What course / training do i need to do for a software / programming / networking job in NY / NJ ?

I did MCA (Master in Computer Applications) in 1998 (from India). Was in the teaching field for 5 years. I am 35 years old now. Recently i moved to NY. I am looking for a job in the computer field (Not teaching). But i do not have any experience in the software / networking industry. I earned CCNA certification in 2003, but it was expired in 2006. Presently i am not in touch with any of the latest technologies. My interests and skills are in programming side.


What course do i need to make myself in demand in the computer industry? Software or Networking? Java or .NET? Oracle or .....Graphics or Multimedia or.. or...


Thank you.

What course / training do i need to do for a software / programming / networking job in NY / NJ ?
I have been working in computer programming since the 1960's.





To be employable, me and my peers need to know


* the application irrespective of the computer part ... that is what we are programming ... manufacturing industry, accounting, trucking, retail ... whatever the business is ... if we don't know the business reality, that uses the computers, our computer know how is worthtless


* try to keep abreast of changing technologies ... it seems like we are doing the same work again and again, but using different languages OS tools etc. to get very similar results, so as the world moves to newer ways to do the same results, or not as good, or new features, we need to learn the new stuff


* know how to implement combination of a particular operating system, networking system, programming languages, data base system, to meet whatever the changing business needs are.





So for example ... in the last week, I was asked for, and I delivered:


* Figure out why some accounting totals did not agree with each other ... I tracked it down to some parts being entered into the system without proper costs, then costs fixed later, so different transactions at different times on the same parts either had null value or corrected value


* Figure out why a particular accounting total jumped by a large sum of money on different days ... I lreverse engineered where the data came from


* Change schedule of products our customers need us to make for them, to show total shipments in last 3 months, to help enhance lot sizing ... for this I wrote 4 programs, 2 in RPG, 2 in CL, in which I basically took some existing programs, copied them, re-wrote some sections of code, embedded SQL/400 to extract the new data desired.


* List of all transactions posted to General Ledger for fiscal year 2006 (the report was 4,000 pages which came to 28 meg which was too big to e-mail, so it was sent via CD Rom) ... this software delivery was via a combination of different programming languages


* Total $ expenditures by vendor for the year 2006 ... this software delivery was via Query





There are several tasks I currently have that sound simple, but are taking forever because I have never done that kind of networking before ... I suspect we do not have some stuff installed on our computer systems that are needed to make stuff work, and I am hampered for lack of any documentation or manuals on what I am being asked to do.





There's also some work I do when time permits, such as:


* forensic accounting ... where I am identifying suspicious patterns of data flows, and back tracing them to identify any cases of us paying for services not received, or where costs have risen so dramatically that adjustments need to be made in our pricing


* software archives clean up ... typically when we implement modifications, we hang onto the old version in case of later discovery of problems, we can then compare old new versions to see if there's a bug not noticed at implementation time ... well now there's software that has been running fine for years ... I need to delete the old versions we no longer need





So you see that to be able to do my job effectively, I have to have a thorough understanding of the business, the applications, the computer tools, and ability to inter-communicate with co-worker staff ... multiple interconnected areas.