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手机应用开发者需求现状及培养要求

发布时间:2011-07-08 14:36:56 Tags:,,

作者:Beth Stackpole

据市场调查公司IHS所述,从用户需求量方向来考虑,2010年应用销售共使苹果获利17.8亿美元,今年全球手机应用销售额预计将达到40亿美元。

那么,这些应用由谁负责开发呢?在近期的“America’s Tech Talent Crunch”研究中,IT求职网站Dice.com发现,与2010年第1季度相比,今年第1季度Android开发者职位空缺增加了3倍多,iPhone相关职位空缺也增加了2倍多。

自由职业者求职网站Elance.com也在报告中指出开发者需求量大增。2011年第1季度,在网站上发布的手机开发者职位数为4500个,与去年同期相比增加了1倍左右。

据Elance.com营销副总裁Ellen Pack所述,在此期间网站上发布的总职位数增长了52%,显示手机应用开发职业增加速度为整体平均增长速度的2倍。

现如今,不仅技术公司正在网罗手机开发人才,各种产品和服务公司都在制作应用。这种积极性就像不久前他们致力于在社交网络站点上一显身手那样。

尽管Web和Java开发人才数量众多,但能够为苹果iPhone或iPad、黑莓以及新Android设备开发新颖应用的专业人士依然匮乏,因为这些平台都相对较新。

开发者和设计师完全明白,那些小屏幕和智能设备触摸界面承载着大量的机遇和挑战。

市场观察人员表示,称职的手机开发者应当具有理解新手机使用规则的能力,而不是只单纯能够掌握新的编程技术,这也是将区分他们能否真正成为手机开发者的因素。

Gartner分析师Eric Knipp专注于研究Web和云计算,他指出:“你在构建Web应用时,拥有的是整个桌面。有些设计技巧不能简单地用在移动设备上。手机应用的开发并不是将Web应用界面缩小后移植到新平台上。长久以来,开发者已经形成某种想法,即功能越多应用越好。但是对移动设备而言,这条定律并不适用。”

mobile-development(from 2kgroup.com)

mobile-development(from 2kgroup.com)

何人可以就职以及如何才能就职

尽管所有的现象都表明市场对手机应用开发者需求旺盛,但这种需求并未促使IT团队大量招募全职工作人员。因为许多公司的IT预算还不足以雇佣专业化及高薪的手机开发人才。

在有更迫切的需求之前,某些公司把手机应用项目外包给咨询公司和小开发工作室。

Aspen Skiing Co.便采取这种战略。到目前为止,这家科罗拉多滑雪度假胜地已经发布了数款手机应用,包括让管理者利用智能手机调查顾客对度假村意见的工具,以及让顾客查看度假胜地相关数据和信息(游戏邦注:如天气、电梯状况和日常事务等)的应用。

Aspen Skiing还未将软件开发视为核心要务,也无法供养庞大的IT团队,因而将手机开发外包似乎是最有效的计划,至少在短期内是这样的。这也是公司聘请兼职顾问开发手机应用的原因。

Aspen Skiing IT管理总监Paul Major说道:“手机环境变化异常迅速,而且与你所使用的内容管理工具以及提供支持的设备有一定关联。采用外包的做法让我们可以跟上时代的步伐。”

向中小型企业提供营销和广告服务的Supermedia公司最早也认为外包的性价比会比自己雇佣开发团队更高。

据公司首席信息官Michael Dunn所述,涉水手机领域数年之后,Supermedia意识到该方向对公司的核心运营模式异常重要,不能再继续将应用开发外包给顾问。大约1年多前,公司决定成立成立内部团队来负责应用的定期更新,并增加支持应用的手机平台。

Supermedia认识到熟练开发人才的稀缺性,因而采取多个步骤避免陷入困境。

首先,他们培训公司内部两个核心Java开发者,让他们学习新的技术,然后继续培养由大学毕业生组成的团队。Dunn解释道:“该市场崛起相当之快,对开发者的需求量也很大。这导致我们无法在短期内招募到足够的人,而且也很难负担这笔费用,所以采取这种战略。”

Dunn表示,成熟老练的Java开发者有一定的基础,能够迅速掌握Android和iOS相关技术。

这些经验丰富的开发者学成之后,便可以教导刚进入公司的大学毕业生,使得Supermedia在培训上的投资发挥出应有的价值。Dunn解释道:“这些新员工掌握核心开发技术和某些手机应用开发的知识,虽然有些只是商业范围内的知识,但他们都曾在大学中做过类似的项目。”

现在,Supermedia拥有10个手机应用开发专家和150人的开发者团队,整个公司负责IT的员工将近300人。

app development(from webapplicationdevelopmentindia1.blogspot.com)

app development(from webapplicationdevelopmentindia1.blogspot.com)

革新技术

据Dunn及其他行业观察人员所述,无论是近期毕业的大学生还是正在工作的专业人士,掌握某些技能有助于让自己成为优秀的手机应用开发者。

毫无疑问,过硬的Java、HTML以及普通技术技能是必需品。掌握面向对象编程并理解用户界面和设计样式的开发者存在一定的优势。

专家表示,如果能精通Android和iOS等主流手机平台的API和用户界面工具包更好,但缺乏此类经验并不意味着你失去成为成功手机应用开发者的机会。成熟的程序员应当能够游刃有余地在各种语言中转换,因为手机开发从本

质上来说就是学习新句法而已。

这种转变的潜在难点在于手机平台所使用的新设计样式。你不仅需要知道显示所设计应用的智能手机屏幕的实际使用面积较小,而且还必须理解用户与设备互动的方式,领会传达高度定向功能的要求。

Rasmussen College School(游戏邦注:这所学校是首批开设手机应用设计和编程的课程的大学之一)技术和设计主任Hap Aziz说道:“人们与智能设备的互动方式不同于笔记本电脑。人们在使用智能设备时并不认为自己在使用电脑,因而你也不能照搬电脑软件开发技巧。下拉菜单和复杂的界面并不适合智能设备,这些更适合于银行中的ATM机。”

而且,需要进行转变的不是那些顶尖的科学家,而是那些做过学习新技术和掌握新方法所需基础工作的人。

回到学校中学习是个选项。除了Rasmussen提供的全日制课程外,众多大学准毕业生也都在继续进行热门项目的认证课程,包括HTML5、面向对象编程、Java和iOS及Android编程。

据手机应用开发咨询公司360mind所有者Nick Dalton所述,边做边学也是个很好的方法,而且受到众多IT职业人士的喜爱。

他解释道,想要成为手机应用开发者的人需要完全投入平台之中,这意味着他们需要脱离PC一段时间。

他们需要全力投入到手机环境中,亲身体验其中的挑战和新的机遇。

Dalton说道:“小型设备的内存较小且处理器并不强大,你需要更注意自己的编程。这些技巧无法通过理论获得,只能在亲身经历中总结出来。”

Dalton是个在IT行业从业25年的资深人士,大部分时间在尼桑和丰田等公司担任企业Java设计师,负责设计后端系统和面向顾客应用。

当iPhone首次发布时,Dalton出版了名为《101 iPhone Tips and Tricks》的电子书,教人们如何使用SDK、电子书和其他在线资源自学掌握iOS SDK开发技术。

苹果App Store的发布以及手机应用开发者市场的脱离,使得他离开企业IT部门创立360mind。

现在,360mind中有将近20个手机应用开发者,逐渐从构建简单新颖应用转移至新企业产品,将苹果iOS和Android应用与后端企业系统连接起来(游戏邦注:360mind是快餐连锁企业Chipotle订餐应用的开发商,顾客可以在手机上使用应用预定并为餐点付款)。

Dalton认为手机应用开发的商机无限,他表示近期的“淘金热”向开发者、系统设计师和Web设计师清晰地表明:在如今全球盛行外包经济的时代里,你不可再继续使用那些过时的技能。

手机应用开发还能够带来其他的好处。Dalton说道:“如果你先前做的是市值数百万美元的企业服务项目,那么制作这些小型自有项目要有趣得多。”

高等教育增加手机应用开发课程

为应对手机应用需求激增的态势,Rasmussen College成为首批开设手机应用设计和编程专业课程的高等教育学府之一。

Rasmussen College School技术和设计主任Hap Aziz解释道,传统计算机科学课程更加偏重理论,Rasmussen新课程更加关注与手机开发相关的软件技巧。

该学院提供软件应用开发的两年学位以及计算机科学的四年制学士学位。

学生们首先会学习Java和C++等现代面向对象编程语言,然后继续研究Android和iOS等具体的手机开发环境。该课程于今年春季开始开班授课。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Your next job: Mobile app developer?

Beth Stackpole

To put the demand in perspective, consider that Apple racked up $1.78 billion in app sales in 2010, and global mobile app sales are forecast to hit $4 billion this year, according to market researcher IHS.

Just who is developing all of those apps? In its recent “America’s Tech Talent Crunch” study, IT job site Dice.com found that job postings for Android developers soared 302 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of 2010; ads for iPhone-related positions rose 220 percent in the same time frame.

Elance.com, a website for freelancers, reports comparable demand: In the first quarter of 2011, there were 4,500 mobile developer jobs posted on the site — an increase of 101 percent over the number of similar job postings in the same quarter last year.

The total number of job listings on the site expanded at a rate of 52 percent in that same time frame, indicating that mobile development as a career segment may be growing twice as fast as the overall job market, according to Ellen Pack, vice president of marketing at Elance.com.

It’s not just tech companies that are on the prowl for mobile development talent. Today, all kinds of product and service companies are scrambling to come out with apps, just as, a short while ago, they were working to establish a presence on social networking sites.

“It’s become one of the boxes you have to check to be a successful brand,” Pack says. And that reality translates into pent-up demand for app developers. “It’s one of those areas where there is more demand than supply because there aren’t enough great mobile developers out there.”

While there are ample pools of Web and Java development talent, professionals with expertise building native apps for Apple’s iPhone or iPad, or for the BlackBerry or any of the newer Android devices, are in short supply because of the relative newness of those platforms.

Developers and designers who fully understand the constraints and the opportunities afforded by the smaller real estate and touch interfaces of the smart device platform are in high demand.

Market watchers say it’s the ability to grasp mobile’s new usage rules, and not simply the ability to master new programming skills, that separates those with an affinity for mobile development from those who just don’t get it.

“When you’re building Web applications, [you] have the whole desktop. There are things you can get away with from a design point of view that simply don’t translate to a mobile device,” notes Eric Knipp, a Gartner analyst specializing in Web and cloud computing. “It’s not just about making things smaller or splitting things up into separate screens. Developers have been trained to think that more features equates to better applications, but on mobile devices, that’s simply not true.”

Who’s hiring, and how

All signs indicate there is a healthy demand for mobile app developers, but that demand isn’t translating into widespread offers of full-time jobs on corporate IT teams just yet. That’s because many companies with lean IT budgets aren’t ready to commit to hiring highly specialized, and therefore pricey, mobile development talent.

Some organizations are outsourcing mobile app projects to consulting firms and boutique development shops until they have a more pronounced need.

That’s Aspen Skiing Co.’s strategy. To date, the Colorado ski resort has come out with a couple of mobile apps, including a tool that lets managers conduct ad hoc smartphone-based surveys of customers around the resort, and another that gives customers access to an array of resort data, including weather conditions, lift status and daily events.

Since Aspen Skiing doesn’t consider software development a core competency and can’t accommodate a large IT staff, outsourcing mobile development seemed like the most efficient plan — at least in the short run — which is why the company turned to an outside consultancy to develop its mobile apps.

“Mobile is such a rapidly changing environment — so much of it is tied to what content management tool you use or what devices you want to support,” says Paul Major, managing director of IT at Aspen Skiing. “Going outside helps us keep pace.”

Supermedia, which provides marketing and advertising services for small and midsize businesses, also initially thought outsourcing would be more cost-effective than in-house development.

But a couple of years into its mobile initiative, Supermedia realized the discipline was far too central to its business model to continue paying outside consultants to develop apps, according to Michael Dunn, the company’s CIO. A little over a year ago, the firm decided to set up an internal team to build regular updates and to enhance its apps to support the growing number of mobile platforms.

Cognizant of the shortage of skilled development talent, Supermedia took a number of steps to avoid being caught in a crunch.

First, it cross-trained two key internal Java developers to learn the new skills, and then it seeded the rest of its fledgling team with recent college graduates. “The market took off so fast and there was such a huge demand for developers, this let us hire immediately, and it’s far more affordable,” Dunn explains.

The seasoned Java developers came up to speed pretty quickly on specific Android- and iOS-related skills, Dunn says, thanks to their basic sets of core skills.

With the new domain expertise under their belt, the veteran developers were then able to mentor incoming college graduates, allowing Supermedia to leverage its investment in their training. The new hires “have core development skills and some knowledge of mobile app development — maybe not on a commercial scale, but they’ve done it in an academic environment as a project,” Dunn explains.

Currently, Supermedia has 10 mobile app specialists within its 150-person developer group, which is part of an enterprise IT staff of nearly 300 people.

Retooling your skill set

Whether you’re a recent college grad or a midcareer professional, you may have what it takes to be a good mobile app developer if you possess certain specific qualities, according to Dunn and other industry watchers.

The need for strong Java, HTML and general technical skills goes without saying. Developers who are steeped in the tenets of modern object-oriented programming and understand user interface and design patterns will have a leg up.

Expertise in the specific APIs and user interface toolkits of major mobile platforms like Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS is a plus — though a lack of such experience wouldn’t necessarily mean you have no chance of becoming a successful mobile app developer, experts say. A skilled programmer should be able to move between languages fairly easily, since mobile development essentially just involves learning a new syntax.

A potentially more difficult transition is coming to terms with the new design paradigm that mobile platforms represent: In addition to recognizing that you’ll be designing apps for the smaller real estate of smartphone screens, you have to understand how users interact with their devices and grasp the need to deliver highly targeted functionality.

“The way people interact with a laptop or a desktop is different than the way they interact with a smart device,” says Hap Aziz, director of the Rasmussen College School of Technology and Design, which was among the first universities to launch a curriculum with a specific focus on mobile application design and programming.

“People using a smart device don’t think of themselves as ‘computer users,’ therefore you can’t use the same conventions you’d use in developing desktop software. Drop-down menus and elaborate help screens just don’t work on a smart device — it’s more like working an ATM machine at the bank.”

Still, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make the transition — just someone with the commitment to do what it takes to learn new technologies and to master the new conventions.

Going back to school is one option, and in addition to full-time programs like the one Rasmussen offers, there are countless undergraduate, continuing ed and certificate courses on hot subjects such as HTML5, object-oriented programming, Java and iOS and Android programming.

Learning by doing is the next best approach, and one likely favored by the bulk of existing IT professionals, according to Nick Dalton, owner of 360mind, an application development consultancy specializing in mobile apps.

Would-be mobile app developers need to immerse themselves in the platform — and that means swearing off the PC for a while, he explains.

They need to make a full commitment to doing as much as possible in the mobile environment to experience firsthand both the constraints and the new opportunities.

“On a smaller device that doesn’t have much memory and has a weaker processor, you have to be more conscious of how you’re programming,” says Dalton. “Those things can’t come from theory, they can only come from experience.”

Dalton, a 25-year veteran in the IT profession, spent much of his career as an enterprise Java architect designing back-end systems and customer-facing applications at companies like Nissan and Toyota.

When the iPhone was first released, Dalton published an e-book called 101 iPhone Tips and Tricks and took a self-directed crash course — using the SDK, e-books and other online resources — to master the iOS SDK once it was released.

That early training and exposure established him as a go-to resource once the Apple App Store was announced and the market for mobile app developers took off, enabling him to leave corporate IT and start 360mind.

Today, 360mind employs nearly 20 mobile app developers and has moved away from building simple novelty apps to working on corporate initiatives that link both Apple iOS and Android apps to back-end enterprise systems. (For example, 360mind was the development muscle behind fast-food chain Chipotle’s ordering app, which lets customers order and pay for meals on their phones.)

With no end in sight for the opportunities in mobile development, Dalton says this latest “gold rush” sends a clear message to fellow developers, system architects and Web designers: “In today’s global, outsourcing economy, you don’t want to be stuck with outdated skills,” he says.

And there’s an added bonus to mobile app work as well. “If you’re coming from a multimillion-dollar enterprise server project where every decision takes forever, working on these small, self-contained projects around [mobile devices] is a lot of fun.”

Higher Ed adds mobile app development to the mix

Against a backdrop of surging demand for mobile apps, Rasmussen College is one of the first higher ed institutes to launch a specialized curriculum in mobile app design and programming.

Where a traditional computer science curriculum is more theoretical in nature, the Rasmussen program is focused heavily on software engineering skills related to mobile development, explains Hap Aziz, director of the Rasmussen College School of Technology and Design.

The college offers a two-year associate’s degree in software application development and a revamped four-year bachelor’s degree in computer science.

Students first learn modern object-oriented programming languages such as Java and C++ and then dive into specific mobile development environments like Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.

The first classes of the new programs began this spring. (Source: Java World)


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