Posted on 11/15/2013 7:52:02 AM PST by SeekAndFind
One of the givens of working in IT is that the pace of technology changes rapidly, and so too, do the skills that are needed to stay current. Here are 10 that John Hales, a VMware instructor at Global Knowledge says are going away:
1. Windows XP/2003 and earlier. Why? Mainly because the operating systems are reaching their end of life and won’t be supported/updated by Microsoft any longer. Also, new applications no longer support them.
2. Silverlight. This was Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash and it can’t be used with the new Windows Store (metro) apps or on a Windows phone.
3. Adobe Flash. After Adobe stopped supporting mobile platforms in 2011, more websites started moving to HTML 5, which works on mobile and desktop Oss. While there is still demand for Flash, Hale thinks it has peaked.
4. COBOL, FORTRAN and other mainframe languages. Although they were popular and commonly used for years, the majority of programming work has transitioned to modern, object-oriented languages like ObjectiveC, Java, C++ and C#.
5. Lotus Notes administrator. Once one of the three big platforms, now more people are moving to hosting email in the cloud or using free platforms like Gmail.
6. Novell GroupWise administrator. Marketshare for GroupWise appears to be rather small in most industries, Hale believes.
7. Traditional telephony. Use of PBXs is declining as more and more companies are switching to mobile platforms, VoIP-enabled phones and collaborative communications platforms like Microsoft Lync.
8. Server-only admin skills. Virtualization is becoming more ubiquitous and fewer physical servers are being deployed, meaning there are fewer to set up and configure.
9. Help desk technicians/level 1 support. There is less demand for help desk skills as they are mainly outsourced to other companies and also off-shore.
10. PC repair techs. Demand for this skill set is decreasing, although it is not going away. However, tablets are being used more frequently in place of PCs and laptops, and there is very little that needs to be fixed in a tablet.
What do you think--do you agree with these choices? Are there others that should be on the list?
You Peoplesoft folk were way overpaid anyways! Y'all should have put up a few bucks while the weather was still warm!
I have some COBOL background, but I don't think I'd go back.
I can't, but if I were emperor of the world it would be one of the first things I would do.
But only after ridding the world of the scourges of Business Objects and Java.
Assumed= assembler. Oh open SRC enterprise java is also one gigantic yak-shave. Abandon all hope ye who enters that pit.
That, and it’s also the a big part of frameworks, like Twitter Bootstrap.
Good.
That means we will retain that rarefied and unique nature, and have the payrolls to prove it. :)
My best career move EVER was to break towards VB/ASP/C#.NET, instead of Java.
Got a jQuery bug up my butt last year, been embracing it to sit on my ASP.NET.
You are correct. By using AJAX features of javascript/jQuery I have been developing some very complex apps that perform as well as desktop apps.
It is amazing the performance you can get. jQuery does make it easy to get code to work in various browsers.
I read a few years ago, at that time, COBOL had the greatest number of lines of code in the field.
COBOL isn't going a way for a long time.
I’m working at a major food chain supplier and still using VMware.
I mostly develop in Java (we host on Linux servers), I use Apache Wicket, which easily works with jQuery/Bootstrap.
I basically have my GUI guy design the HTML pages, then I easily incorporate the data bindings, so it’s a good division of labor. I HATE JSPs/JSFs with their intermixing of logic and markup.
Absolutely.
ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE !!!
No XP - what am I going to do?
XP is still chugging along on my PC.
My MAC is running W 7 on the parallel Desk Top.
Of course, the land line is becoming less used but there will be a need for those skills long after you are dead and buried.
My "land line" is delivered via combination, phone, internet and TV, but there are still hundreds of million phones that use the traditional phone lines.
A hundred million of anything is a market.
When the SHTF, somebody has to know these old technologies.
Ah, those were the days! :-)
Unix skills will be in demand for a long time.
At my company we say “It’s called SAP because you need to be one to buy it.”
I have some COBOL background, but I don't think I'd go back.
I did COBOL for almost 13 years (87-00). It was fun. You haven't lived 'til you've wrestled with a 10,000 line COBOL program with 4 7-layer arrays and crawled out with your sanity intact. Boy, howdy!
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