What Technologies Should Computer Science Students Learn?

As an undergraduate student in Computer Science in college, I faced the challenge on which technologies to learn in my spare time. As I was completing my degree, new technologies came emerging in different areas of software development. New frameworks were being released such as React and Angular. As a result, I started to learn a lot of different technologies that came out in the marketplace. However, I did not have a focus as for why I was learning things in my spare time.

On the other hand, many times, I felt overwhelmed and did not know what to learn outside of my duties as an undergraduate student. Through the years, I have developed a strategy that I want to share with all the Computer Science students out there so they can decide which technologies they can dedicate their free time to. This way, they can start building a portfolio of projects they can use to showcase to potential employers.

The purpose of this article is to serve as a guide to help Computer Science students pick technologies and programming languages that will help them in their career development. Consequently, helping them to focus on learning the tech stacks that will help them move closer to the careers they want to pursue after graduation.

So, let’s get started.

Pick your area of interest

Since the technology industry is filled with diverse areas such as Web and Mobile Development, Data Mining and Machine Learning. My suggestion is to pick one of these potential career paths. That is, the sector of the industry that most interest you. This could be mobile, web or even game development. Once you identify the area that interests you, go ahead and start learning the technologies that are required to build projects that fall into the category of choice. For instance, if you want to work on developing mobile apps for Android phones, start learning how to write code and build applications in Java or Kotlin.

Research the technologies that are in demand

Once you know what area of the industry you would like to work on after graduation, go ahead and research the technologies that are in most demand by companies in your sector. Research online on websites such as Indeed. Type in the type of role you would like to pursue, then read the job descriptions that may come up in the search results. This step is very important because it will help you learn skills that companies are looking for in developers. Hence, when you graduate, you will have projects in your portfolio using the technologies that companies are looking for in their candidates. To give you another example, let’s say you want to work as a web developer. On the job descriptions, you might see words like Angular, React or Vue. These are frameworks, which are based on the JavaScript language.

So, my suggestion is to write down the whole set of technologies that may come up the most as you read the job descriptions. Then, pick the one that came up the most and start working on projects you can later add to your portfolio.

Learn the fundamentals

After you pick the technologies that are tailored to your professional aspirations, learn the fundamentals of these technologies. Learn the essential concepts of the programming language or framework you choose. Furthermore, understand why the language or technology was invented in the first place. Also, focus on understanding why it is better than other similar technologies on this field. This will help you acknowledge the value the technology brings to the marketplace, also understand what it is going on in the background when your application is running. This has helped me a lot in the job interview process because I can explain to the interviewer on a deep level the functionality of my code.

There you have it, here are some tips and strategies to help you as a Computer Science student choose which programming languages and technologies to learn in your spare time. By using these tips, you will narrow down on learning the tools that will help you on your next step after graduation.

For more tips and strategies you can use as a Computer Science student, check out my YouTube channel, “Felix The Dev”. I may have done a video on a question you might have. I think it can help you.

I hope this helps!

Photo by Jorge Jesus from Pexels

Originally published at yadielcabrera.com on September 23, 2018.