Being a programmer never was the first thing I imagined my life’s occupation to be growing up. I always had dreams of more adventurous jobs: test pilot, military soldier, doctor. But reality and an understanding of what avenues for success were available to me lead me to business school. Even then, I chose the more glamorous major of marketing with visions of being the key creative person in advertising or marketing campaigns. What I ended up doing after graduation was spending four years in the retail trade working as a retail manager. I did ok in that field but never really excelled as my heart was never in it and I always sought something different. When I left the trade and went home, I had to figure out what I was planning to do with my life. Some research let me to return to college to take up programming and receive a diploma in it. It forever changed my life.

When I first started out in programming, I specialised in the language PowerBuilder. At the time, 1996, it was considered to be the superior of fourth generation programming languages like Visual Basic and consequently it was in high demand. That skill led to jobs in Florida and Europe and I rode it for it was worth. But I always considered myself very forward looking. In this field, employers always were looking for the hottest new solutions to address their business problems. When I returned from Germany, I was aware of Java as the new language of choice for development. In quick fashion I started learning how to use it and for several years as the language grew in size and complexity, I grew along with it. It was with these skills that I found a position in Winston. But times are changing again.

It was two years ago that I sensed that as a leading edge language, Java was fading. That was typical of mature languages. The new trend was towards scripting languages like PHP, Python and Perl, a part of the LAMP paradigm where components were built on open source technologies. So I have a practice of doing my personal programming in PHP. This website and the sub sites run on a PHP engine using MySql as the database. Much easier to use than Java and more widespread today in running web sites. Knowing this language I hope to keep my marketability as a web programmer high in the face of outsourcing and off shoring the very skills that my family depends upon for keeping us comfortable.

Yet I sense a new shift now. These shifts happen way too fast now for me to keep up with them. Web 2.0 technologies are everywhere exemplified by AJAX applications like the ones behind Google Maps. Flash and now Microsoft’s new tool, Silverlight, are making web sites more immersive doing things that even AJAX sites can not do especially in video. As more people acquire faster connections, they yearn for more involved websites with all sorts of eye candy and immediate feedback. In my experience the most useful of websites are those that display information which is best handled through plain html.

So I have a decision to make: do I plunge in and try to learn as many of these various technologies as I can to diversify my skill set to stay competitive in the workforce as a computer programmer? Do I try to become a master of Google’s Web ToolKit APIs? Will it be similar to the experience I had in spending my free time learning the Mobile Java APIs (used in cell phones and PDAs) for several months back in 2000-2001 and then find out that the whole industry demand for the technology had collapsed? Or do I stay with the technologies I know and build on those for there is still a demand for applications that require basic functionality and nothing more.

I am now at an age that I do not have many re-inventions of myself left and with increased family responsibilities, my time is scarce. I may take the plunge or maybe not. For now, I am a computer programmer by trade and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Question is will I stay relevant?