A career in the field of software development remains immensely popular due to various factors. Chief among them of course is the higher compensation and lucrative pay scale in the IT industry when compared to other career options. In addition, the flexibility of work hours and the sheer sense of achievement experienced by one while creating new programs are unsurpassed by any other job.

Popularity and reach of Software Programs

Software programming has become a quintessential part of our day to day life, right from the smartphones in your pocket, to video gaming, and everything in between. The opportunities in this field are truly astounding. The niches for specializing are also diverse, from creating operating systems, to mobile app development, or web app development to name a few.

There are various ways in which you can distinguish yourself in the market for the much coveted title of software programmer. Here, we focus on some of them.

Information Technology is one of the most dynamic industries with new technologies surfacing frequently. In such a scenario, it can get intimidating for information technology professionals at all levels to keep abreast of the latest technology innovations worth investing time and resources into.

It can therefore get daunting for entry and mid-level IT professionals to decide which technologies they should potentially be developing skills. However, the biggest challenge comes for senior information technology professionals responsible for driving the IT strategy in their organizations.

It is therefore important to keep abreast of the latest technology trends and get them from reputable sources. Here are some of the ways to keep on top of the latest trends in Information Technology.

·         Subscribe to leading Analyst Firms: If you work for a leading IT organization, chances are that you already have subscription to leading IT analyst firms notably Gartner and Forrester. These two firms are some of the most recognized analyst firms with extensive coverage on almost every enterprise technology including hardware and software. These Analyst firms frequently publish reports on global IT spending and trends that are based on primary research conducted on vendors and global CIOs & CTOs. However, subscription to these reports is very expensive and if you are a part of a small organization you may have issues securing access to these reports. One of the most important pieces of research published by these firms happens to be the Gartner Hype Cycle which plots leading technologies and their maturity curve.Even if you do not have access to Gartner research, you can hack your way by searching for “Gartner Hype Cycle” on Google Images and you will in most cases be able to see the plots similar to the one below

One of the biggest challenges in pursuing a career in software development is to figure out which language you want to work. In addition to commonly used software programming languages like C, C++, C# and Java a lot of new programming languages such as Python, Ruby on Rails have surfaced especially because they are used by a lot of consumer based start-ups these days.

It could then be a daunting task to figure out the technical language you should learn which helps you prosper in a software engineering career no matter the technology advancements that happen in the marketplace. Learning a fundamental and universal language like C# could be a great start to your career as the language is very mature and extensively used by companies large and small

What is C#

Similar to Java, C# is a multi-paradigm, object oriented language developed by Microsoft. C# is intended for use in developing software components meant to be deployed in distributed environments. So in essence, learning C# can enable you to write applications for large and complex server side systems that use sophisticated operating systems as well as compact mobile operating systems such as Android

Applications are becoming more and more sophisticated as languages such as Python open the doors to the world of programming for people who have the creative vision but always felt actually writing code was beyond their grasp.

A large part of any programs success is based on how well it can react to the events which it has been programmed to understand and listen for.

A good example of an event would be when the user clicks a button on the applications window. What happens when that button is clicked?

Well, the first thing that happens is the operating system sends out a message to let any listening software know that the button was clicked. Next, your application needs to do something in response to that event.