IT Development: The Skills of the Future

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I while back I read an article from a July Tech Republic on IT Jobs of the Future. The article raised some interesting questions for me.  If IT jobs of the future will be moving toward development and consulting, just what type of IT development will that consist of and what new skills will be needed. 

I have worked on lots of Software projects and the System, Security and Network administrators we worked with were often good programmers.  The tools they used were usually scripting languages like Perl, Shell Scripting, AWK and SED and a few others.  Later on they started dabbling with  Javascript and Python and most knew SQL well.  So the question is: weren't they always developers? 

What this article really implies that more and more equipment will be located away from the users and sometimes the IT Support team.  Users will now need access to software running somewhere else, in a "cloud".  The different applications will need to be integrated with custom front ends to allow simplier access, whether on their tablet, smart phone or laptop.  Custom apps on a per site location will be needed for each customer to meet their specific need. 

Does this mean IT Developers are really application developers?  Perhaps not, at least in my opinion.  I see the need for very specific skills in integration that IT departments need to deal with all the time.  IT Developers are building tool sets and Apps to meet very specific needs for a site.  Some of these applications could become out of the box  solutions, but many will remain custom projects that can be updated by a customer, but are not one size fits all.

If all this holds true, we have another issue to think about.  Training and knowledge base.  Right now many IT Engineers need to learn the skills on the job or on their own. Getting a Masters Degree in Information Technology is great but an expensive way to start out.

I think we need to start rethinking how we train the next wave of developers, starting in Elementary and Middle School.  Many schools offer programming in High School and some in Middle School. But do they provide "real world" experience.  I think we may want to consider having 4H for technology: a place for kids interesting in technology to really learn how things work with some guidance.  Just my thoughts.

Lego MindStorm NXT 2.0 provides pluggable coding units to allow easy building of programs.