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Submission + - How Much Do Tech Bosses Really Earn? (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Everybody knows that tech's top figures, such as Google CEO Larry Page or Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, are worth billions of dollars thanks to stock options. But how much do everyday tech executives — the CIOs, Chief Data Officers, and so on — earn? Generally between $150,000 and $175,000, not counting possible perks such as stock options, according to a new analysis. That's based on national data, although anyone who works in tech knows that, in high-demand areas such as Silicon Valley, salaries can skyrocket far higher for those with highly specialized skillsets and the right mix of experience. It's a good time to be a Pointy-Haired Boss... but then again, when isn't it?

Submission + - Tech Salaries Had Biggest Year-Over-Year Leap in 2015 (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Average technology salaries in the U.S. saw the biggest year-over-year leap ever, up 7.7 percent to $96,370 annually, according to Dice's new survey data. Bonuses and contract rates also rose from 2014, and tech salaries in seven metro areas reached six-figures for the first time since the survey began more than a decade ago. Contract workers saw a rise (5%) in hourly compensation, with contractors earning $70.26 per hour. Other Websites have shown similarly high salaries for tech professionals; Glassdoor, for example, called data scientist the best job in America, with an average salary of $116,840 and bountiful job prospects. But while everything might seem great on a macro level, that doesn't mean tech workers don't face their share of stagnant salaries, brutal workplaces, and annoying managers.

Submission + - The Most Popular Bad Passwords of 2015 (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: For years, security experts have told people they need better passwords protecting their online accounts: no more '123456' or 'qwerty' or 'password.' Based on SplashData’s fifth annual list of the 25 most common passwords, however, it’s clear that relatively few people are listening to that advice (Dice link). The firm based its list on more than 2 million leaked passwords during the year. The most popular, as in 2014, was '123456,' followed by 'password' and the ingenious, uncrackable '12345678.' One new entry on this ignoble list: 'starwars' in 25th place, no doubt thanks in part to the popularity of 'The Force Awakens' and the accompanying marketing campaign. Seems like a lot of people have forgotten (or never learned) that, while it’s a pain to create (much less remember) a complicated password with lots of numbers and special characters, it’s nothing compared to the pain of having your online accounts compromised. Maybe, as some have proposed, we could someday kill passwords for most services.

Submission + - The Best Ways to Simplify Your Code? (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Technical debt arises for many reasons—whether moving goal posts, pressure to get code tested and released, high programmer turnover, and lack of documentation. Over time, it can also render code a spaghetti-like mess. But how to deal with it? In a new column on Dice, (Dice link) developer David Bolton offers some suggestions, ranging from refactoring to using compiler inference to increase readability and shorten declarations. While those techniques are straightforward, it's clear that a lot of developers let their code get out of control, and trying to plan beforehand doesn't necessarily prevent the work from getting overcomplicated. It seems like every developer has a go-to technique (or four) for keeping things a little more streamlined. What are yours?

Submission + - Tech Professionals' Aggravations Rise, But So Do Salaries (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Despite some concerns over the stock market and whether the so-called “unicorns” will survive the year, it’s apparently still a good time to get into tech: New data from Robert Half Technology suggests that salaries for various tech positions will increase as much as 7 percent this year. Which is good, because tech professionals have confessed to a host of aggravations with their lives (Dice link), including too-expensive housing, lengthy commutes and gridlock, inability to achieve work-life balance, and a disconnect from their jobs. It’s neither the best nor worst of times, but the money could be pretty good.

Submission + - Java Named Top Programming Language of 2015 (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: What was the most popular programming language of 2015? According to the people behind the TIOBE Index, Java took that coveted spot, winning out over C, Python, PHP, and other languages. “At first sight, it might seem surprising that an old language like Java wins this award,” read TIOBE’s note accompanying the list. “Especially if you take into consideration that Java won the same award exactly 10 years ago.” Yet Java remains essential not only for businesses, it continued, but also consumer-centric markets such as mobile development (i.e., Google Android). That being said, even big languages can tumble. (Dice link) Objective-C tumbled from third place to 18th in the past 12 months, thanks to Apple’s decision to replace it with Swift. In 2016, TIOBE expects that “Java, PHP (with the new 7 release), JavaScript and Swift will be the top 10 winners for 2016. Scala might gain a permanent top 20 position, whereas Rust, Clojure, Julia and TypeScript will also move up considerably in the chart.”

Submission + - Your Car: Aerial Drone Launcher? (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Ford and Chinese technology company DJI (which manufactures drones that specialize in aerial photography) used the spotlight of this year’s CES to announce a developer challenge: figure out how someone in a Ford vehicle can use the dashboard touch-screen to launch (and land) a drone from the back of a pickup. While the challenge is framed as a “search-and-rescue system for the future,” drone control from a moving vehicle has a lot more applications than search-and-rescue. In 2014, Renault designed a concept car that came with a small flying drone controllable via tablet or preset GPS waypoints. In theory, this “flying companion,” launched from a retractable hatch in the roof, could prove especially useful at scanning the road ahead for possible traffic jams. (Renault hasn’t yet announced a production model of the car.) So are drones-from-cars an odd sideshow? Maybe. But if they catch on, imagine the driver-distraction issues from trying to pilot a UAV while you're on the road.

Submission + - Some Tech Segments May Face Turbulence in 2016 (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: David Foote, an analyst who accurately predicted the tech industry's job growth in 2015, is back with some new predictions about which segments will do well in 2016 (Dice link). At the top of his list: DevOps, cloud and software architects, and cybersecurity experts. Those that won't perform well? SAP specialists, storage 'gurus,' and network managers could all face some headwinds. 'Companies are continuing to outsource infrastructure and that will reduce the need for network specialists except for network security which will remain in-house,' he says. Whether or not he's right about which parts of the tech industry will do better than others, there are also increasing signs that things could get very tight from a funding perspective for startups, as even the so-called 'unicorns' risk seeing investor money (and customers) dry up.

Submission + - Facebook, Google Top Year-End App List

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: New data from research firm Nielsen shows that — surprise, surprise — Facebook, Google, and Apple dominated the list of most-used mobile apps (Dice link). Facebook’s core app took the top spot on Nielsen’s list with 126 million unique users per month, followed by YouTube with 97 million, Facebook Messenger with 96 million, and Google Search with 95 million. This is partially a consequence of the mobile world essentially becoming a duopoly between Google Android and Apple’s iOS, meaning that the core apps produced by those companies are always front-and-center (and thus always in use) for the majority of mobile users. But not every app launched by these companies succeeds: While Facebook dominates, for example, the company is notable for some app misfires, including Paper and Facebook Home. That might be cold consolation to indie app developers trying to build up a significant audience.

Submission + - Microsoft Offers Linux Certification. Yes, Really. (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Former CEO Steve Ballmer once publicly referred to Linux as a 'cancer.' Not content to just let Ballmer blow up about it, company also spent a good deal of money and legal effort on claiming that open-source software violated its patents. A decade ago, the idea of Microsoft creating a Linux certification would have seemed like lunacy. But now that very thing has come to pass, (Dice link) with the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) Linux on Azure certification, designed in conjunction with the Linux Foundation. Earning the Linux on Azure certification requires tech pros to pass Microsoft Exam 70-533 (Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions) as well as the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) exam, which collectively require knowledge of Linux and Azure implementation. Microsoft evidently recognizes that open-source technology increasingly powers the cloud and mobile, and that it needs to play nice with the open-source community if it wants to survive and evolve.

Submission + - Developing in C/C++? Why You Should Consider Clang Over GCC (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The idea with Clang, a compiler front-end for C, C++, Objective-C++, and Objective-C, and LLVM (a compiler infrastructure) is that you can mix the compiler front-end with a targeted back-end and end up with highly portable and efficient compiler. Clang can perform static analysis of your code, and lets you write tools that give you information about a program. Although many developers prefer developing in C/C++ using GCC, developer David Bolton (in a new Dice article) makes an argument for why you should switch to Clang. While GCC is probably still best when it comes to speed, he argues, Clang is improving release by release, and features tools that developers could find useful.

Submission + - Why You Should Choose PostgreSQL Over MySQL, MariaDB (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB are the three “main” open-source relational databases available today (there are four if you count FireBird, but for brevity we're excluding it). For years, MySQL had a reputation of being faster than PostgreSQL, but much of that was due to the MyISAM database engine, which didn’t support transactions. On the flip side of things, PostgreSQL had a reputation for being slower but more reliable. But with the recent versions of both platforms, things have started to change; for example, speed has been less of a problem for PostgreSQL, while MySQL now defaults to the InnoDB engine, which does handle transactions. According to developer David Bolton, here's why PostgreSQL is worth a second look for your database-management needs (Dice link).

Submission + - Can Full-Time Tech Workers Survive the Gig Economy? (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: By some measures, more than 40 percent of U.S. workers will be independent in 2020. Today, that number stands at 34 percent, according to the Freelancer’s Union. By all accounts, the trend seems widespread enough to indicate that tech pros should prepare themselves for the dynamics of a world that depends more on contingent work. The question isn't whether the tech world will see an increasing prevalence of 'gigs,' rather than full-time positions; it's whether those in full-time positions can easily keep their jobs when there's pressure to farm it out cheaply and easily to freelancers. Or will the need for people who can see projects through the long term prevent the 'gig economy' from radically changing the tech industry?

Submission + - Work-Life Balance Among Tech Pros Is a Myth (Survey) (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Are tech professionals really willing to live on energy drinks, and sleep on office couches, in order to get the job done? For many, the answer is “no.” In response to a new Dice survey (Dice link, obviously), only 5 percent of employees at technology companies said that work-life balance wasn’t a top priority for them. Contrast that with nearly 45 percent of respondents who said they wanted more of a work-life balance, even if their current position made that difficult. More than 27 percent of those surveyed also characterized work-life balance in the tech industry as a “myth.” It seems that, despite all those companies talking publicly about wanting to give employees a better work-life balance (complete with onsite gyms and unlimited vacation time and... stuff...), it's not really working out for a lot of people. (And that's something that people have been calling out for some time.)

Submission + - Python's On the Rise... While PHP Falls (dice.com) 1

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: While this month’s lists of the top programming languages uniformly list Java in the top spot, that’s not the only detail of interest to developers. Which language has gained the most users over the past five years? And which are tottering on the edge of obsolescence? According to PYPL, which pulls its raw data for analysis from Google Trends, Python has grown the most over the past five years—up 5 percent since roughly 2010. Over the same period, PHP also declined by 5 percent. Since PYPL looks at how often language tutorials are searched on Google, its data is a good indicator of how many developers are (or aren’t) learning a language, presumably because they see it as valuable to their careers. Just because PYPL shows PHP losing market-share over the long term doesn’t mean that language is in danger of imminent collapse; over the past year or so, the PHP community has concentrated on making the language more pleasant to use, whether by improving features such as package management, or boosting overall performance. Plus, PHP is still used on hundreds of millions of Websites, according to data from Netcraft. Indeed, if there’s any language on these analysts’ lists that risks doom, it’s Objective-C, Apple’s longtime language for programming iOS and Mac OS X apps, and its growing obsolescence is by design.

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