apparently not. Value == money.
Not to say you are incompetent. Just that your employer doesn't value you or your contribution. Fuck them.
Time to update your resume and talk to your wife and move to Montana? If she were willing to start over or even retire you can get paid the same or even less and live like a fucking king based on the equity of your home if you bought it before the boom.
When your employer doesn't value you it means your relationship is in turmoil with yourself and the employer. Either the employer wants you out and doesn't give a shit about your needs or you do not give a damn your employers needs. Time to severe it.
Austin Texas, Boulder Colorado, and even Montana are having .coms start there due to the lower cost of living and people like yourself can live like human beings.
http://saveie6.com/
He took a list of 10 languages, added another list of languages, then looked for those ...
Ie, there could well be other languages that he didn't look for that are more in demand than the one he looked for.
I don't know exactly how he handled only 'programmer' jobs for Dice.com ... but they've got 31 jobs that match 'perl'. Add that to the 3 from the other site, and we're looking at 4.4% (behind Python, above, C++, VB, TSQL, etc.
Of course, this is always going to be a point-in-time study. (I found 63 'Ruby' jobs (out of 745), which would put it at 8.4%, above his 7.2%) You really need to look at long-term trends. (and you need to make sure to not count the same jobs from week after week ... although the fact that they can't find someone to fill a job might be a sign that's skill's in more demand, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's good to learn that language if employability is your goal)
The really sad thing is that ASP is above Python (33+10=5.8%), and SQL's not on his list but mentioned in 27.8% (155+52) of the jobs. And Postgres (which he didn't check) has more mentions than Hadoop (which he did)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
If you're interested in projects with glacial pacing, going to lots of meetings, eating lots of doughnuts, not actually building anything ever, and getting trapped in an industry you dislike because your technical skills have atrophied, then defense contracting is the thing for you.
But if you want to, you know, actually write software that actually gets deployed and used, then for the love of all that is good and holy, don't even glance at defense contracting.
It'll suck the soul right out of your body.
You could learn any other, better, language.
i.e NoScript et al.
i.e NoScript and the like.
Exactly.
I disagree.
The problem is IE. That is old IE which can not do HTML 5, CSS 3 animations, JIT JS, or any of the other things.
Google Chrome experiments? All these are advanced. Also google IETest Drive ? Even IE 11 is ok finally again. Corps and grannies using XP and IE 8 is why you need plugins as ther ei sno way to make something pixel perfect in Chome as well as IE 6.
Technology is progressing. Just on phones now and if enough people upgrade more often it will put pressure on Grandma and the corps to modernize so we all can have a better experience.
Then don't. You don't need your website to look exactly the same for every damn person and you shouldn't even be trying to. Different users have different preferences and needs. Some like bright colors, others need high contrast or large fonts, I presonally prefer a colored text on dark background. The more you web developers keep trying to make it look like a freaking picture, the more you piss off users that just want to read the text on your page.
For instance, many people find small black text on a white background fucking painful to read, but all of us slashdotters have to put up with it because their god damn javascript screws with everything.
For instance, many people find small black text on a white background fucking painful to read, but all of us slashdotters have to put up with it because their god damn javascript screws with everything.
Firefox + 'Color that site' is a wonderful thing.
PHP at #5 (9.5%) in the fifth spot
I only know PHP, you insensitive clod.
OK...well, I'm a Unix C++ developer in Southern California with 5 years if cross-platform experience. I was hired fresh out of college at $70k/year with full benefits (and not as a contractor). Currently, I make substantially more than that, and from what I've heard, similar positions in the Bay Area pay a lot more.
I sleep in my bed in my condo every night, alongside my wife. I shower in my own bathroom.
I drive 12 miles round-trip every day to get between work and home.
Saying that it sounds like you've been cheated is a vast understatement. It sounds like a great time to look into relocating elsewhere, or at least searching for a job that doesn't want you to bend over and take it in the ass. On the other hand, if you can't find a better job, then there's the possibility that the market has decided that your work isn't worth as much as you think.
With anything, an employer will pay you the lowest that they think they can get away with. Obviously, there's some reason that your employer (and possibly your industry) thinks that they can shaft you like they've been doing. The best course of action would be to figure out what changed in the last decade or two, and figure out a way around it (such as a way to argue that you're worth more than they're paying for you, and that they're going to lose you and be unable to re-fill your vacancy if they can't keep up). If you don't have a reason for them to pay more, they won't.
recently I did a responsive web page which relies heavily on js and css.
the only browsers I had to make couple of specific fixes for because they lie and don't work properly were IE's, albeit not on desktop. it was the windows phone 7.8 and windows phone 8 browsers which needed special attention - even symbian belle browser and opera mobiles worked just fine.
(and the fucks even changed the format of the user string between wp7.8 and wp8)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And after gaining some C++ experience with your defense contractor gig, move on to a high frequency trading firm doing C++ @ $350k per year.
[......] there is no way to make something pixel perfect in Chome as well as IE 6.
Nobody in their right mind bothers with IE6 any more. What's the point? Market share is now under 5%, stop wasting your time!
Want to know why you're being punished? I mean, do you really *want* to know or do you just want to be angry?
IT workers have learned to become incredibly adept at sticking daggers in eachother's backs. I think the reason is the unbelievable increase in profitability of our fields so we scrambled for some years to get as big a slice of the pie vs. other companies as possible and, now that times are leaner we compete with eachother individually instead.
A house divided can not stand.
Techies have one thing in common, we all think we're better than average and that cooperating with others will only "bring us down" to the level of the others. This is why we don't unionize. This is why we are vastly more likely to be fierce libertarians and objectivists. We think we are sort of low-level super-heroes who can swoop in and save the day while leaving others dumbfounded because... we did. That's what we usually could do.
The sooner we start realizing that we are regular workmen just like everybody else, we just work more with our brains than our hands, we might be able to cooperate. Unionization really is the key here and it's even a surprisingly libertarian approach. Call it collective bargaining or one group sellilng its services to another group: either way it's the same thing except one of the sides don't get to dictate the entire contract for the other side. Where I live, we have started a process of unionization and it has benefited everyone. The workers get more harmonized pay, better benefits, more job-security and the employers get a more loyal and stable work-force with easier negotiations for salary and benefits because it happens collectively. The proof is in the pudding and this is where the self-styled rationalists start getting religious and refuse to look at the actual data and resort to spouting Ayn Rand.
Is this just some sort of metaphor for all of us that need to rise up or something, or is it potentially helpful if I point out that at week 2 of the whole van thing, I'd be looking into finding a cheaper place to live and raise a family. Don't get me wrong. I like San Francisco a lot but that doesn't sound worth it.
Not sure if DarwinSurvivor is serious or making fun of people. Either way, this post is hilarious because it makes no sense.
Win phone 7's IE browser is using IE7's rendering/CSS engine I believe. IE7 was only a very slight upgrade over IE6. Not sure about wp8. IE8 was a lot closer to modern browsers in CSS but still had plenty of BS to worry about so probably IE8.
Do you even know what REST is?
I ask because it drastically simplifies things relative to the alternatives, and certainly has nothing to do with the fact Javascript and the DOM are both utter shit.
Quite rightly said.
As a web developer, I have no sympathy for anyone that tries for pixel perfection. Assuming that you handle all the idiosyncracies of the browsers and imperfections in the speciifcations correctly, you either get the choice of limiting yourself to whatever the oldest target browser provides, or backporting the features you want with javascript. From an artistic perspective, you can't control the viewport size or whether the client is using a browser that supports anything but raw html. The ultimate goal is therefore out of reach.
It's not entirely invalid to argue that artistic or technical perfection should be pursued without regard to whether it is attainable, but let's face it: your website may be many things, but the next La Gioconde it is not. It's probably not even Piet Mondrian, although hopefully it escapes being Jackson Pollock. It's okay that it doesn't look the same on everyone's screen.
In point of fact, you should expect it. Because, you know, it's entirely guaranteed to happen to some degree. Thus, responsive web design is usually a pretty good idea.
Also good: having a well-documented API. You know, for kids.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You are a fucking idiot. MOVE. Yeah, I live in the suburb of Detroit. I bought a 4 bedroom house with 1/4 acre for the price of a car. Mortgage free. I make decent money doing tech stuff, and save more than most of my peers in SV. Why? Because no mortgage. Don't have to deal with commute, I'm not in Detroit, it's pretty safe, decent, yeah, cold sucks, economy is not the greatest. But IT folks don't have problem getting job, and pay is good. Sleeping in your van for 8 years? You my friend are an idiot. No one is punishing you or doing anything to you, you are the one who has made the choice and choose to suffer.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
now try living with double (or more) the cost of living over the last 15-20 years, but making the receptionist's salary.. back then, $10-15 an hour was good.. today? still $10-15 an hour.
if you're making more than 4 times the federal poverty level.. SHUT THE FUCK UP and quit bitching... YOU have options to cut your expenses without sacrificing essentials-of-life.... other people work just as hard as you do, or harder, and don't have that "luxury".
boo fucking hoo you don't see your family except on weekends.. that's your stupid-ass greedy fucking choice. you could live somewhere like cedar rapids, iowa or springfield, illinois, or grand forks, north dakota.. make the same or a tad less salary but spend a fraction on living expenses.. but you don't. so again, shut the fuck up... and maybe put your children and your spouse first for a change, move somewhere less expensive, more family friendly, cleaner, safer, with better public schools, where you can make a BETTER life for you and your family on less money and spend more time with your kids so that when they grow up into fuckups, you have only yourself to blame, not the media or internet... o wait, when they do turn into fuckups now, it is still your fucking fault for being an absentee parent that COULD have done better if he wasn't so fucking stupid.
Yes I do know what REST is.
It's a hack to cope with the fact that the browser-server connection doesn't hold state at all well between pages.
It all holds together nicely until you try to make it secure, but establishing a secure session on top of a system that has its fingers in it's ear says "La la lah, I can't hear you, I'm REST, not session based".
God I hate REST.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The client-side tilt makes sense because business logic generally requires being "embedded" in the business to do it well, including understanding the office politics that pushes and pulls on features, and that means being at the office.
But often the GUI side can be done with little or no domain (industry-specific) knowledge because we know the desktop-like idioms we want and can often describe them using common products such as MS-Office, but it's just a PITA and time-consuming to actually code it.
About 15 years ago I thought desktop GUI idioms would be almost commodity by now. Visual Basic and Delphi made it easy to come pretty close to what you wanted by drag-and-drop, purchased plug-ins, and fiddling with a few properties. It seemed to be the way of the future.
But the Web somehow gummed that up. The existing browser standards don't do desktop-like GUI's well, and so we rely on JavaScript-based kits to do it instead; but they don't always play well together or work right across browser versions.
The VB/Delphi model made GUI development easier, but at the expense of deployment (installation) headaches, such as DLL-hell. The Web flipped that to simplify deployment, but at the expense of making GUI development a hell. It's hard to focus on and master both business logic and GUI intricacies. (Sure, the cream of the crop can, but not regular developers.)
In my opinion we need a new GUI-centric browser standard. JavaScript was not designed for building full GUI engines; it's a glue language meant for light-duty event handling etc., NOT for creating big reliable systems-software libraries (entire GUI engines). Forcing it to be something it is not will leave GUI building an arcane and specialized art.
Table-ized A.I.
Jave always has, and still does suck.
Yes! We in Montana would love to have a few more of you Imports with your renowned Bay Area driving Habits. We also enjoy following you to work while you are driving 20 mph, apparently because there is a half inch of snow on the road (but to be fair, we backward fucks usually have no idea why you people behave the way you do). Honestly though, if it were me I'd choose Colorado. It never snows there and they will pay you $30,000 cash after your first week of having a P.o. Box. I read it on them internets.
...and you can be at zingermans in less than an hour, take that bay areafoodies!!