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Thread: Be honest.

  1. #1
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    Default Be honest.

    ok, so i want to become a software engineer some day, and i wanted to know what language employers like the most, like which language would bring in more money. and also i heard some cities you can make more than others, what is a good city on the east side of the United states for software engineering?
    i know this is a java forum, but please be honest about it.


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    Default Re: Be honest.

    honestly, it depends what you develop, and on what. I have friends that work in C#, C++, and Java they all make about the same doing different jobs. As for east coast; I have no clue. I live in Washington state, and there seems to be a great need for C#/Java. They develop the computer systems for hospitals.

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    Default Re: Be honest.

    Software engineering is a very wide and diverse field. Different languages are used for different purposes. Most software engineers know several languages (for example, I've had to learn some C/C++, Java, C#, Matlab, OpenCL, and assembly from different projects I've had to work on). It's not the language that defines whether a company considers you a good asset (at least not always), but rather how you can apply the language to create something useful.

    C/C++ - Probably two of the most used languages. If you had to learn any one language, I would recommend picking one of these two (preferable C++). The reason is the scope of these languages is to try and allow the engineer to do anything they could possibly ever want to do. Because these languages are extremely old (I think C++ comes from the mid 80's, C was not too long before then), they have an extremely large user base so most companies will choose these if they're designing a desktop application. Because of this, many languages (including Java) are based off of the C/C++ syntax. C/C++ combine the higher level elements of software design (structures/object oriented programming, functions, etc.) with lower level elements (even as low as defining the assembly code) that's simply elegant and extremely powerful.

    PHP, Javascript, JSP - Generally used for applications on the web. There are a plethora of other languages used for this purpose, I'm no where near knowledgeable on this topic to tell you which languages are the most commonly used.

    OpenCL, CUDA - Two up and coming languages I've found to be very promising. I believe both of these languages are based of of the C language, but they are both specialized towards GPGPU programming. Personally I lean towards OpenCL because I have an ATI card so I can't use CUDA, but CUDA is a much more mature technology at this time (hopefully this gap will close within the next few years). I believe Microsoft has also tried creating their own GPGPU language called DirectCompute, I haven't heard anything noteworthy about this project, though.

    Matlab - Mostly used for scientific computations (such as signal processing, quick and dirty data reduction and plotting). I don't think Matlab is something used by the majority of software engineers/computer scientists, but rather is used by engineers and scientists in other fields such as mechanical engineering, biology, electrical engineering, etc.

    Java, C# - Commonly found in a classroom setting, but they're also quite popular in industry because they make creating GUI's very easy, and the performance of these two languages are actually pretty good. While a well designed C/C++ program can usually outperform a well designed Java or C# program, it takes significantly less effort to design the program well in Java or C#, and a lot of the times the performance gain from using C/C++ is negligible or irrelevant.

    Also, you should become a software engineer/computer scientist because it's something you love doing, not because it's something you can make a lot of money doing A lot of software companies I'm aware of are on the west coast (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.), or even overseas.
    Last edited by helloworld922; September 27th, 2010 at 06:25 PM.

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    Default Re: Be honest.

    ok, im going to try to switch over to C++, since i want to be more of an applications developer. and one more question, i was looking a t job listings and stuff to see what the general requirements are, and most require many different things like C++, and some java experience, and all sorts of stuff like ASP.net and stuff that i dont know a whole lot about. do i learn all this when i take courses in college?

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    Default Re: Be honest.

    College teaches you crap about programming. If I were you, I would buy some books and self teach,