Re: Essential software/programming skills for TC?

[Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>]

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Bruce H. Johnson <bhj -at- wrkblslns -dot- com> wrote:
> Lots of good advice coming in this thread. In addition, many of the tools we
> use, such as Word, have their own macro/programming language. In Word's
> case, it's VBA. Learn a lot of the tool language, especially if it is fairly
> wide-spread in the industry.


The coolest part of the new Mac:Office 2011 is that VBA IS BACK! I got
to use my beloved VBA for the first time on my Mac and I LOVE IT.

That said, VBA is not the most flexible, and its implementation in the
different Office applications isn't 100% consistent. But when it's all
you have to work with...


>From a higher level perspective, and this is my current plan, I'd look
into frameworks. Software is rarely developed from scratch nowadays;
developers are choosing to work with frameworks to shortcut their dev
time.

jQuery is a library for wrapping browser-dependent JavaScript into a
consistent wrapper. It isn't technically a framework but some have
called it that. However, you can search for frameworks built on top of
jQuery.

Drupal is an application development framework commonly used as a
website content management system. A small group has started
integrating a DITA authoring component into Drupal to make it
attractive to TechCom. Also, the Drupal documentation project is
actively requesting TechCom involvement in writing Drupal
documentation.

.NET provides building blocks for developing full apps, including UI
and back end functionality. .NET apps run on desktop and mobile
clients and the web.

At my new job I've learned that Cocoa is a suite of frameworks used in
Mac development. I originally thought there was only one.


I'd also explore development process methodologies like Agile, Pair
Programming, Extreme Programming, etc.


Phil, I commend you for looking at the technical aspects of our job.

This is all off the top of my head.

-Tony
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