Some general questions concerning programming job market.....

[imhotepmp]

I was thinking about getting into one of the above fields. Will there be a large market for programmers in general in the foreseen future. Also how would I break into those fields? What programming language should I learn? Access, SQL, oracle?As of right now Im a biochem/comp sci and I was thinking that a DB programmer would be a perfect integration of these two majors.(bioinformatics?)Im nearly done with my biochem(4 more classes)and I just started my comp sci(in 2nd quarter of c++)


What about programming? I hear Java is a pretty hot marker now.

Any thoughts? Is one better than the other, from looking around on the net it appears the DB prog get paid alot more than regular programmers?

thanks for any insight you can give me.



imhotepmp

 

[Ken g6]

Java sure is hot. So are the JavaBeans you (sometimes :Q) use to make it. And Hot Java, I'm sure, is even hotter.

Seriously, Java is hot, but it's also complicated. If and when you learn it, you're in a good spot at the moment. But it's even better to learn how to learn programming languages. I don't exactly know what that means yet, but I'll be in that class in a year or so.

As for databases, I don't know that much about them, but I gather SQL is good for web stuff, and anything web related, including Java, is hot.

 

[divide by zero]

imhotepmp,

There are are fewer DB programmers available than demand so they get paid more. It also takes longer to learn, like a specialization. The Oracle DB folks make righteous bucks! I'm not sure if Access programmers make as much. Oracle is usually used by larger corporations while Access doesn't scale as well so isn't used on big projects (in general). Go with Oracle. SQL - Structured Query Language - is used to access pretty much all flavors of databases. Yes, databases are pretty hot since they are used on the back end of a lot of websites, Oracle not Access.

Since you're learning C++ you'll be learning Object Oriented programming which is half the way to learning Java. I think C++ and Java are the two most commonly used langauges in new commercial projects. Java runs slower than C++ so knowing both will give you the flexibilty to use the one that is appropriate to the particular problem.

To check out contracting rates go to: http://www.dice.com