Today's jobs

What topics should be studied to have success getting and maintaining a job on today’s computer industry?

There are plenty of jobs out there, but I doubt basic will get me a job at Microsoft… yet BMax is getting good… will it get me a job?

What job? Programming? I don't know squat about that, but if you want to get a 3D-artist position or similar traditional art studies and skills are still very important... PhotoShop can't teach you color and composition basics, not does it fully correct your lack of hand drawing skills.

I myself have BA in Architecture and that has been a great help - architecture has a lot of common "problems" with 3D modeling, like thinking three dimensionally and making things look functional and pretty. BA in A + good traditional drawing skills have kept me in the industry now 7 years and 362 days... and counting.

Why would you want to work for Microsoft? Like India that much? Anyway about 60% of all the ads I see are Visual Basic related.

Not at Microsoft.

Holding a programing job you'd need to know your relational database and SQL. You'll need to be able to understand and create UML diagrams. A good understanding of RUP or XP (depending on whether you're aiming for a job in an agile company or not) wouldn't hurt, as well as programming experience in Java (Enterprise Beans) or C#. Knowledge of algorithms, datastructures and design patterns wouldn't hurt either.

Just answered something similar in the blitz3d forum (maybe that will get moved here).

Blitzmax will not get you job. (99% of the time mentioning it will probably kill your interview, the other 1% it may be what lands the job though - most interviewers would not know what blitzmax is and from the title would not be impressed)

Steps to take
1 - Decide what industry you want to work in.
2 - Decide what language sets. The two biggest paths right now are either the Java path or the Microsoft path. Up and coming is the LAMPS (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP, etc..)

You can go with learning more then one language set, but hiring managers generally don't believe that someone is REALLY experienced in more then one at a time.

As for the industry bit - more and more companies are going to look for people with practical industry experience in addition to programming, so getting education in a field other then just programming is helpful.

Studying will make you a student, to be an employee you get a job. Some people believe one comes before the other, others believe you do one or the other. Whether studying helps you get a job depends entirely on what the person interviewing you believes. It's therefore much cheaper to get off your but and get a job, seeing as the world is full of prejudice for and against anyway students anyway - there is no right way to do it.

If your starting a new job then it doesnt matter what skills you bring to the table, as every job is different and will demand different skills, odds of a perfect match are remote. You just got to make sure that after 2 weeks or so your fully up to speed, and that by the end of probation you are essential.

all very good advice. from a windows application development standpoint, C#/.NET seems to be the big push from M$ but i think its several years out from being the standard. relational databases and SQL are a must. a good understanding of two and three-tier software architectures would be good as well as a solid understanding of OOP. any experience you can gather in a multi-developer environment would be beneficial as well.


hard to say. i would think professional BMAX jobs would be few and far between and non-existent in a business environment. lessons and knowledge learned while developing in BMAX could work towards landing an entry level development position though. while the BMAX implementation of OOP does not match C#, it does allow you to become familiar with many OOP concepts. also, since it is a full-blown language it shares all the base features any language has such as the concept of variables, loops, functions, etc. applying this knowlege in a different language is simply a matter of knowing the different language.

From a more specific viewpoint - Our company employs programmer's proficient with C++ & rdbms - mainly SQL Server, Ingress and Oracle.
Preferably with a computer science related degree and a proven development track record.
C# and ASP.NET skills are becoming ever more valuable as the swing from rich client to web-based applications increases.
VB or any other Basic language would be a welcome addition but would not be enough alone.
For support engineers the minimum requirement is an MCSE in Windows 2000 or above including Microsoft Exchange and MS SQL Server.
Knowledge of UNIX especially IBM's AIX would also be a great advantage. We still do a fair amount of work in the UNIX arena but it's becoming less as more companies abandon the expensive RISC servers for cheaper Intel ones.

You need to be more specific about the type of job you want to know what you need to study. BlitzMax is a good language, but won't get you many jobs.