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Edward,
The way you asked the question gets you a lot of answers that reflect the experience of the responders. Skills are only a part of the equation, and I don't think it's of value for any of us to just spew out a list of the latest or greatest skills. The industry is large enough so you can find 'demand' with a widely varied skill set. As someone said, there are really good Cobol jobs that are in demand due to the scarcity of Cobol programmers.
What I'd ask of you is:
What is your work experience at this point? If you've been around since GWB, you're not starting out in your career.
What do you want to do? Small team, large team, challenging, comfortable, etc. Are you looking to be a DBA, Front end, or back end programmer? Desktop, web, phone apps?
'Very good with SQLs' - on a CRUD level or design and interdependency level? It's a relatively easy jump to Postgres or MySQL but again, what are your goals in that case?
'Moderate acquaintances with C#/VB.net'. With the vastness of .net languages, that's not telling me a lot.
Industry-wise, my thoughts are that Web/Cloud is the way to go. I'd forget AI and Web 3.0. IoT and VR are promising but those could be really tough skills to take on, depending on your experience.
Microsoft: "Where do you want to go today?"
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I want any job that I can make a living off of.
Quote: 'Very good with SQLs' - on a CRUD level or design and interdependency level?
All of the above.
Quote: Moderate acquaintances with C#/VB.net'. With the vastness of .net languages, that's not telling me a lot.
I have worked mainly in VB6 (oh the horror) doing Business Accounting programming. I have been converting my programs from VB6 to C# and, OOP but everything seems to have gone to the Web.
I am sorry for not being more specific. I do appreciate your answer. As far as VB.net goes I feel like I can do about 80%.
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No horror in working VB6; there really is still a big codebase out there in VB6.
As someone else mentioned - sorry forgot who, looking at asp.net is something logical since you can leverage your existing abilities in VB/C#. Tack on HTML5/CSS, which are pretty quick learns for someone with decent programming background. The Web has really become the place to be and many desktop apps are moving some or all functionality to web-based. While I can still spin a much deeper interface in VB/C# desktop; if there is a web-side to the app we're building and maintaining two code bases. It's somewhat less seen in the pro accounting world, but it's there in POS modules, remote employee functions, etc.
Would I venture into the *nix world with some of the other languages? Probably not for a paycheck, it's a leap. Helpful to have some experience with Postgres and MySQL, but they're just DBs, yeah different than MS DBs but still much the same and a quick learn.
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I'd also add that taking a look at W3Schools Online Web Tutorials[^] can be a fun little exercise. It tends to be really basic level stuff, but you can take a look at a lot of varied technologies to see if any catch your eye. Then you can do research from there.
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I am slowly digging my way out of the same situation.
Here is the skill set I'd be shooting for:
* Web development using ASP.NET Core. Including HTML, Javascript, and CSS.
(Learn these BEFORE attempting heavy frameworks like Angular or React.)
* Docker and Kubernetes.
* Basic Cloud technologies such as storage, compute, lambdas, etc.
* Learn your way around Linux and open-source tooling. You'll interact with these in the modern world whether you want to or not.
* As others suggested, learn what employers in your market want, and develop at least basic familiarity with these.
Good luck (to all of us).
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There is not much of a market here in New Orleans. I can find many jobs that allow working remotely. those are the ones I am shooting for.
ed
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Wow, after reading all the comments, I didn't know that being an embedded developer for my whole career was the simple life! Assembly language in the early years and then when compiler tech got good enough, C/C++.
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sasadler wrote: being an embedded developer for my whole career was the simple life!
Definitely! And you often get to play with cool hardware before anyone else!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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It depends on what type of job you are trying to find. If it is in the database software development world you might want to look at no SQL databases like Mongo DB. If you are looking for a position as a game programmer you might want to take a look at Unity which will allow you to leverage and improve your C# skills. For embedded programming, you would want to look at the Internet of Things (IoT) and C.
Having specific skills and languages on your resume may get you through the HR review, but getting an offer and succeeding at the new job comes down to your ability to:
1 - Understand and solve problems.
2 - Learn and effectively leverage new technologies.
3 - Communicate clearly.
For example, if you are a core game software developer, I would expect to see the applications and systems you created, worked on, and how you addressed and solved some of the challenges you faced. Having Unreal/C/C++ on your resume tells me very little; but saying that you updated the unreal memory manager to address the unique needs of Gears of War, tells me a lot about your ability to read code you did not write, and effectively change it to fit the needs of a major game franchise. Naturally in the interview, I would dig into this area to discover just what you did and how you solved those issues.
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I'm a bit late in the discussion but I've been in the industry a long time and watched languages come and go. I now rely on Stack Overflow's annual survey which shows some surprising results.
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/
Javascript still tops the most popular list and SQL and C# are still up there. Rust is the most loved and least dreaded but ranks at only 9.32% on the most popular list. There are other anomalies as well. As long as the technologies I am using are high up in the most popular list I'm quite relaxed about job prospects. It's not us developers that decide on the languages and platforms it's management and they are interested in a whole range of other issues like continuity support cost etc. I wouldn't pay much attention to the "highest paying" list it can be skewed by unusual temporary demand and small samples and can change very quickly.
Microsoft always cops a hostile beating but the MS ecosystem still looks pretty healthy. I've also recently noticed a few bespoke business systems being ported from Heroku/aws to Azure due to uptime reliability issues.
There are some things that can only be seen by the mind - JS
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Hi All,
Happy New 'Thing', I read on yesterdays Email about the Norton password manager being hit. Ok I got into a heated discussion with a friend about them, All your things in one place to open everything? see a problem, I do, the old single point of failure. The same people who used to bitch as I had passwords on post it notes, encrypted (well, hand written) used Norton and another password manger I can't remember (LastPass? rings a bell), the whole thing seemed a bad idea to me. Opions Please! 
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I too would recommend it. I have used it for years and I have had no problems.
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Keeps everything local, do you install it on your machine and then have a file encryted for the passwords? So only one location by default?
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You can do that, or you can put the password file on google drive or OneDrive and access that from anywhere. As long as you have a secure master password on that file no one else can get in, but placing it on an unprotected OneDrive or other file share does allow anyone with access to try to brute force it.
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Quote: As long as you have a secure master password on that file
What ever that means 
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It means that if your password file is protected by the password 'pa$$word1' and other people can find the file in the wild you will find out what that means.
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I've used Keypass for years, and it has only one problem. I sometimes forget to update it, and that comes back to bite me. For instance, I returned from a weekend away to discover my MIG welder had been stolen, so I figured I'd just pull the video from my security cameras. Alas, I can't remember my login details. Quick, of to look in my encrypted password file and find that I neglected to enter that device. Grrrr...
Curiously, when I was in the Microsoft Insiders program, and they hosted a technical session in Phoenix (Fancy lunch included), a manager presenting the Win2K Security details told us a little secret. He said, "You know how we always tell you to use different passwords for everything? Who does that? I use only one myself; it's "cantremember." I always got a kick out of that.
Will Rogers never met me.
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One Password to rule them all? Trouble I think...
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Quote: One Password to rule them all? Trouble I think...
As long as you keep the keypass file as safe as you keep the _one_ password safe there, I see no problem.
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Perhaps not. I keep the password file on a key fob, which is stored in a safe. The Keepass master password is written and stored in a different safe. Now if I could just remember what those safe combinations were...
Will Rogers never met me.
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I used to use my big brain to hold all my contact telephone numbers but fast dial and smart phones ended up removing the need for that. I now use it for passwords instead. I have a unique password for everything and just remember them all in my head. Easy peasy!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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From time to time I take a peek at the Europa Clipper’s clean room webcam. Usually not too much action takes place, usually it’s just some guys in hazmat suits moving around.
One thing that got me wondering is
what makes human built probes move through space? It takes years for one of them to reach its destination. Keeping an engine burning for years requires literary tons of fuel. Is a probe moving mostly by inertia (because it is easy to defeat the gravity force of the sun)?
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Basic Newtonian mechanics: a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.
And since "space" is mostly a pretty hard vacuum, there is no friction to slow it down (like there is with a car or a ball on Earth, both of which are slows slightly by air friction and much more by friction with the surface they are rolling on). So the only effect is gravity, which is pretty trivial at that distance because of the low mass and relatively high velocity of the probe. The further away from the high mass bodies like the sun and planets the probe gets, the less effect gravity has on it, and the more constant the velocity.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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