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Edwin Rivera
Data Analysis Techdegree Student 4,895 PointsNeed some advice.
Hello all.
I've been apart of Treehouse for a while now and I've helped here and there but i mostly keep to myself.
I've have been studying JavaScript for a bit and many people are talking about how the market is changing and more people are looking mobile developers and it makes me feel like all this effort I've put in for JavaScript is for nothing. I've found myself looking at the swift/IOs and android tracks exploring the salaries and things they can do and it discourages me from my current track. For monetary reasons it would be smarter for me to learn the skill that will help me succeed the most. I am about half way through the JavaScript full stack track and im stuck on what i should do from here.
TLDR: My brain cant stop telling me to learn Mobile development because it will make me more money that JavaScript, but my heart tells me to finish my commitment to learn JavaScript.
I'd like to engage the community and see what you all have to say were to put yourself's in my shoes for some words of wisdom or advice. Ill take all the help i can get.
Thank you
1 Answer
Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 PointsThe world of coding is vast, rapidly changing and chaotic. It can be hard to navigate, but that's partly why it's lucrative for people who are able to successfully navigate it.
The web (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) is a much bigger market. There are millions and millions of websites. There's a larger ecosystem of support. But there's also a lot of competition.
Native apps are a smaller market, so developers who make native apps are more specialized, which gives them an advantage. But it's harder to learn because there isn't same ecosystem. (I would bet that getting your question answered on the forum about an iOS topic takes longer on average than a web topic, but I could be wrong). And smaller specialized labor markets have more friction in them, for both employee and employer, because the likelihood that a qualified person is available for the job exactly when it gets posted is lower.
Something else to keep in mind: there are new technologies that let you build native apps using web technology, like React Native or Ionic. There are performance trade-offs, and sometimes these tools can be frustrating and buggy, but they're getting better and better. There's also something called Progressive Web Apps that make web sites more like native apps. There's a lot of debate about these things and whether they'll make native apps obsolete. But native apps seem to have an advantage when it comes to performance and using native API's on the device, which is especially important for gaming or augmented reality.
I have not heard that there's a trend towards hiring more native app developers. I have heard that mobile is gaining more and more over desktop, but that doesn't necessarily mean native, it could also mean mobile web or these other kinds of solutions I mentioned.
I'm biased, but I think the better route is to double down on JavaScript. I made the mistake when I was learning to code of jumping around and learning the beginning level of all sorts of things. Someone who knows beginning web dev and beginning iOS isn't hirable, but someone who knows only one thing at an advanced level is hirable. That's my two cents.