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Programming Languages You'll Need Next Year (and Beyond)
Nerval's Lobster writes: Over at Dice, there's a breakdown of the programming languages that could prove most popular over the next year or two, including Apple's Swift, JavaScript, CSS3, and PHP. But perhaps the most interesting entry on the list is Erlang, an older language invented in 1986 by engineers at Ericsson. It was originally intended to be used specifically for telecommunications needs, but has since evolved into a general-purpose language, and found a home in cloud-based, high-performance computing when concurrency is needed. "There aren't a lot of Erlang jobs out there," writes developer Jeff Cogswell. "However, if you do master it (and I mean master it, not just learn a bit about it), then you'll probably land a really good job. That's the trade-off: You'll have to devote a lot of energy into it. But if you do, the payoffs could be high." And while the rest of the featured languages are no-brainers with regard to popularity, it's an open question how long it might take Swift to become popular, given how hard Apple will push it as the language for developing on iOS.
Sure, but a programmer that doesn't know CSS is pretty limited!
A _web developer_ maybe, but a _programmer_ surely isn't.
Developers in start ups usually are bad paid and baited with stock options.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's terrible advice. If you want the big bucks, get into Python, Node.js, or Go and find a startup that just received VC and has tons of money to shove at developers. C++, Java, and C# are great for long-term "comfortable" jobs, but that's not where the seriously good money is.
Terrible advice also. If you want the big bucks, know your shit in several domains, know how to deliver your shit and be good at analytic skills, troubleshooting, design, architecture and project management.
The VC route is a high-stakes one. For each one that cashes it, there are droves that lick their wounds, specially outside of SV.
Going back to languages, no language guarantees good income, not even comfortable jobs. Being able to deliver shit on time, and have deep expertise on something (say, Oracle Enterprise stack, or embedded development), that's where the sweet spot is, meaning, potential to make close to $200K or more, for years, if not decades. Long hours as a consultant, but the rewards are there, and are more predictable and solid than shooting at the VC/startup stars.