What are some popular skills relevant in today's industry?

[sachaudh]

I have a couple summer projects I wanted to work on, and was wondering which one to do. One is a data analysis project focusing on learning R, Machine Learning, Big Data, and Statistical Methods. Another one is setting up my own selfstarter clone in node.js, with social sharing, and accepting Bitcoin payments (Stanfords Startup Engineering course), working with the Kinect, or building an ios app in Swift. Any advice? I'm kind of interested in the Startup Engineering project but I feel like the first project will give me more skills and experience.

[vijayaggarwal]

It depends a great deal on what's your near-term and long-term professional goal. The first one will advance your career in engineering, and the second one will further you on the path of entrepreneurship. That said, these two paths are not so far apart that you cannot switch from one to the other later on in life. In fact, you easily can.

If you are not very clear of your medium-term/long-term goal, let me invoke Jobs' advice[1] that you should follow your heart and let the dots connect backwards.

[1]: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

[sachaudh]

Ah yes I remember his speech. I guess its still too early for me to say. I want to experience a bit of everything. I'm sure i'll eventually find what I love to do.