Desktop vs Web Developer Skills?

Are you focusing your software development efforts on an area of specialization or career track? In this post, I will discuss and compare the demand for web developer skills to the demand for desktop programming skills, so that you can decide which developer track is better for you and make a better investment of your time or efforts.

• Desktop Developers create applications known as thick clients that reside on the desktop, while web developers create rich internet applications or websites which are viewed using a web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.).

  Aspiring desktop developers have to learn windows application development using tools like Visual Basic, C#, C/C++.

• Web Developers have to learn web application development using tools like Visual Basic, C#, PHP, ASP.NET they also have to learn user interfaced based technologies like CSS, JavaScript and HTML.

  Web Developers are in much higher demand at this time because the demand for web applications is much higher than the demand for Desktop applications.

For every five (5) web developer jobs advertised, I see just about one desktop developer job.

The demand ten (10) years ago was for desktop applications because businesses were still getting used to the INTERNET and the WEB.

Today there is a much higher demand for web applications because the web HAS CHANGED the nature of how we do business and how we interact with each other.

Web applications are in more demand because they are easier to scale than windows applications.

They are more cost effective to support, easier to deploy and much more accessible.

The skills you gain as a web developer will be in demand across a wider market than the skills you gain from Windows development.

So, here is a comparison of the demand for web developer skills to desktop programming skills

• Scalability of Web Applications Versus Desktop Software

  Web Applications have thin front-ends (thin clients) which means that they can be accessed by more users or customers with less network or server overhead than Desktop software which has a much thicket front-end (fat client)!

• Support or Maintenance Costs of Web vs. Desktop Software

  Web applications have a lower support and maintenance cost compared to desktop applications.

  When a Desktop application has to be upgraded, the software has to be re-installed on all the desktops accessing it!

  This is in contrast to Web Applications where an upgrade or re-install is necessary only for one or a few computers (in the case of server farms used in highly trafficked websites!)

  Maintaining Desktop Applications also costs an organization more money because more support technicians have to be employed to troubleshoot install or deployment bugs and issues encountered whenever you deploy a desktop application to several different computers.

• Accessibility of Web Programs Versus Desktop Applications

  The internet makes web applications extremely accessible!

  A Web Application deployed to a server in Tulsa, Oklahoma can be accessed easily using a browser from a computer in any city, state or country.

  This is is contrast to Desktop applications where you first have to download and install the software on your local computer before you can view or access it.

  This is why the accessibility of Desktops is severely limited when compared to the accessibility of Web Applications!

• Web vs Desktop Software, Which Is Better for Business?

  Web Applications act as business portals for providing personalized services to customers or users around the globe.

  Web applications make it easier for businesses to streamline or automate their business processes by providing one-stop destinations for frequently used or accessed services.

  Web Applications make it easy to deliver out-of-the-box ideas or new services quickly and through testing and experimentation, they make it easier to gather feedback on what works and what doesn’t!

If a large portfolio of your application development is in Windows, your career may end up with skills that are not marketable or become extinct like the Dodo.

My recommendation is: Learn Web Development Skills like ASP.NET, CSharp (C#), Visual Basic .NET, .NET Framework, SQL Server, MySQL, PHP, WordPress (CMS), JavaScript, CSS, HTML / XHTM, Ajax, JQuery.