If you are about to graduate in Computer Science and have a chance to pick one of these fields, which one would you go for?

Which field is the hardest to find jobs in? (Heard some of my friends say that their friends had long layoffs between projects in SAP. Is this the exception or the rule?)

Which field has the most potential for growth?

Which field involves traveling and being away from family most?

Which field is most frustrating to work in?

Which field pays more?

In which field is it easier to find a job for someone with no experience?

Any general advice is appreciated.

Thanks guys!

These are not fields. They are technologies that can be used to various programming task. There is a large set of things that can be done with all of these technologies. What the company does is just, if not more, important than what they use to do it.

Fields are things like networking, machine learning, game design or web developement.

If you were to change your question to those list of fields, the answers would still be very depending on the company, where you live and what type of person you are. Giving an overview of what you have done and what interests you would be helpful in helping people guide you to a career you might be want to pursue.

SAP pays the best but requires the most experience. It is also very specialized. SAP is the only one that generally requires travel as projects are often spread around the country.

Java generally pays better than .NET development and probably the most widely used language, though C# is gaining on it.

.NET development is limited to Windows and thus has a smaller market. Thus, Java developers generally make slightly more, especially at the higher end.

Frustration level is really dependent on each person so it is pretty tough to quantify.

I would guess that .NET frontend development would be easier for entry-level positions, but it's going to be tough in either field as you are going to be competing against more experienced developers. As for growth opportunity, it really is hard to say because things change so quickly in this field. In my career, I started in C++, then migrated to Java/J2EE, and then switched C# over the last 5 years (although I still do J2EE development as well).

As for myself, I tend to think that C# is the easier language to learn. Java tends to suffer from framework bloat. This also makes the learning curve for Java steeper when dealing with enterprise level development as you have to know not just the language, but also all of the frameworks (EJBs/spring/hibernate etc...)

Penguino,

For a guy who just graduated college and has no experience in any of these, you suggest .net is easier to learn and get a job in?

Does anyone have a different opinion?

can anyone tell me more about SAP? How do I go about learning this? what background do i need? how hard(1(super easy)-10(super hard) is it for a fresher to find a job?

I don't agree with this. I program in Java every day and have never used any of the frameworks you listed or needed JavaEE. Just because the APIs to do a lot of things are include in the standard library of .Net does not mean they don't take time to learn just as if they were their own framework. In general, the days when a language was just a language and didn't come with a huge standard library have been gone for a while. In the same vein, there are many frameworks that exist so that you don't have to write everything yourself. If a framework meets your needs, you learn it and use it. If it doesn't, you don't have to.

Definitely this.

On top of that I feel that the best companies/jobs are the places that understand that hiring people for 'fields' is better than hiring people for technologies.

Meaning that a company asking for a web developer that knows a couple of relevant technologies is generally better than a company asking for a PHP developer. You're generally going to get paid and treated better as well as have a lot more opportunities to grow as a developer.

TheIrishThug,

You said you work in java. Can you tell me more about how the life of a java programmer looks like? The avg pay, the hours, the joys and pains etc. Is it a 9-5 job or are you working on something or another after coming home? Any pitfalls I should know about before I immerse myself in it

Thanks

KB24 - That's a really weird question. What's your background? What do you mean by "picking" one of these languages? How did you arrive at these three options?

We did most of our projects in java(some in c++) in my university. But many people I know are in .net and SAP. I was going to go into a career in java but they are saying that a fresher has no chance of getting a job as a java programmer. That there are too many experienced programmers for employers to choose from. They advised me that .net is a relatively new field and that a recent grad with no experience has a better chance of getting a job here.

THen there are my SAP friends who tell me they are getting paid like crazy and that I should look into getting trained in that. I have no clue about SAP but they tell me it's easy to learn. But there are others saying that you have to be away from your family(will be a problem if i get married in the future) since you need to travel a lot and that the competition is crazy and that you have to be prepared to not have job for many months in between projects etc.

Not sure what to do or who to believe.

My first impression is that your university sucks.

Are you graduating this spring? Have you already graduated?

Where do you live (country or area of the country)?

Edit: That comes across as a bit harsh. When I say that your university sucks - I just mean that it seems to be providing poor guidance to its students. Focusing on specific technologies is silly and they should have been providing relevant advice/training/skills all along.

The point is that I can't tell you what the life of an average java programmer is. Just like I can't tell you what the life of an average developer beyond the fact that it involves programing and meetings.

A lot of what your asking is more about work culture than it is about programing jobs. My job has flexible hours where if you get your 40 hours and don't miss meetings, it doesn't matter if you show up at 6am or 1pm (there is at least 1 person in each of those categories). But there are jobs where they have 8am standing meetings every day and it is important that you are there.

Along the same lines, pay is very depended on the type of company. A large established company will likely pay more than a start-up, though there could be a payout if the start-up is bought out. And then all of this is dependent on where you live, as 50K in New York City is very different than 50k in Columbus, Ohio. Anyways, money is not everything. There is real value to benefits and free time, and those don't show up when you just look at the number.

As jjshabado pointed out, your school should have career placement services that are dedicated to helping people with understanding the job market, fields of interest and maybe even some contacts of companies that have hired previous graduates.

As you said, you have gotten different information about the availability of jobs in Java vs .Net. The best thing you can do is not a Java developer or a .Net developer. Be a developer. You should know how to program and how to apply what you have learned to the task at hand.

I've had my job for almost 3 years and have written Java, Python and some C. All of this has been within a project that has about 30 people working on it. There are things that make each of those languages unique, but there are also things that just come down to syntax and API definitions. The syntax and API pieces are the ones that are easier to quickly search for and find the answer. Where as it is much harder to conceptualize an algorithm when you haven't been exposed to a number of techniques.

I'm from Chicago. I'll be graduating in Spring, yes. I'm taking software design and Object oriented design this semester.

I want to focus on object oriented programming and look for jobs as a java programmer. My gpa isn't stellar because of poker. I'm thinking of taking the sun certified java programmer exam. How would you advice me?

How do I go about improving myself in this area? Any books/resources you recommend?

GOF design patterns is still a pretty good place to start. As IrishThug pointed out the language is not all that important. This week alone I've written in C#, CakePHP, and Actionscript. Once you've mastered a language, whether it's Java, C++, or C#, you'll find that you can pick up a new one very quickly. It's far more important to get work experience than to worry about whether you should be a C# or Java guy. The real things you need to focus on are learning how to debug, writing readable and efficient code, and beginning to learn how to design applications.
Don't worry too much about learning algorithms. I haven't written a sorting algorithm from scratch in over 10 years. As long as you understand data structures and OOP, you can always look up how to implement a particular algorithm.

Good companies won't care about this - and depending on your resume will consider it a negative (or more accurately consider the fact that you thought it was important a negative).

If you're really worried about this take some time to work on an Open Source Project or some independent project that you can talk about to potential employers.

+million, worlds best oracle/java or java/sql server programmer would be a cinch hire at my .net/sql server shop

jjshabado,

what are some things you look for in the resume of a fresher?

can someone list some open source projects that accept students with no prior experience?

Guys, my gpa is only 3.0 and i haven't done any internships yet. The job search is really stressing me out. What can I do in these 4 months to give myself the best chance of being hired?

One of the best things for me, as I hate mornings. Also on a similar note the company cultures you can find are dev-friendly in certain places, and its one of the best things about my job.

I'm assuming your talking about SAP AG's ERP products? I work in ERP, though its a SaaS (cloud based web app) and in manufacturing only. Disclaimer: SAP (and Oracle) are our competitors so I'm probably biased.

If you mean the industry (ERP) its definately stressful and frustrating at times. Higher pay, more benefits, and a lot of autonomy. Having a better idea of an actual field (web based software development/manufacturing sector) would be good, I spend more time looking over business problems than code.

If you mean the product (SAP) my opinion is its not a good path. 1. Buggy 2. On Premise which I think will fail over time to SaaS and they have no real SaaS product that can compete 3. Expensive for companies to buy compared to alternatives which if you're consulting for those companies I guess its ok as the customization/etc.

Just off the top of my head and in no particular order:

* some proficiency with at least two programming language and with some supporting evidence (I used Java to implement X for job Y or class Z). If you're using a class it needs to be a senior-ish class. Not "Java 101" or equivalent.
* some proficiency with an OO programming language. This probably wouldn't be as important for all jobs but we still use Java for a bunch of stuff so I wouldn't want someone without any OO knowledge.
* some experience with databases - even if its just taking a class
* some interesting experience outside of school. Could be work, could be an open source project, could be "I wrote my own Fantasy Hockey League software".
* some work experience. It doesn't even have to be relevant to programming but it's always nice to see that people have had a job and there are lots of life skills that are transferable between vastly different jobs.
* reasonable marks. It's not super important to me though. If I can see an actual transcript I will care about more about marks for specific classes. I wouldn't want to see a transcript with poor marks in all of the CS classes and amazing marks in English literature but if there are good/reasonable marks for the CS classes I don't care if you failed a couple of non-CS classes.

I'm sure there are more but I haven't looked at resumes that recently.

All of them. Try to find something that you'll actually be interested in and then start with really really simple features. If you're not sure where to start there's usually someone you can email for help/direction.

java or .net, then sap

Write some code! Seriously walk in with a small portfolio of work. I keep one with examples I can show. I also have an elevator pitch I practice that is the response to the inevitable "so, tell me about yourself" interview question. I also prep responses to relevant experience and skills. For instance if I know it's a iOS shop I'll dive into the SDK and go through the apps I've built. I also dig through 3rd party works I've gotten from others looking for things that might come up, like for instance data storage on a device.

Basically just walk through the interview in your mind and do a dry run and start thinking and acting like a programmer right now., Learn the tools and the SDLC processes, it's more than just knowing a language.

Java has tons of open source libraries and projects. Get involved with a big project and learn to program. Don't worry about technologies. A good developer can move between Java, .Net, or any other language/framework.