Thursday, May 31, 2007 Computer skills that have gone unpopular By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
I SAW an interesting study in Computerworld which lists what computer skills are sort of dying or going down in popularity.
You should be careful about learning these skills, as demand for them is lesser. Of course, when you are in the job market, obsolescence can work both ways. If you know a skill that is dying, and somebody is advertising to look for someone who knows that skill, then you could very easily get that job as there are lesser competitors, too.
What are these skills? Foremost of these is Cobol, the original business computer language developed during the 1960s.
There was a resurgence of Cobol during the y2k era because many codes needed to be rewritten or analyzed. However, Cobol is hardly in demand nowadays. The other programming languages that are falling in popularity are Cold Fusion, Powerbuilder, Turbo Pascal and C. Learn C to understand its basics, but most employers are now looking for C++ or C# skills.
Another skill that has a declining popularity is hierarchical databases. Right now, most popular databases are usually relational, which is what Oracle, SQL Server or DB2 languages are.
There is also a lesser demand for administering non TCP/IP networks, like SNA or others, as most networks are now based on IP, which allows it to connect to the Internet easily. For instance, a Novell Certified engineer is probably not very marketable nowadays.
However, as noted, these are generally surveys and could be not reflective in certain locations. For instance, Cobol is still a skill that is popular in certain areas, particularly when large financial systems are involved and maintained.
In the Philippines, many of the development companies here write software for embedded systems or drivers for mobile or printer devices, and C is still the preferred language used in many of these projects.
Incidentally, last week, Bill Gates went onstage to proclaim that Microsoft has sold over 40 million copies of Windows Vista.
While there were issues that were highlighted—mainly on compatibility of running old software—these were relatively only on limited cases, and, in general, so far, most of the issues hurled against the new operating system has been found to be much exaggerated.
As sure as eggs are eggs, people will move to Vista. It is only a matter of when. Moreover, it really is much more secure, better graphically and also has a lot more features, like encryption and MemoryBoost. MemoryBoost is a cool feature, which you can use a USB based memory device as your additional memory when needed.
If you would like to test it, by the way, you can always ask your dealer where you buy the software from to install for you a free 30-day trial copy of either Windows Vista or Microsoft Office 2007.
On another front, I was really amused at a news item which detailed the earlier agreement late last year between Microsoft and Novell.
In that agreement, which was widely reported, Microsoft created an alliance with Novell and agreed to spend hundreds of millions to market and promote SuSE Linux.
In return, Novell supposedly agreed to pay a certain amount of “royalty” for certain patents that it is using.
The latest reports say that, because of this, the sales of SuSE Linux has increased by over 60 percent, and reportedly, without surprise, the number one channel reseller is Microsoft!
Maybe that is one for the books of Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
