In demand skills...

The Job market for .Net, AJAX and PHP developers is active and predicted to rise during 2008. The  demand is red-hot right now for people with AJAX, .Net and PHP skills, so says Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director at Robert Half Technology in Menlo Park, Calif.

(Robert Half Technology is a staffing and consultancy firm, and is the parent company of Protiviti an Internal Audit and Risk consulting firm).

While dot net is a platform for rewriting your applications, php and AJAX are tools which are for designing the front ends.

So, programmers looking for jobs have to train themselves in these technologies. This also means that the UI design is a hot market and programmers and professionals have to brace themselves for  assignments which involve implementing creative designs.

Technology professionals can also add Microsoft's Silverlight, media rich tool, to their 'must learn' software tools.

It is appropriate to note here that professionals form dying technologies like C, Powerbuilder and cobol. While it is true that there are many companies around the world which are heavily into Mainframes, an example being Federal Express, it is also relevant to note that a gradual shift is being noticed in their IT infrastructure.

It is in this activity of 'shifting of technologies' being undertaken by companies that professionals have to indentify windows of opportunities and gain footholds. It is also to be noted that with the rise of mobile computing, tools which are suited for such applications are gaining in demand. Prominent among them being C#, C++, and Java.

Of course, Team working and great participation is a must and 'i am just a coder' kind of attitude will lead one nowhere.