nerdywordy

React is obvious, it's included with nearly every front-end posting these days whether the company uses it or not.

But other than that it looks like it is a good time to be a data engineer or a Gopher. I'm surprised that Go is the only high growth language, but I guess it coincides with Docker/DevOps/Sysadmin growth.

Flexibility. Outside of pay/benefits, I feel like flexibility is the ultimate perk.

We're a small software SaaS & consulting shop. 15ish employees. The atmosphere is relaxed, and there aren't cheesy corporate posters anywhere.

On the flip side, we also don't have bean bags or an open office.

We work standard 40-45 hours/week. We stay motivated and fresh by working remotely every now and then or by taking a long weekend whenever needed.

I've been offered better paying jobs at fairly large enterprise companies... but the flexibility offered here means to much to me.

Motivation doesn't really take gimmicks. You just need to have a work environment that doesn't encourage burnout or neglecting your life outside of work.

If you have signed a contract with your current company you'll need to look over it to ensure there are no conflicts (non-compete, idea ownership, etc.)

If there's no contract or nothing in it specifically preventing outside work then it is perfectly legal.

Your best bet is freelance or short to mid term contract work.

I would start by asking around your network. I'm no social bee, but I've gotten a couple fairly well paid dev contracts this way.

As long as your productivity doesn't drop for your current employer, they likely won't care at all.

I'm excited to check out Weex... but I find NativeScript to be terribly buggy and slow compared to React Native. Have you had a positive experience with NativeScript?

Iteration speed is the main reason. Our devs can develop, test, and push tweaks absurdly fast with RN. Most of our applications are CRUD apps shooting the data to web.

There's nothing wrong with Xamarin. We have a few apps still maintained in Xamarin. But I find developing UIs and even the general data flow to be better in RN. Perhaps I just prefer JSX and the Redux pattern.

I find that Xamarin is still better documented and it's easier to find help than with RN. But we tend to live on the bleeding edge a bit.

Fair point. For enterprise the transition will likely take 3-5 years minimum before Dot Net Core really catches hold.

But for startups or faster moving enterprise shops, Dot Net Core does present a more exciting (and flexible) ecosystem.

React Native is gaining a lot of traction for cross-platform mobile development. My company has started to transition to RN over Xamarin for our enterprise app development.

Functional languages have begun to gain popularity and coverage as well.

On the frontend Elm is excellent. On the backend Elixir and the web framework Phoenix offer top notch developer experiences.

If you have experience in the dot net world... Dot Net Core is shaping up to be a revolutionary rewrite of the dot net ecosystem. It's fast and lean, as well as cross-platform.

If you are into lower level languages, Rust & Go have picked up a ton of steam in the past few years. Until recently they have been stuck in the systems level programming niche, but Go especially is beginning to take hold for API and more "front side of the backend" development.

At the risk of being flagged hipster, I used to prefer Laravel, but I've migrated almost completely to Elixir & Phoenix. I just find myself infinitely more productive in a functional environment. Perhaps it just clicks better for me.

I can only speak for myself, but I find Elixir+Phoenix an awesome dev environment. It's a fantastic first functional language to get started with.

My company's first choice is always Azure since outside of my team we're C# head to toe. Though after skimming through a few deployment articles I might push for a Heroku deploy.

I can honestly say I've not been this excited about a language in quite a while. Working with Go is pretty straightforward... but it's a complete bore. The more I dig into Elixir the more I desire to use it full-time.

I'm diving into Elixir now to compare it with Golang for a new web app backend I'm working on. I really enjoy the functional paradigm but from what I've seen deployment can be a bit annoying. Whereas with Go you can compile and drop it easily into production.

Does anyone have experience with this?

I'm in the process of learning Elixir currently. I'm completely new to functional languages but I've found this course (https://www.udemy.com/the-complete-elixir-and-phoenix-bootca...) to be an awesome introduction. I'm about halfway through and the explanations are top notch. I definitely recommend!