May 28, 2020
Application Developer Career Overview
Application Developer
Salary:
The national average for an Application Developer is $91,574
Education:
In order to get in the field, Application Developers typically need
to earn a four-year bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related
subject such as Computer Engineering.
Skills and Requirements:
Application Developers are professionals who design, develop and
deploy computer applications, i.e., apps for computers, mobile phones,
and tablets.
To be successful, Application Developers must understand the
intricacies of mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android, and
the development environment and frameworks used to write software on
those operating systems.
Currently, there are five major mobile platforms, each with its own
core language(s) and development environment:
| Mobile Platform | Core language(s) | Dev. Environment | Mobile Device |
| Android | Java & Kotlin | Eclipse | Multiple Vendors |
| iOS (Apple) | Objective C & Swift | Xcode | Apple Devices |
| RIM (Blackberry) | Java | Eclipse | Blackberry |
| Symbian | C++ | Various choices | Multiple Vendors |
| Windows Mobile | C# | MS Visual Studio | Multiple Vendors |
Career-Boosting Skills
Any skilled job has a wide spectrum of abilities and programming is
no exception. Developers who are fluent in object-oriented
programming languages such as Java, Objective-C and C++ and know the
terminology, concepts, best practices and can break a problem down,
are ahead of the curve.
How to Become an Application Developer Without a Degree?
Although companies prefer college credentials, what you really need
to have is efficient software development skills, a solid
understanding of the software development processes and lifecycles
(this includes design-develop-test-release-maintain cycle) as well as
a development methodology, platforms and environment.
The best way to learn how to code is to write code. There are a ton
of good books, video tutorials, blogs, stack-overflow answers,
open-source projects out there. Many of them are free and readily
available. Also, having a good mentor could cut months or years off
experimental coding by learning the industry’s best practices
from a pro.
