What Is The Best Career Path in Software Development?
What are the considerations?
When you are a beginner, you might want to study everything about software development. That’s exciting. We list some of them: mobile development, app development, game development, etc. On the other perspective, many experienced developers also struggle in this field. One of the big reasons is that software development is increasingly growing with more and more programming languages, frameworks, and tech stacks.
Each developer has to endeavor to learn new things every day. By contrast, they will not find out their paths, even become unemployed. To choose the best career path in software development, we have the following considerations.
What subject you should learn?
How about the median salary?
How is the work environment?
What are your strengths?
Which is the right career path in software development for you?
Be a web developer
Becoming a web developer is one of the most common paths in software development. It's also an easy way for most people. Many beginners choose this path for their career. Web development comprises of two key majors including front-end (client-side) and back-end (server-side). Additionally, there is full-stack development which contains both.
Front-end developers take responsibility for the interface of web applications.
The back-end developers work on databases, scripting, and website architecture.
The full-stack developers have knowledge of those fields. However, they are not essentially an expert in both. If you are an entre-programmers, this path is a good choice.
The salary of this job varies from $50,000 to $117,000 in the US.
Be a mobile developer
In the current explosion of the mobile market, mobile development is really a hot job. If you'd like to interact with mobile applications and build your own one, it should be your future job.
In addition, it's a proper selection if you want to do business. Accordingly, you and your partners can build apps, games to earn money. The most popular platforms for mobile development are Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile.
Java and Kotlin are two programming languages you should learn for developing games on the Android platform. Objective-C and Swift are used for iOS development.
The salary of this position often ranges between $78,000 and $188,000 per year.
Be a desktop developer
For many decades, desktop development dominated the software. Nowadays, desktop development just is ranked the third position after web application and mobile application. However, many people still consider that the desktop developer is the best career path in software development.
In fact, people still use the desktop base for most enterprise and professional applications. Typically, desktop developers use GUI toolkits. They are:
- JavaFX and Swing: two Java UI frameworks from Oracle.
- Qt is a cross-platform, C++- based UI framework.
- WPF is a common mature XAML-based Microsoft technology.
Each year, a desktop developer can earn from $76,195 up to $117,000 or even more.
Be a video game developer
Video game developer can be a challenging path for you. It requires you to not only be excellent at professional knowledge but also have great creativity. This job is not for all. You may have to face fierce competition. Anyway, it's still a wonderful choice if you have a strong passion.
We give you some clues for making video games:
Frameworks: DirectX, OpenGL, Unity 3D, WebGL
Programming languages: C, C++, C#, Java. JavaScript and HTML5
Additionally, Swift and Java are correspondingly the technologies used for iOS and Android games.
If you become a game developer, you can get a salary of between $66,000 and $148,000 per year.
Be a data scientist
Be a data scientist, you need to have a broad knowledge including multiple fields. You have to use proficiently scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems. This position request that you have the ability to extract knowledge and insights from structured/unstructured data.
If you are a newbie in the software industry, we do not encourage you to choose this path. It's more suitable for experienced developers. There are a lot of issues and tools you must understand if you desire to become a data scientist.
Be a beginner, you will not be able to know all these technologies immediately. However, you should keep learning to be more excellent.
For data scientists who work in large companies, they can earn between $86,000 and $190,000 per year.
Be a software tester
Be a software tester, you will evaluate the functionality of a software application. Then, you have to determine whether it meets its stated requirements and recognize any error. You can do this job manually or and automatically. There are some tools you need to pay attention to:
Automation tools: like Selenium, Katalon Studio, TestComplete
Unified functional testing: soapUI or Rational Functional Tester
Frameworks and languages for you to learn:
Javascript: cucumber.js, Nightwatch, Protractor
Python: PyUnit, Lettuce, Behave
PHP: Codeception, Behat, SimpleTest
C#: Visual Studio unit testing framework, SpecFlow, NUnit
The software tester can have an average salary of $61,977 in the U.S. If you are an expert, the salary can be up to $84,000.
In conclusion
Choosing the best career path in software development does not mean you will do that job forever. However, it's an extremely important step. When you determine who you want to be, you can know what you should learn. Additionally, knowing your own strengths is vital as well.
Thanks for reading until the end of this post. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave your comments below.
Collective Sources
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