
Ask HN: Which programming languages(s) should I focus on to get a job? - Onixelen
- I live in a non-tech hub area, I might consider moving to a tech-hub later.<p>- Most boot camps teach Ruby on Rails, and I know one teaches Javascript in the backend. But there are no major boot camps around here, which leads me to believe hipster languages like Ruby and Node aren&#x27;t as widely used among employers here. Plus I don&#x27;t know how long these languages are going to stick around for.<p>- Java seems to have the most jobs available.<p>- I&#x27;m interested in web development. There&#x27;s a small chance I might consider pursuing my own startup. But if I make enough as an employee I might refrain from doing that.
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brudgers
It might just be that lack of bootcamps correlates with the degree to which a
location is not a tech-hub. The reason Ruby on Rails and Node are popular is
because they're used in many industries to get work done with reasonable
productivity. Rails is more than a decade old and NodeJS nearly eight, both
are relatively mature and often chosen on technical merit.

For employment, it probably makes sense to learn whatever is commonly wanted
when hiring entry level programmers...I mean there might be local companies
writing code in C, but they would probably be less likely to hire someone at
entry level and when doing so might be more likely to want a formal credential
over self-teaching.

Anyway, I think programming is more about higher level abstractions than any
particular language and it probably makes less difference what a person picks
than picking something and writing code regularly makes.

Good luck.

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davelnewton
What kind of job do you want? "Web development" is a _hugely_ broad area.
Personally I'd pick a relatively well-known one at random, but these days, I'd
point people at modern JavaScript.

That said, "knowing" the language is only a tiny part of the battle.

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Onixelen
> What kind of job do you want?

Software developer/engineer who works w/ websites/web applications.

> "Web development" is a hugely broad area. Personally I'd pick a relatively
> well-known one at random, but these days, I'd point people at modern
> JavaScript.

Being in a non-tech hub area, I don't know if there are a lot of jobs here for
JavaScript in the backend. If there are a lot of JavaScript jobs in non-tech
hub areas, I would probably go w/ it, since it seems like the easiest/simplest
language. Job descriptions mention JavaScript but then there are many other
languages also thrown in.

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davelnewton
It turns out JavaScript is pretty popular on the front end as well.

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Onixelen
My impression has been that back end pays more, that's why I was more inclined
towards it.

I don't think I would pursue my own startup, even though I said so above.

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davelnewton
There's no "pays more, pays less" based on front-/back-end, there's only
individual jobs. It _totally_ depends on the market, the market in your area,
your skills, the technologies involved, and you.

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edburdo
The one that interests you the most. Look at the language, the types of jobs,
etc. Find what you want to do, then learn the language to do that.

Learning languages is easy once you get past the first one. So pick stuff that
you want to do, so you'll stay interested.

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rerx
What line of work are you interested in?

~~~
Onixelen
Software developer/engineer who works w/ websites/web applications.

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fazkan
the one that you like the most...

