I'm primarily interested in Internet applications. I know there's more than the usual percentage of folks on here that dabble with software, websites, applications and whatever other "computer type stuff with a user interface". That could be an Android app which tells you the live statistics on your Indian call centre or an on-line Go tournament with live coverage of at-home games using the Flash webcam plugin. (not-so-random examples lol)

I was reading one of the latest in a long stream of "Flash is dead" blog entries, and I wondered what people on here used?

Do you develop in Flash or Air? How about Silverlight? Did you used to develop in Flash but now use HTML5 instead? Do you find yourself forced against your will to use a mixture of technologies, effectively doing the same project 3 times over for iOS, Android and the desktop markets?

Likewise, does anyone still use ASP? I have to for legacy reasons, but anything new is always going to be php.

The options for developing a web-connected interface that works on any of a dozen or more client platforms is frankly mind-boggling. People expect to access information from their €99 Android tablet or their iPhone just as easily as from IE on their quad-core work station.

However, in the end most applications require a subset of the same things:

1. an intuitive and functional user interface
2. content that can be easily managed
3. interaction with a back-end database
4. intelligent graphic design
5. multimedia
6. security
7. access to local hardware such as webcams and card readers

If I asked elsewhere, I'd expect the reply "your question is wrong" but hopefully you guys will understand what I mean when I say: If you were to bet your career on learning one set of tools, what would you choose today?

If you were to write the next "Weebl and Bob", would you use Flash? Is a wobbly egg (or two) a good enough reason to keep on living? If you don't care about the question (what was the question?) then at least click on the link:

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Russi ... n+Trailer/

Plumbing.


More on topic, I was told Ruby on Rails would be a safe bet. YMMV, IANAL.

Just seen a job advertised for a Hardcore Backend Developer. I'm sure it's something other than it sounds.

Also known as a Personal Trainer?

You see I've heard that a lot in the last few years, along with Ajax and jQuery, but I still have no real idea what it all means. I think part of my confusion comes from the fact that it doesn't begin with the letter p.

Err.. that's kind of what a friend of mine does for a living. Seriously. He develops websites and it so happens that most of his customers are in the er... more specialised end of the entertainment market. It's not a business he wanted to get into, he just did the job for one company and it's a very insular industry, so once you do a good job for one of them all the other companies hear about it and want you to do stuff for them too. And, needless to say, they're not short of a bob or two.

Most of the time it's just webdev, the content is something that's kind of irrelevant. However he says going to see the clients for meetings can occasionally be... well, interesting.

Jon

I wouldn't bet on a single tool or technology.

I started with Z80 machine code, then BASIC, 6502 assembler, 68000 assembler, DCL, Fortran, COBOL, MS BASIC, 4D, Cognos, SQL, Java, C, C++, Java, PHP, Ruby, Visual Basic, ASP, ASP.net, C#, Pascal, bash and probably dozen or so others I've forgotten.

The technology changes very quickly and the tool for one job isn't necessarily the right one for the next job. Being flexible and understanding "programming", as opposed to learning a specific tool.-

When I took my last programming job, I hadn't done any serious coding fo a couple of years (I'd been doing a lecture series on "best practices in component orientated software re-engineering" and a couple of QA jobs on other projects and some testing), I had never used PHP or produced a website. I went for an interview for PHP, the day before, I went to w3schools and got the basics of HTML and PHP down. I then did 2 days trial and I got the job. When I left 18 months later, they told me I was one of the best programmers they had had, not bad for somebody who had never written a line of PHP before the job interview!

With regards to web development, I think one should have a good grasp of web standards. I don't think the web should be a case of "we'll support the Desktop and not mobile", or "we'll only support Android and the Desktop", or even "Only Windows". The web should be accessible for everyone, and that is why we have standards.

I'd prefer HTML 5 over Flash/Silverlight/etc. because it is a standard that many people can view. I hate JavaScript, and I respect anyone that can code it, it just frustrates me with it's errorless non-working!
RoR I didn't like, and I tried Perl Catalyst a while back and it confused me.

For what little I do, I still use nice static pages using PHP+XHTML+CSS, maybe some Perl on the server-side for added geekiness.

HTML5/JS (don't do much of that myself, I'm more server side development/test

Use ASP.Net (Both webforms and MVC), not traditional ASP though

Most of the software we make is web based, means testing doesn't need to be done onsite past seeing what they use in terms of browser, javascript turned on/off etc


The C languages and .Net as they are fairly generic, constantly used and updated often with new features and methodologies inline with the market, staff are still in high demand, with that pretty much anything can be quickly learned with exception of some scripting nuances
http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/1 ... talent.php