I ran across an article on Tech Republic listing the top 10 skills that developers will need over the next 5 years.  Lets break it down and focus on only the mobile.

The weakened job market, and the poor economy leave a lot of us looking for quick skill sets to hold us over for the next great job.  The list on tech republic, and my breakdown of the related skills for mobile programmers will not only ensure that you’re in for the high demand jobs, but you’ll have the skills for the next 5 years.

1: One of the “Big Three” (.NET, Jave, PHP)

For our purposes replace PHP with objective C, C++.  Learning Java is going to give you the biggest bang for the buck of the 3 programming languages for this reason; You’ll be able to write apps for Symbian, Blackberry, WebOS, and Android.

2: Rich Internet Applications

Yes, absolute must.  HTML 5 as stated in the post is going to incorporate all sorts of RIA functionality.  Learn it love it live it.

3: Web Development

Every platform has its own webkit, this should be a duh moment for anyone reading this.  Web Development is a basic skill set you are going to need.

4: Web Services

In the manipulated words of Floyd, how can you have development if you haven’t learned your services!?  IF you don’t learn your services you can’t have any development!

5: Soft Skills

Working on your own or with a small team of developers for mobile apps you really don’t need soft skills.  Sit in your basement and eat cheetohs for all I care, but if you’re working for a company to program something for internal use these might be kind of sort of useful.  Consider these optional, you’re fine just the way you are.

6: Dynamic and/or functional programming language

Optional at best for right now, but as these mobile operating systems become more and more like full blown desktop systems expect to need at least one dynamic language by your side.  Going back to the top where I said java was the best bang for the buck.  Ruby is hot Hot HOT!

7: Agile Methodologies

Honestly, I had to look this one up on wikipedia.  This still seems like a business buzzword to me, so in reality the best words of advice I can give you is to use common sense.

8: Domain Knowledge

Know thy enemy . . . or customer.  Know what they want, accept feedback, look at usage numbers and figure out how to improve your product based on that feedback.

9: Development “hygiene”

Even if you’re working alone this is still helpful.  Utilize one of those open source systems out there to organize your projects and keep revision logs on exactly what’s changed.  You may need to revert to a previous piece of code, or at least look at some of that stuff for inspiration.  Organization is a good thing, and these tools just made it easier.

Finally!

10: Mobile Development

Hell Yea!

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30,500 iPhone apps

At an average cost of $2.69 per app, and only about a quarter of the apps being free (including the advertisement driven), some people out there are making some money.  The iPhone AppStore has really opened up the market for programming for mobile phones.  Every smartphone platform is getting their own version of the appstore, this is the gold rush of the digital age.  Grab your toolkits and SDK’s and lets get diggin!

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As a mobile device enthusiast and new developer, this is a very good time to get into the mobile programming world, but how do you choose which platform to use?  One way is to look at sales numbers and other trends that may relate to those numbers.

Luckily, we have companies like Gartner that make it their business to know what is going on in the technology world, including the cell phone and smartphone market.  They recently released the 2008 numbers that include a break-down by mobile platform.

Over the last couple of years, the smartphone market has been growing.  Big time players like Apple and Google are now in the game going against old time favorites like Research in Motion, Microsoft, and Nokia.  Behind the scenes, the device makers and developers are carefully watching the trends to see what platform to commit time and resources to.  In 2008, smartphones made up 20% of all cell phone sales in North America.  A lot of this is related to carriers finally pushing devices since most smartphones require a data plan.  These data plans give the carriers a new source of income outside of the normal talk time and texting charges, so it is in their interest to promote them.

Over the next couple of days, I am going to dig into this data in depth and share my analysis of what happened with the different smartphone platforms in 2008.

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