Top 10 Most Welcomed IT Professions 2012

Despite the doubts in stability of the American economy in 2012, the research has showed that American companies are going to expand their IT staff. Analytics have found out what IT professions will be called for. The results of the annual research organized by Computerworld showed that 29% out of 353 IT-executive managers are planning to increase the number of their departments by the summer 2012.

‘The demand for IT-specialists in companies of all types and sizes is constantly growing’, says Mike McBrierty, the executive director of one of the biggest recruiting agencies the Eliassen Group. Moreover, according to his own words, the companies are planning to update the infrastructure and restart the realization of the projects postponed for the last 3 years.

As Computerworld claims, in 2012 the directors of IT departments have set teeth for implementing innovations and that’s why the most relevant for future employees will be the following nine main skills.

•    web and mobile application development skills
•    project management skills
•    technical support and maintenance skills
•    network technologies skills
•    business analysis skills
•    Web 2.0 technologies skills – more and more companies are planning to implement these technologies and the demand for php/java/.net software developers won’t decrease in 2012. Also there will be a big demand for Ajax GWT professional web developers as well as the specialists in .Net, PHP, HTML, XML, CSS, Flash and Javascript.

New Azure Toolkit for Windows 8

Microsoft has released the new tool for mobile application development companies that allows using the possibilities of the cloud platform Windows Azure and the software Windows 8 Metro.

The new set of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 has been designed for the simplified apps development under Windows Metro which is able to work with the cloud operation system Windows Azure. The new tool is reported to let using the remote Azure storage as well as its computational capabilities.

The new tool includes the Windows 8 Cloud Application templates for Visual Studio, which allows working with it from the common environment for software developers.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 supports JavaScript and HTML5, as well as .NET, C#, C++ and Visual Basic. Among the additional options there are tools for checking dependency, Windows Push Notification Service libraries and Visual Studio 2010 templates.

Mono 2.8 – Development environment .NET

Novell has released the new version of its cross platform development environment Mono 2.8 for web application development based on the .NET architecture. The new version of the platform Mono is a final step on the way to the release of the next version Mono 3.0.

The development environment Mono is an open alternative to the Microsoft tools for the development of .NET applications. Here web developers get all the necessary tools for writing and moving .NET applications oriented not only to the Windows operating system but to the various modifications of Linux or Solaris.

What is new in Mono 2.8? Firstly, its improved productivity of the SGen mechanism for collecting ‘garbage’ in the memory with the dynamic compression of the used memory. Secondly, Mono 2.8 contains a powerful Low Level Virtual Machine used in scientific and financial applications where large volumes of calculations are required. Thirdly, now Mono 2.8 has full support of the new specification of the programming language C# 4.0.

Dynamic and functional languages – a new way of thinking

#8. Dynamic and functional programming languages (Please, read the beginning of the list in the previous posts)

You would be surprised, but the next point in our “look-ahead list” is dynamic language. It can be functional language as well, we can’t decide it exactly. Of course such languages as Python, F#, Ruby, and Groovy don’t belong to mainstream; nevertheless software professionals can find good ideas in them. Take LINQ from .NET as an example, this language is an “offspring” of the functional programming. Ruby and Python are becoming more and more popular in some areas (owing to good programming for Silverlight).

Your programming skills in these “informal” languages will not only make your resume more impressive, but also liberalize, helping to find more non-typical and unusual decisions for everyday tasks.
For example, you can read the book “Programming Python” by Mark Lutz. It will show you all power of this language and help to unveil your potential. No doubt this book is one of the most comprehensive and detailed edition for advanced Python programmers available nowadays.

to be continued…

14 technologies that won’t become obsolete before 2014: foundations of software development

The impact of recent changes in the world economy changed the situation in world of software. Now the majority of developers are focused on short-term work. But it doesn’t mean that they are careless about their prospects. Self-education and experience are still the only way to success. That is why it’s so important to be constantly analyzing existing technologies and methodologies trying to keep step with changeable IT- world, not wasting valuable time for unnecessary knowledge and superseded information.

So we will try to forecast the most essential skills for developers that won’t become obsolete in the next five-six years. In this and the next posts we will list 14 the most relevant technologies for software developers.

#1-3: Java, PHP, .NET

It’s highly unlikely that three foundations of software development, Java, PHP, .NET, will be in less demand in the near future. Developers need to know at least one of these programming languages and development platforms: Java, .NET (VB.NET or C #), or PHP. Nevertheless only one programming language syntax is not enough. Usually projects cover a wide range of different functions, so developers need to know the frameworks and libraries associated with the necessary functionality in more details.

to be continued…

Using .NET for Software Testing Automation

Nowadays software testing is a rapidly growing up sphere. And software testing engineers may be found employed in different sectors. Lots of methodologies are widely known:
-Agile testing;
-Extreme testing;
-Scrum testing;
-White Box testing;
-Traditional Black Box testing and others.

The Black Box testing is the most popular and called for in many companies around the world. For years experts had been developing different costly commercial tools to lessen testing efforts and to increase the efficiency and quality of software testing, but lots of them were nonviable in practice. Later in 2001, some testing experts offered to create the software utilities for their manual-and tool-automated testing efforts.

.NET programming

Microsoft.NET – is a concept of fast and qualitative program development. The .NET concept is created according to the new world situation which requires more high-quality and secure programs.

You need to setup .NET Framework Redistributable Package for executing the .NET program. It has only 25MB and you can download it from www.microsoft.com site. Usually .NET applications are small programs (.exe or .dll).

But in future .NET will be in all computers all over the world. The .NET will change web-sites. It will be an application which can be accessed via any device by the net.

You need Visual Studio for .net applications, web-applications, web-services development. Also you need some components from .NET Framework SDK. You can see the .NET applications code using C# or Delphi with the help of Reflector for the .NET tool. You can create a .NET program using any language which has a compiler. It’s possible to create your own compiler and add it to Visual Studio. Such compilers exist now: The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework, Delphi for .NET compiler and others.

.NET applications simplify the System Administrators’ life. They are small and secure and don’t break servers. They control a computer memory and access failures.