According to IT Career Finder, Best Computer Jobs for the Future (12/24/2024) are listed as follows:

1. IT security specialist (not developer; median salary: $120,000)
2.  Mobile application developer  (median salary: $132,000)
3. Software engineer (median salary: $130,000)
4. Video game designer (including developer; median salary: $99,000)
5. Computer systems analyst (not developer; median salary: $104,000)
6.  Web developer  (median salary: $93,000)
7. Health information technician (median salary: $63,000)
8. Technology manager (median salary: $170,000)
9.  Database administrator (including developing)  (median salary: $117,000)
10. Network administrator (not developer) (median salary: $95,000)

Computer science is different from many other disciplines (like electrical engineering). It is more like a professional school (such as culinary schools), which emphasizes practical works instead of subject studies because many IT companies want the new recruitees to start contributing immediately. There are three kinds of computing personnel:

• Developers:
  
  
  • Positions (plenty): Developers of front-end and back-end web pages, mobile apps, and all kinds of software
  • Skills (more stable): Programming languages (such as C++ and Java), web programming, mobile app development, data processing and management including databases, and data structures & algorithms


• Practitioners:
  
  
  • Positions (not many): Experienced personnel like data scientists, database or system administrators, security analysts, and network architects (more applications & configuration and less development)
  • Skills (based on the needs of companies): Databases, data warehousing, data lake, Hadoop, MapReduce, Linux, SPSS, SAS, Cogno, Matlab, Tableau, etc.


• Researchers:
  
  
  • Industrial positions (few and based on the needs of corporations): High quality personnel required for the advanced areas like artificial intelligence, security, computer vision, autonomous driving, and speech recognition
  • Academic positions/trends (few and changed according to the government policies): ❓ ⇐ artificial intelligence ⇐ big data ⇐ high-performance computing ⇐ security ⇐ (mobile) networks

Unless you have an impressive resume or a strong connection, practicing tens or hundreds of questions posted at the LeetCode is a must in order to secure a job at corporations (like Google and Facebook). Otherwise, your chance of answering the questions correctly is low because of their high difficulty and time constraint. In addition, you need to create LinkedIn pages to show your achievements, and may consider uploading your projects to the GitHub to showcase them.

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Remark I: Definitions, terminologies, and theories will be discussed minimally in this course. Instead practical works and programming knowledge will be emphasized and enforced.

Remark II: This is an advanced web course using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). For a database course, check DATA 520 Databases and CSCI 513 Advanced Database Systems using Oracle databases and JDBC (Java Database Connectivity).

Remark III: Numerous web development tools and software have been proposed and keep emerging. The reason of using the latest ones is mainly because of hype since programming languages have no major breakthroughs since 1950s, and the application cores still require about the same level of heavy human works. Unfortunately, many IT managers do not realize this truth, but once you master one specific technology, learning another should not be difficult because all foundations are about the same.

Remark IV: Web, mobile, and database programming is a must for IT developers, and the only effective way to learn software development is practicing, instead of studying concepts or writing some testing programs.

No pain, no gain 😂

Remark V: Remote work is a trend for IT workers. This course also allows you to learn how to do it by using the VPN (virtual private networks) to connect to our Linux server undcemcs02.und.edu, and having the exercises set up at the server and be accessed from the clients.

Instructor’s qualification: The instructor initiated a database-driven web system by using Perl and Sybase in 1997, when not many people were familiar with the web development. Ever since, numerous software and tools such as ASP.NET, LAMP, and Oracle have been used by him to build various web systems. In addition, the instructor began mobile-commerce research in 2000 and started developing mobile apps since. Many mobile platforms were used by him initially, but the instructor is now focusing on Android, which is the most popular one currently.

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University of North Dakota Course Description (CSCI 457) —
A study of the system architecture, content design and implementation, and data analysis, management, and processing of electronic commerce. Topics include Internet basics, business issues, data management and processing, static and dynamic web programming, e-commerce content design and construction, and databases and host languages with embedded SQL.

Electronic Commerce (or E-Commerce) from Wikipedia —
Commonly known as e-commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks.

Mobile Commerce (or M-Commerce) from Wikipedia —
It is the delivery of electronic commerce capabilities directly into the consumer’s hand, anywhere, via wireless technology.

Electronic Commerce Technology from IEEE TCEC —
The different technologies reflect the technical, organizational, and legal requirements of the different participants in electronic business transactions. These technologies support one or more of the phases of an electronic business transaction: planning, identification, negotiation, actualization, and post-actualization.

A Generic System Structure of a Database-Driven Web System —

Client-side mobile/handheld programming steps —

An Internet-Enabled and Mobile Database Course Sequence —
This is part of an Internet/mobile-enabled database course sequence offered by me:

CSCI 260 .NET and World Wide Web Programming
⇓
CSCI 457 Electronic and Mobile Commerce Systems
⇓
DATA 520 Databases
⇓
CSCI 513 Advanced Database Systems
⇓
CSCI 515 Data Engineering and Management
⇓
DATA 525 Data Engineering and Mining

The following platforms, software, and tools used in these courses greatly help students land a decent job:

• CSCI 260 (.NET and World Wide Web Programming) to build database-driven websites by using
  
  
  • Microsoft Access database,
  • Microsoft ASP.NET,
  • Microsoft C# or Visual Basic,
  • Microsoft .NET, and
  • Microsoft Visual Studio.


• CSCI 457 (Electronic and Mobile Commerce Systems) to build electronic and mobile commerce systems by using
  
  
  • Android programming,
  • Android-server-database connection,
  • (L) Linux operating system,
  • (A) Apache web server,
  • (M) MySQL database, and
  • (P) PHP.


• DATA 520 (Databases) to build Internet/mobile-enabled database systems by using
  
  
  • Android programming,
  • Android-server-database connection,
  • JDBC (Java Database Connectivity),
  • Oracle database, and
  • Relational database design and SQL.


• CSCI 513 (Advanced Database Systems) to build Internet-enabled and embedded database systems by using
  
  
  • Android programming,
  • Android SQLite embedded database,
  • JDBC (Java Database Connectivity),
  • Object-relational SQL and PL/SQL, and
  • Oracle (an object-relational database).


• CSCI 515 (Data Engineering and Management) to build location-based services and data-mining systems to discover knowledge from a large set of data by using
  
  
  • Android programming,
  • Android Google APIs and Firebase database,
  • Data mining and knowledge discovery,
  • Information retrieval,
  • Location-based services, and
  • Smartphones and mobile handheld devices.


• DATA 525 (Data Engineering and Mining) to build Internet-enabled data-mining systems to discover knowledge from a large set of data by using
  
  
  • Data mining and knowledge discovery,
  • Internet-enabled Firebase database,
  • Information retrieval, and
  • Internet-enabled TensorFlow.