How to become an asp.net developer

Essential skills : The following are the essential skills that you need to learn in the order specified to become a web developer 

1. Dot Net Basics : Learn what is Dot Net all about and how it works. All dot net developers, irrespective of whether you are a web or windows developer, need to know about these concepts. 

2. One Programming language (C# or VB.NET) : You must learn at least on of the programming language (C# or VB.NET) to build dynamic data driven web applications.

3. SQL Server : SQL Server is a database that stores the web application data. You need to learn the SQL programming language to store and retrieve data from the database server, which helps us build data driven web application.

4. ASP.NET : This is the framework that .NET provides to build web applications.

5. ADO.NET : Enables an asp.net web application to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data.

7. Visual Studio : This is the development tool/software that we use to build Dot Net applications. 


In addition to the above 7 essential skills, you also need to know the basics of HTML. HTML is very easy to self learn and there are many free resources on the web already.

Nice to have skills : These days a lot of organisations are also looking for the following skills in addition to the above essential skills. If you want to increase the chances of getting your resume shortlisted for an interview call, then you also need to be familiar (if not proficient) with the following technologies. 


1. ASP.NET Web Services : ASP.NET Web Services became a legacy technology with the introduction of WCF. However, there are many organisations that are still using ASP.NET web services, so if you want to increase your chances of an interview call you may want to learn this technology as well. Also, learning asp.net web services, makes it easy to learn WCF.

2. WCF : Helps buils service oriented applications. If you are familiar with this and if you can answer the interview questions you almost have the job.

3. ASP.NET MVC : Gives you a powerful, patterns-based way to build dynamic websites that enables a clean separation of concerns and that gives you full control.

4. Entity Framework : This is an ORM framework  that enables .NET developers to work with relational data using domain-specific objects. Another nice to have skill.

5. LINQ : Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) is a set of features introduced in Visual Studio 2008 that extends powerful query capabilities to the language syntax of C# and Visual Basic. The different aspects of LINQ are covered in the following tutorials.

In addition to the above 4 nice to have skills, you also need to know jQuery.

All these resources are available at no cost because of Father "GOOGLE" ha ha ha...
This means if you spend 5 hours a day in exploring these skills online or from any other resources then within 30 days  you have most of the skills required to become a successful asp.net web developer.

All the very best.

Finally if you feel this post useful and think that it can help others like you please share on Facebook,Google+ and any other social media  you use.


Happy Coding!

How to Make a No. 1 App With $99 and Three Hours of Work...-By Ryan Rigney

You don’t need to be a programmer to break into the App Store’s top charts. All you need is 100 bucks and a free afternoon.

You’ll need a halfway decent idea, of course, but once you’ve got that nailed down, you can easily buy the source code, get an online tutorial on how to use it and within hours have a game ready to play. That explains why 95 of the 300 or so new apps released on Apple’s iTunes store one day last week were riffs on Flappy Bird, the mega-hit its creator pulled at the height of its popularity. There’s Flappy Wings, Splashy Fish, even Crappy Bird.

For some reason, a surprising number of these apps, like Flying Cyrus, Cyrus Flyer and Jumping Miley, feature the disembodied head of pop star Miley Cyrus. One of the most downloaded of this unlikely sub-genre is Flappy Miley Wrecking Ball Pro, created by Gregory Storm. He uploaded the game on February 12, just two days after Flappy Bird flew the coop. Never mind that he’d only heard ofFlappy Bird the week before. “I had no idea what a Flappy Bird was,” Storm said. “Never played it. Hadn’t seen it.”

So how was he able to create Flappy Miley so quickly? Easy: He bought everything he needed.

The first step was purchasing the source code to Flappy Crocodile.

On sites like Chupamobile, billed as “a stock photo agency, but for app development,” programmers can sell their app’s source code to others. This is hardly a new idea in the videogame business, but just as the democratization of development has allowed people to create games with small budgets and sell them at low prices, so too has it created a market where middleware mavens can sell source code to would-be developers for next to nothing.

You need an app for your restaurant? Chupamobile has templates for $50 each. Want to create a match-three game likeBejeweled? A clone of Tiny Wings? The rights to the source code are just a few clicks and a few bucks away. Just $99 gets you an open-ended, royalty-free license to use the Flappy Crocodile code to create a single app and sell it in perpetuity. Even if you make a million bucks, you don’t owe another cent to the guy who did the heavy lifting.

In the case of Flappy Crocodile, that guy is Vojtech Svarc, a 26-year-old app developer from the Czech Republic. He’s spent the past six years jumping from one online business to another: website scripting, e-books, Google AdSense and practically everything else. Svarc got into the app business about a year ago, but quickly realized that investing large amounts of cash into a single app and hoping it would be discovered among the 1 million or so already on the App Store might not be the best use of his time. Then he thought, what if building an app could be more like building a website?

“When building a website, there is no need to start from scratch as there [are] plenty of templates out there to choose from,” Svarc said. “Using templates cuts the cost and time down, and it allows you to get your products out there quickly.”

Svarc watched the App Store and noticed that any time an app made waves, similar apps would be buoyed to the top. Speed, he thought, was key to taking advantage of that. App templates would allow developers to build trendy apps in no time. “When I saw the media attention Flappy Bird was getting,” Svarc said, “I knew this [was] a ride I need to be on.”

So far, he says, about 100 developers have paid him $100 each to use Flappy Crocodile. Svarc saysTiny Flying Drizzy, which was the No. 1 free game on the App Store earlier this week, is based on his engine.

Anyone with a C-note and ten seconds can license the source code to a videogame. But what do you do then? Don’t you need programming skills to actually modify the code?

Nope. You don’t need any special skills at all. To prove it, I bought a license to use Flappy Crocodile.

I’ve worked on a mobile game before, but I’m a terrible programmer. Still, I could see that my $100 had bought me a complete package: Svarc had included every asset, function and plugin you’d need to publish and sell a Flappy Bird clone. It also included a voucher for an online course, led by Svarc and app developer Yohann Taieb, that walks you through the process of creating your first app. It covers everything from registering for an Apple developer license to reskinning the graphics and adding in-game advertising to uploading your finished product.

I had a little trouble setting things up properly at first because of how I’d set up the open-source game engine Cocos2d while developing my own apps. With a little adjustment I had Flappy Crocodile running smoothly in Xcode, Apple’s iOS development software.

With minimal effort and zero coding required, I could now start replacing any of the game’s art or sound with my own files. A drag and a drop later, Flappy Crocodile’s cheery background song became “Type of Way” by Rich Homie Quan.

Then I found the folder containing the files for animating the crocodile. I opened up Photo Booth and snapped a selfie, cut out my head using Photoshop, then replaced the crocodile sprite with my face. I compiled the new code, feeling more than a little surprised when the iPhone simulator launched successfully, allowing me to direct my own head through a gauntlet of pipes. In less than an hour, I’d changed Flappy Crocodile into Flappy Ryan.

Gregory Storm put more spit and polish into his clone than I did.

“My wife knew an awesome animator named Reinaldo Rocha,” he said, “and he was able to get us preliminary sketches within an hour.” Storm swapped in Rocha’s drawings of Cyrus, which featured flapping ears and a tongue that is forever sticking out.

He made several other tweaks before submitting the game to the App Store, all of them minor: The static background image is different, and all the sound effects have been changed. Otherwise, everything from the menus to the pipes are straight from the source code. Some app templates require users to “re-skin” everything, from the graphics to the music to the sound effects, before they upload the app. Flappy Crocodile‘s license agreement has no such restrictions.

Assembling an app using inexpensive source code and zero knowledge of programming is limited to simple app games today, but it won’t be long before you can use the same trick to build more elaborate games. There’s already a similar sharing economy where developers use the low-cost game development engine Unity. And anyone can buy complex elements of game design like artificially intelligent enemies. Buy the code, slap it into your game, and you’re done.

“Things like rendering a silhouette when the player moves behind an obstacle, or handling palette swapping characters, used to be done on a game-by-game basis. Now I can buy a standardized solution for the price of a pizza,” game developer Mike Bithell said in a blog post on the Unity website.

It takes significantly more effort to create a high-quality game in Unity than it does to whip out a Flappy Bird clone, but we’re reaching the point where non-coders will be able to make increasingly complex games and throw in snazzy features as easily as ordering an extra large with pepperoni. More and more popular indie and mobile games have begun using Unity in recent years — République, Plague Inc. and Rust, to name just a few — and this is one of the reasons.

The widespread availability of source code and templates is just putting small developers on par with big players in the app market, says Storm. Big Fish Games, he notes, has published more than 100 hidden object games on the App Store.

“I highly doubt they build from scratch for every new title,” Storm says. “They aren’t trying to be original and recreate the wheel. They’re trying to maximize their proven formulas and repeat them by re-skinning and using the same source code over and over.”

Creating such games, he says, is like appearing on the cooking competition show Chopped. “Everybody has the same basket full of odd ingredients and you have a short time to make something tasty with them or you’ll lose out,” Storm says. “It’s my job to take the same source code that everybody else has been given and spice it up.”

Still, with so much competition it isn’t easy for a guy like Storm to make a killing. With all of his costs — buying the art, hiring a freelance programmer to help with updates, etc. — he says he’s spent about $2,500 creating Flappy Miley. If it sticks around — say, if Miley Cyrus twerks her way back into the news — Storm could rake it in. But in the volatile app marketplace, that’s a big “if.”

“At this point we’ve just about made our money back,” Storm says, “so it looks like a fun night at the Olive Garden is in our future.”

How To Tap Into Your Car's Computer—And Why You Might Not Want To

Most people know that today's cars and trucks utilize multiple onboard computer systems. But many drivers are less aware that all cars built after 1996 have a 16-pin data port under the steering column that accesses the vehicle’s computer network. Think of it as something like a hidden USB connection for cars.

For decades, only auto service technicians had a way to plug into the so-called onboard diagnostics (OBD) port, so they could read and interpret the fault codes that trigger dashboard warning lights. (Ka-ching!)

It was only a matter of time before enterprising technologists would figure out how to tap into the OBD port and beam the data via Bluetooth to smart phones carried by drivers. Shouldn't you, as the owner of your car, have ownership of—and access to—the data stored onboard?

The answer is a resounding “Yes,” for the creators of a wave of hardware-software car-based telematics aftermarket products—including Automatic, Mojio, Dash and Truvulo. The first of these products to hit the market is Automatic. I’ve had it running on our 2006 Toyota Prius for the past few weeks.

We've Got the Data—Now What?

The two basic components are a dongle that snaps into the port and a mobile app. Remarkably, all of these competitors offer strikingly similar features to drivers, including interpretation of engine warning signals, crash alert notifications, route tracking, eco-driving feedback and a way to locate a parked car.

Why are they so similar? Because these offerings are all essentially a solution in search of a problem. You can imagine simultaneous whiteboard sessions in which programmers try to figure out what cool things can be made from car data—and basically coming up with the same set of first ideas.

The setup for Automatic was a breeze. Download the app. Plug in the dongle, which Automatic calls the “Link.” Start the engine, and now all your trips are logged on a map, with start and stop times, miles driven, miles per gallon, and likely fuel costs based on local prices sourced from the web.

I completely understand this impulse to help drivers with more eco-efficient driving. I've been reporting on hybrid and electric cars for more than a decade, and have seen every imaginable variation of dashboard display that encourages fuel parsimony by rewarding drivers with virtual flowers, trees, butterflies and eco-scores. So-called hyper-milers push this to the extreme with driving at 40 mph on highway shoulders, and generally making every other driver crazy with their slo-mo antics. (That guy apparently on Quaaludes in front of you in his Prius? A likely hyper-miler.)

Sorry, but for most drivers, this kind of high-tech eco-nagging only goes so far. Within minutes, my wife and I turned off Automatic’s annoying beeps that indicate jackrabbit accelerations, speeding, and hard braking. Even the most devoted fuel-sipping hybrid driver might start to ignore the app after a few drives as old habits settle in. Besides, many cars have MPG readings on the dashboard, which are quite sufficient to indicate whether or not you’re undermining your car’s efficiency.

I thought that maybe the mapping feature would help my wife and me figure out the quickest routes for our kids’ school carpools. However, the size of the map image in the app lacked the detail we needed, and what we did learn confirmed that our zigzagging made little difference in driving times.

Great Benefits—In Theory

The two more useful features—dubbed Engine Health and Crash Alert—could arguably justify Automatic's $99 purchase price by themselves. Unfortunately for my evaluation (though fortunately for me and my family), we didn't experience any engine or safety problems during the past few weeks. Therefore, I am unable to comment on the effectiveness of these two features.

Theoretically, Engine Health would allow me to read the engine codes responsible for firing up a "check engine" light. Given what even the most honest mom and pop mechanic charges these days, that feature alone could return my investment on Automatic. But a quick perusal of Automatic’s community forums reveals a number of customers complaining that the app could not find fault codes, or did not provide enough information to make them truly useful.

Considering that emergency notification services such as OnStar cost around $200 a year, the one time $99 cost of Automatic could serve as the poor man's version for some drivers.  During the setup process for Crash Alert, still in beta testing, you identify two phone numbers of loved ones that would receive a text message in the event that the Automatic dongle's built-in accelerometer detects a crash scenario. It will also automatically report the crash to local authorities, according to Automatic.

Again, though, there are caveats. If the Bluetooth connection is lost during the crash, your phone is damaged, or you're out of a coverage area, the crash feature might not work. There is a quantum difference between this kind of discount aftermarket product and the mature type of built-in concierge emergency service provided by automobile manufacturers, albeit at a higher cost.

Works in Progress

Despite my grumblings, Automatic is a noble attempt at providing car-connected services at a fair price. The interface is slick and easy to understand. My gripes aren't with the execution, which is well done, but with the concept itself.

To see how things evolve, we should keep our eyes on Automatic and its fast-following competitors. Mojio, for instance, is apparently taking an open platform approach by emphasizing the availability of a developer's kit, which would allow the crowd to come up with its own bright ideas for OBD-based applications for cars—including a wide range of remote tracking possibilities, such as geofencing for teenage drivers or sending your location to friends. Mojio is planning to create its own store for downloading such apps.

Like Automatic, Mojio uses its own proprietary dongle, which you can reserve (but not yet purchase) on the company's website for $149. That's also what it charges for downloading the SDK.

Perhaps The Magic Price Is ... $10

Another player, Dash, takes a similar approach to Mojio—but divorces the dependency on custom hardware. Instead of charging $100 to $150 for the dongle, the Dash website links to Amazon, where users can purchase a generic Bluetooth OBD dongle for as low as $10. Then it's just a matter of downloading the Dash app, which is currently available for Android, and promised soon for iOS.

Truvolo and Clickdrive, not yet taking preorders, steer in a slightly different direction by apparently trying to build a more robust set of connected car applications on a data-rich platform.

Barrier to entry is low, so it's likely that there are other competitors I haven't yet discovered—all trying to utilize car computer data to make car ownership cheaper, safer, and more connected.

But here’s the key question: What can these independent aftermarket products provide that beats the latest and greatest car connectivity features, created by major automobile manufacturers, and placed right on their cars?

WHICH CODING LANGUAGE IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

If you’re ready to buckle down and learn programming, here’s where you should start.

Coding is all the rage these days. Students of all ages and adults already in the workforce are increasingly encouraged to learn programming. Even President Obama said everyone should learn to code. 

There are countless resources that offer the opportunity to learn different skills. From free online classes through services like Codecademy to multi-thousand dollar programs that promise to turn you into a bona fide software engineer in nine weeks. 

But the question remains: Does everyone really need to learn to code?

The answer is no, at least if you’re not in an industry that relies on technology. But that pool of workers is gradually shrinking.

Gregg Pollack, founder of learn-to-code service Code School, says anyone who has to communicate with a developer at any point in their career should learn the basics of programming.

“If you learn some code, you’ll have a much better appreciation for what they do,” Pollack said. “Take the time to understand what it is and how to effectively communicate with programmers.” 

If your goal is to just understand programming concepts, you can play around with a few coding languages and see which one you prefer to learn. However, if you have a goal in mind—such as building an iOS application or a responsive Web page—you need the right tool for the job. 

I’m Just Getting Started

If you have no experience with coding languages or Web development, you can start by learning basic HTML and CSS. 

HTML isn’t a programming language; it’s a mark-up language used for formatting documents. With HTML, you’re able display your words, pictures, links and video in a format that can be understood by Web browsers. Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, help you can change the font, size, columns, and other design aspects of a Webpage. 

You may already have experience using HTML and not even realize it. People who use WYSIWYG editors like Adobe Dreamweaver might have noticed you can change your editing style by toggling from “visual” to “HTML.” 

Even minimal knowledge of HTML is helpful for people, whether they want to pursue programming or not. Having a mild understanding of how responsive websites operate, and learning how to fix your personal blog or site on your own, can help in many careers down the road. 

I Want To Make Web Apps That Look Good

JavaScript is the code makes websites look great, and there are a variety of compatible frameworks like Ember, Angular and Backbone to help you organize and structure your Web applications for multiple browsers. 

JavaScript has been around for 20 years, and it isn’t getting any less relevant. In fact, it’s on track to become the dominant enterprise language.

You can run JavaScript on just about any browser, and it is used to program both frontend and backend services. There are numerous resources for students to learn JavaScript, and Pollack told me JavaScript is Code School’s most popular course offering. 

“If you’re doing anything on the Web, you have to learn JavaScript, no matter what your backend is,” Pollack said. 

I Need Fast Prototyping

If you’re a designer and want to learn backend programming to test applications, Ruby or Python are good options—both are object-oriented, dynamic languages that are fairly easy to learn. And both were among the top five most popular job skills of 2013. 

Ruby has a large ecosystem and an active, supportive community. Ruby was created in 1995, but rose to popularity after the Rails software framework launched in 2003 and made building websites and Web applications simpler thanks to collections of pre-written code.

Python, while similar to Ruby, has a somewhat larger scientific community, so if you want to progress into machine learning and artificial intelligence, Python is the language you should learn. 

If you’re ready to get started, try Learn Python The Hard Way, or the Ruby trackat Codecademy. 

I Want To Build An Android App

On Android, the open-source operating system, app development is mostly done in Java. 

You can build Android applications on Windows or Mac, and purchase relatively cheap devices to test your apps on. And as Android continues to dominate the market share, more mobile developers are choosing to get started on Android than iOS. 

The free introduction to Java programming course on Udacity is for beginners that want to learn Java concepts. Once you’re comfortable with Java, check out the official Android developer site for a comprehensive breakdown of how to create your first Android project. 

I Want To Build An iOS App

On your Mac, you can create iOS applications that run on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with Objective-C. Objective-C is Apple’s abstraction of C with influences of Smalltalk used primarily for building iOS and Mac applications. 

See Also: The Reviews Are In: Android Apps Outshone iOS Apps In 2013

Because there is less fragmentation on iOS compared to Android, it’s easier to create a one-size-fits-all application for the App Store than Google Play. 

Beyond knowledge of Objective-C there are a few other requirements for creating an iOS app—a Mac running OS X 10.7 or later; Xcode, the free tool needed to build an app; and the iOS software development kit. 

To get started, check out the iOS path on Code School and the Apple Developer tutorial.

My Child Wants To Learn To Code

Students across the U.S. were exposed to coding last year. The push to teach kids to code rose in popularity through academic programs like Code.org, which brought coding concepts into the classroom.

Through gamifying the coding experience with tutorials including Plants vs. Zombies and Angry Birds, kids learned the basics of problem solving and introductory programming skills. Code.org features student and teacher tutorials, but there are other game-based resources as well. 

If your child or young student wants to learn programming, or continue practicing concepts and skills she learned in the classroom, start from—or rather with—Scratch.

Scratch is created specifically for students to create interactive games and stories through easy-to-follow lesson plans and collaborative work environments. Scratch is great for students just starting out, primarily designed for students ages 8 to 16.

Find What Works For You

You don’t need to have a particular project in mind to start learning the concepts of programming, but it definitely makes it more fun if you have an idea that you can turn into reality. 

If you’ve heard “You should learn to code!” one too many times and you’re ready to finally begin, dive into any class that doesn’t require programming experience and get started. Once you find a class you’re comfortable with, an idea for a project will materialize, and from there, you can learn as little or as much as you want.

Lead image courtesy of Kris Krug on Flickr. Rails image courtesy ofhslphotosync on Flickr.

Google’s Project Tango: 5 Things You Need To Know

Google's latest ambitious project aims to help mobile devices understand their environments.

Google wants to build a new kind of smartphone—one that can see your environment just like you can, or help blind customers navigate the visible world. This isn’t a new version of Android, at least not yet; it’s a new experimental beast entirely. Google calls it “Project Tango.”

“The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion,” Johnny Lee, who leads Google’s Project Tango team, said in a video on the project site.

Here are five things you need to know about Project Tango:

1. Google's Project Tango prototype is a 5-inch smartphone. Project Tango aims to merge the physical and digital worlds. Humans use visual cues to interact with their environments, Google is building a prototype smartphone that can do pretty much the same thing.

“Our current prototype is a 5” phone containing customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment,” Lee said. “These sensors allow the phone to make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating it’s position and orientation in real-time, combining that data into a single 3D model of the space around you.”

2. Project Tango isn't Android, but it runs on it. Google’s Project Tango prototype runs on Android and offers development APIs to help Android apps built on Java, C/C++ and the Unity Game Engine to learn data about the phone’s position, orientation and depth. We reached out to Google to learn more about the prototype’s specs, especially its processors, and we’ll update this story as soon as we learn more.

3. Project Tango could revolutionize navigation and augmented reality apps. A phone that can create 3D models of its immediate environment could have a wide range of applications. For instance, Google could provide more granular directions for navigating indoor spaces like buildings or malls (although the company has already started to do that without 3D phones).

It could also spur along the development of “augmented reality” apps that overlay digital information or graphics atop photos and live video of the real world. Augmented reality could also be used to include real-world objects in digital games.

4. Project Tango dev kits are limited. Google is currently offering 200 prototype kits to developers, but due to "FCC restrictions," developers who want an early glimpse at Project Tango must work for an incorporated institution or entity. (It's not clear why.) You can apply for one by filling out this form.

But not all dev kits are built the same. According to Google, some of the devices are optimized for projects in indoor mapping,  processing sensor data, single and multiplayer games, and the company also plans to "set aside units for applications we haven’t thought of yet.” Google expects to distribute all its available units by March 14.

5. Google has 16 Project Tango partners and counting. These include Movidius, a Silicon Valley startup dedicated to developing chips that can interpret data from sensors and cameras; Bosch; OmniVision and the Open Source Robotics Foundation.

Images courtesy of Google....

Keep Learning Linux—It's The Future

Linux may be 20 years old, but it's as hot as ever in terms of job creation, a new survey finds.

Everyone’s a tech company these days. From new-school video streaming services like Netflix to old-school grocery businesses and government agencies, technology increasingly drives business productivity. At the heart of this movement is Linux, resulting in exceptional, highly paid job opportunities for Linux professionals.

Software Developers’ Increased Currency

Software developers are the new kingmakers, according to Redmonk analyst Stephen O’Grady. Small wonder, then, that the most recent US News & World Report list of the top 100 jobs now ranks software developer at #1, with system administrator positions in the top 20.

Clearly, the economy is rebuilding around tech as every company seeks competitive advantage by making more intelligent use of their data and seeks to improve agility with cloud and open-source technologies, among other means.

What’s perhaps less clear is just how much this new tech economy depends on Linux.

The New World Of Tech Is Built On Linux

This Linux dependence becomes evident in a survey of 5,000-plus Linux professionals and hiring managers the Linux Foundation recently released in partnership with Dice.com. Among other findings in the report:

• 77% of hiring managers have “hiring Linux talent” on their list of priorities for 2014, up from 70% in 2013. With these strategic priorities set, 93% of hiring managers plan to hire a Linux professional in the next six months.
• 46% of hiring managers are beefing up their plans for recruiting Linux talent over the next six months, a three-point increase over last year.
• 86% of Linux professionals report that knowing Linux has given them more career opportunities, and 64% say they chose to work with Linux because of its pervasiveness in modern-day technology infrastructure.

All of which means demand for Linux professionals is heating up. Considerably.

Linux: Lots Of Demand, Not Enough Supply

In fact, 90% of hiring managers said it’s “somewhat” or “very difficult” to find experienced Linux pros—and those who have the right skills and expertise are being aggressively recruited. In fact, 75% of Linux professionals surveyed said they received at least one call from a recruiter in the last six months. Nearly 50% of those received six or more calls.

It’s a good time to be a Linux pro.

This translates into higher pay and better benefits. Because 55% of Linux pros believe it would be “very easy” or “fairly easy” to find a new, better job, 20% of them said they received incentives such as higher pay, a more flexible work schedule or additional training as part of a counteroffer from their employer after they tested the job market.

To keep them from testing the market, Linux pros enjoyed salary increases over the past year that exceeded the average for technology professionals by more than two percentage points. These professionals also received an average bonus of $10,336, up 12% from the previous year.

The Past, Present And Future Of Linux

Ten years ago, the smart way to earn more money was to learn Linux. Today, that’s still true. Back in 2004 Linux was still new and was largely being deployed by early adopters seeking a competitive edge in their respective markets, and often financial services. Today Linux is the default operating system for cloud, Big Data and mobile, the big trends that are reshaping industries. Not confined to early adopters, Linux is simply the platform on which much of our innovation happens.

As such, I’ll give the same career advice I gave back in 2004, and which I’ll likely still be repeating in 2024: learn Linux. it’s the future.

Be The Part Of Innovation

The Most In-Demand Job Skills of 2013...

Stack Overflow tallied up which keywords companies searched for the most often out of 14,000 total searches, and gave us the numbers to do an infographic of the top ten most-searched skills:

According to Will Cole, Product Manager for Careers 2.0 at Stack Overflow, Java’s popularity may indicate employers’ rising interest in mobile development. But due to the language’s wide number of development uses, it’s no surprise it snagged first place. 

“Java is hugely popular for a wide variety of companies, it's the most common language across the world that developers use and are proficient at, and it's relevant knowledge for a growing market in Android development,” said Cole. “Love it or hate it, many people know Java, and many companies want those developers.”

Stack Overflow isn’t isolated in putting Java on top. According a survey by Dice, a technology career center, employers listed Java as the number-one developer skill they’d be seeking out over the course of 2013. Likewise, ReadWrite also predicted that Java would be one of the seven most in-demand technology skills for the upcoming year. 

Indeed, most of the skills on the Stack Overflow chart have been around for a long time. There’s no Hadoop, Node.js, or any other buzzword skill in the top ten. 

What should job seeking developers take from this? Trendy skills and languages may come and go, but employers are still boosting for the classics. 

“While we see new technologies pop up frequently, it takes a considerable amount of time for them to work their way into the every day company's stack on a mass scale to notice major trend changes,” Cole said.