I agree with dan_onyeka that there is nothing like the latest and most lucrative programming language. Supposing there is one, say assembly language, are you sure you will like it? You need to develop interest in one that you like, master it and do something productive with it. The sky is big enough to contain all the languages and the programmers.

However, a fair way of knowing how popular or lucrative a language is to search the job net. This also depends on where you are searching. Some analysts use http://dice.com. You can also read more on career magazines or websites. See this link on 10 Programming Languages You Should Learn Right Now [url]http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2016415,00.asp[/url]. You will learn a lot my reading all the comments too. On dice.com, you can learn how popular a language is or how employers are demanding for it. According to eweek, "The database skills most requested of IT hires were Oracle and SQL in March, and the most in-demand programming languages were J2EE/Java and C/C++. You can conduct your own independent search" - [url=http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2113747,00.asp]http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2113747,00.asp [/url]

But coming home to Nigeria, you will earn a living as a web developer quickly with PHP and since most Nigeria corporate sites tend to use ASP, you might be luck with that.

In conclusion, here is a excerpt from my email archive.

Aim Enterprise
The rule is that whichever field you find yourself, you should aim to compete globally. The dream of most professionals is to work in the top companies in the world, Fortune 500, Global 1000, etc. Not everyone would make it there eventually but for those who work at it diligently they go a very long way. It is in the enterprise you will usually find the experience and the reward. These organizations are run differently from the small companies you see by the road side. In Nigeria, banks, big telecos, oil companies etc would fit in the definition of enterprise though in reality some of these companies would be classified as SMB (small and medium businesses) in developed countries. Yes, when you look at the revenues, number of staff and number of locations they operate from. These are businesses that are typically called mission critical. Can you imagine how you feel when you walk in to a bank and you can not make a transaction because the system is down or how do you feel when you cannot make a urgent or important call with your mobile phone because the operator is having a problem? Further more, imaging what sheer waste of energy and millions of dollars to drill a dry oil well. These companies would rather do it well than do it cheap or experiment because the cost of failure is huge.

On PHP, you will hit the road faster but it wont take you to the enterprise. The world of web application development is largely divided between Java and the .Net platforms. I don't want to start a flame war by going on merit or demerit of them.

Problem with PHP
The requirements in the enterprise is different. Downtime is usually quantify in naira or dollars. Do a personal research and find how many banks in Nigeria or even abroad use PHP. The language does not scale, lacks OOP (until version 5) and not distributed. There are work around but they are not easy. Big companies like yahoo and others use it but it's not something popular among Fortune 500 companies. You find it mostly in SMB. Look at it again, when you are in the enterprise, you will not likely be talking to a MySQL database but something like Oracle, DB2 and Sybase or its sister MS SQL mostly on Unix servers only with the exception of MS SQL. You will need to take care of things like transaction, stored procedure etc. When I had that challenge I switched to Java and the reward was huge. That's perhaps where Java is most popular at least JEE (J2EE). Again it all depends on where you are going.

Conclusion
In conclusion i want to say nothing good or that is of premium value comes cheap. I have a friend who is a professional PHP programmer. His company would like to start using .Net or precisely ASP.Net. I have never used it but know a few things about it. Well, one of them is that since .Net languages borrow hugely from Java, they equally inherit the complexity of Java. The last time I asked him, how far. He had almost given up or at least suspended it. You can know the syntax but developing and deploying a real world application is quite a different thing. Then I asked him to compare it with how long it took him to learn and start developing real world application with PHP. Of course a lot shorter. Do the sums yourself.

Hey why are you running PHP with ISS? You are better off with Apache. For your development environment, you can use Windows but if you have got another machine, you can use Linux or any other UNIX variants. I mean you can code and design your web interface Windows while you run your scripts on Linux on another box.

Configuring PHP, MySQL and Apache individually can be challenging for a newbie but there are helpful one-install products that will help. My favourite is XAMPP available at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html. This is the link to download the Windows installer one - http://www.apachefriends.org/download.php?xampp-win32-1.6.1-installer.exe. I recommend this one. Please remember to disable or change the port for ISS. You might also have to take care of your previous MySQL installation. XAMMP will install Apache 2, PHP 5, MySQL 5 among others for you and configure them to work together.

Finally, here is a simple script to connect to your database.

<?

$db_name = "mysql"; // name of your database here
$db_username = "root"; // username for database here
$db_password = ""; // password for database here


$mysql_link = mysql_connect("localhost", "$db_username", "$db_password" or die( "Unable to connect to database server";
@mysql_select_db( "$db_name" or die( "Unable to select database";

?>

Please see this post https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-50790.0.html#msg1097386

There are many areas you can choose to specialize but it seems your interest is in software development. You don't have to jump ship because someone says system administration is hot in Nigeria. If you have no interest or cut out for it you will not be fulfilled. You might get the money but you wont be satisfied. So, first weigh your interests. You should naturally go for things you find easy and pleasurable to do. Develop on your strong skills. If you like you can apply the law of natural selection. It is also good to read and learn wide in the initial stage of your career. That's the broad base for the pyramid you will eventually build.

Whichever area you select be it programing, database, networking or sys admin, you need to be very good in it. "A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men says" If you do this the money will come. But to narrow down on software development, most programmers are self made. They don't rely on a training centres somewhere. They sit down, read the books and work out their fingers on the code. With the money you will pay such training institutions you can acquire a PC for yourself, get the necessary tools and books. As easy as this may be some find it difficult to do. Well, who can really blame them with a lot of issues to contend with in a country like Nigeria. If you can pay the price, you will get a good reward.

Do not make the mistake of starting with certifications. Certification easily fails in software development as most developers are not really hired on what certifications they've presented. I am not against certification but it wont help you if you have it without the actual skills. An expert said "In the hiring process, what tends to happen is it comes down to, 'What tools do you know? What languages have you done? How long have you programmed in them? Have you built any apps that I would know about? Can you show me any examples of applications?' The technologies you feel comfortable with and master become more important than a paper certification."

Cheers

For a limited time, Sun is offering a choice between 2 free DVD software kits- Solaris 10 DVD Software Kit or Solaris Express, Developer Edition DVD Software Kit. Get yours here!

According to Sun, it would take 10 days for you to receive the DVD kit. I finally got mine this week. Solaris 10 Operating System DVD for SPARC x84/x86. Some Solaris lovers around the world have also been complaining about the late arrival of the kit. Please be patient or download freely at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp.

You wont be wrong if you say that’s a good lesson from the success of Ubuntu. You can get your free Ubuntu CDs at http://www.ubuntu.com/ . I can confirm they ship to Nigeria.

Get your free NetBeans CD at http://www.netbeans.org/about/cd-form.html. The CD NetBeans worldTour CD includes the NetBeans IDE 5.5, NetBeans Mobility Pack 5.5, NetBeans Profiler 5.5 and Sun Java System Application Server 9.0_1 Platform Edition.

The CD, according to the site contains versions for Windows, Linux, Solaris x86, Solaris SPARC and Mac OS X.

I requested for a copy in February which was shipped on 20th March and I received it on 30th April after the pack was "missent" to Singapore. It is for real! The Developer Tools CD contains only Sun Studio 11, Sun Java Studio Creator 2 Update 1, Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8 and Netbeans 5.0 and not 5.5. Only the Solaris on SPARC and x86 are included. You might be lucky to get the Linux or Windows version if Solaris is not your development environment. I must add that the software is freely available to download from Sun's and Netbeans side. It makes sense where it is impossible to download from a slow link.