Xiaoniu 小妞

I read an article today titled “The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills” that made me shiver.

1. Cobol
2. Nonrelational DBMS
3. Non-IP networks
4. cc:Mail
5. ColdFusion
6. C programming
7. Powerbuilder
8. Certifed NetWare Engineers
9. PC network administrators
10. OS/2

I can see why some of these are on the list. Cobol and Nonrelational DBMS (hierarchical databases) are no brainers. Seeing C programming and ColdFusion on the list gave me the biggest shock.

I was under the impression that C was alive and well. It was something I thought was going to stick around for a long time. I believe it is past its peak, but not dying too quickly.

ColdFusion is another one. I never heard of it before starting my current position, but CF widely used here. I had no choice, but to learn it, develop using it and support various CF applications. Not to mention CF is still being developed. It wasn’t long ago that CF 7 came out (last year maybe). We are undoubtedly moving away from CF and towards Java, but not because CF was bad.

Powerbuilder should be beated with a shovel, buried in a hole and forgotten. I was forced to use it in college and I never liked it. Very awkward and not popular. I have no idea why we even had to use it. I would have preferred to use MSSQL or Oracle over Powerbuild with Sybase. Blah. My mouth feels icky.

Oh, the joys of being a programmer. You have no choice, but to learn new technologies. I was a big C++ guy that dabbled in PHP in my previous job. I then learned CF (for this job) and moved deeper into the Java world. I’m very deep into Java programming now and starting to dabble in Ruby. C++ is good, but I just don’t have the need to use it. PHP is okay, but it really doesn’t fit my style of coding. Java and Ruby fit my style very well.