If ten years ago it was crucial to learn English to find a good job, now IT skills are more important. Let’s figure out which skills are useful right now and how to learn them more easily.
Table of Contents
Programming
Why it matters
Firstly, programming allows you not only to use technology but also to create programs and applications. It can be useful both in your career and in everyday life.
Secondly, each programming language is just a set of rules, and if you learn the basics of one of them, you can then more quickly understand any other. Programming is the gateway to a profession. You learn a language, you start creating projects in it, and then, if necessary, you learn another one.
Thirdly, programming teaches you to think abstractly, at the level of concepts, not at the level of concrete objects. Programming is useful for children: coders are faster at math and physics. You can become a developer and join a custom software development agency to create a unique product.
Where to apply
This depends on the programming language. In everyday life, Arduino, Java, JavaScript are easy to use. With Arduino, you can program microcontrollers for children’s toys with radio control, household appliances. Using Java, you can write an application for the phone. With Javascript, you can make a website that will collect user requests, such as customer orders.
Managers, analysts, and marketers can use Python to work with data in tables and databases. Sometimes the basic knowledge is enough to set up macros in Excel.
The developer chooses the languages according to the tasks: servers are written in PHP and Go, game engines – in C# and C++, mobile applications are created in Java and Kotlin, system applications are written in C.
Basics of Web Development
Why it matters
The average person spends seven hours a day on the Internet. That is, he sees web pages more often than he looks out the window. With the help of the site, you can convey information, express your emotions, find a job, sell goods. Basic web development skills not only help you build a website yourself but also understand and evaluate the work of professionals. You come to the agency, order a website, you are billed. It will be great if you can evaluate the customer’s competencies, understand whether the prices and deadlines are adequate, and even understand in advance whether it is realistic to express your ideas on the site.
Where to apply
First and foremost, web development is needed for web designers, layout designers, and UX designers. Also, the basics of development will be useful to a specialist in any profession to assemble a portfolio, make a business card site, assemble a page for an event, and so on. Thirdly, web development helps people of related professions get additional experience. For example, a graphic designer who draws postcards and posters can learn web development and layout of websites and expand his competence. Knowing the basics of CSS, one of the elements of web development, will come in handy for book layout designers – popular book layout engines are assembled on CSS.
Working with video and graphics
Why it matters
The quantity and quality of video content on the web are growing. Now it is easier to watch a video, especially without sound, than read the text. The number of video distribution platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, private platforms) is also growing, and many want to post videos on them. Of course, careers as a cameraman, editor, or blogger depend a great deal on observation, scriptwriting skills, and knowledge of basic composition. But technical skills are also important.
Where to apply
You can apply your editing and shooting skills to both everyday life and professional tasks. Also editing and shooting skills will be useful for work in television, film production, and advertising agencies.
Machine learning and working with data
Why it matters
We live surrounded by data and everyone has to interact with it – sort photos, process customer orders, calculate average student scores. Special tools help you work with data faster and easier, but you need to know at least the basics of machine learning. At the same time, it is not so difficult to get basic knowledge – you can solve simple tasks in a popular Python language, even without much understanding of how machine learning works.
Where to apply
Almost any field. Working with data and machine learning helps to perform medical and psychological diagnostics, analyze user behavior, predict natural disasters and stock market behavior, create programs for unmanned cars and bots for computer games, analyze roadway quality.
But it’s not just developers who need data skills. Marketers and managers can work with Excel spreadsheets, automatically collect information from several websites at once, and work with SEO queries. In everyday life these skills can also be useful, for example, to sort through the home photo archive and select from it only photos with grandfather or kittens.
In any case, knowledge of tech skills will allow you to work not even in the field of technology, but to become a copywriter. You will be able to earn as an author with broad knowledge in the networking topics list.
UI/UX
Why it matters
UX design is about creating useful and simple products, both digital and physical. More often than not, UX designers design mobile app interfaces, but that’s only because all life is centered on phones these days. Basically, UX designers create products that are easy for the user to interact with, be it household appliances or industrial objects. If you know something about UX, you understand how to simplify an order form in an online store, create a menu for an application, draw a button that the client will definitely click.
Where to apply
UX designers help to create websites, mobile, and desktop applications, as well as all that the user interacts with. A UX designer can find work not only in digital companies, but also in industrial plants, science, and manufacturing labs, and in designing psychological experiments.
How to learn IT skills
Study regularly
The easiest way to learn IT skills is to set yourself a challenge and solve it. And it doesn’t matter if you’re working with a teacher or doing it yourself. You need to hone your skills constantly, gradually increasing the level of difficulty. In learning IT skills the same principle works as in fitness training, and in any training. It is better to practice a little, but every day.
Create your own projects
It is boring to solve educational tasks, so it is better to think over your own project: a program that will help you to keep a budget, a video presentation, which will bring new clients to your main work, a website for a relative, who has long wanted to do his own business. And it is even better if this project is not for yourself, but for someone else – external motivation will work. But it is important to understand the degree of comfort – if it does not work right away and becomes a shame in front of other people, you may not want to go back to it again.
Find the right format
Studying alone is effective, but difficult – not everyone is ready to make up their own lumps. Sometimes you want to take advantage of ready-made solutions. That’s why you have to try different formats, like taking courses. The advantage of courses is the low pace, and it is easier to adapt to them. Also, in the case of courses, there is an additional motivation: you have paid money, so you have to attend classes and try to get the most out of them.
Another training format is teamwork. Several people of the same level take on a project and try to implement it. The main advantage is that problems can be solved more quickly than one. The main disadvantage is that not everyone will learn the skill equally well. Some will get easier tasks, some will get more difficult ones.
Find a mentor
It’s important to get feedback in training, and you need a mentor for that. He can tell you why you did well, or why you didn’t. He can tell you the easier solutions and basically show you what should work and how it should work.
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