Since Mark Zuckerberg announced the parent company of Facebook's name change, discussions about the much-touted arrival of the "metaverse" have dominated the high-tech news in recent months.
In October 2021, the social network giant did indeed rename its company "Meta" and used the opportunity to launch a set of metaverse development tools for developers. Since then, everyone has started exploring the possibility of creating other metaverses and thinking about the benefits this could bring. The involvement of large companies in the metaverse undoubtedly offers future opportunities for anyone who wants to professionalize and become a "metaverse developer."
As the trend of building the metaverse gains momentum, it's reasonable to ask about career opportunities. Of course, before that, you first need to try to understand what appears to be a new El Dorado.
What is the metaverse?
Roughly speaking, a metaverse is a digital space where you find digital representations of people, places, and objects. In other words, it's a "digital world" with real people represented digitally. If you haven't seen "The Matrix," now's the time!
In many ways, during a Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or even Discord session, we already exist in a form of metaverse. You are "there" in the room, but you can be represented by a static image, like an avatar, or a live video.
You can use it for lots of things: meetings of course, but why not a factory tour, training... In fact, almost all Human Resources programs can be rethought to become metaverses. And if you add 3D glasses, the metaverse offers a fully immersive experience. It's almost like The Matrix, I tell you! Except, of course, metaverses don't stop at a Zoom meeting, which is still very different from what Facebook's founder prophesied.
Metaverses will be much more:
- They will be persistent, meaning they will never reset, will not pause and will never end: they will be there indefinitely.
- They will be synchronous and "living": preprogrammed, autonomous events will occur, like in "real life", but the metaverse will be a living experience existing for everyone, constantly, in real time.
- They will have no limit on simultaneous users, although each user will have an individual sense of "presence". Everyone can be part of a metaverse and participate in an event, visit a place, or carry out a specific activity with other participants at the same time.
- They will have a functioning economy: individuals and businesses will be able to create, own, buy, sell, and invest in anything that has a "value" recognized by others.
- They must offer an experience spanning both the digital and physical worlds, private and public networks (experiences), and open and closed platforms.
- They will offer unprecedented interoperability for data, digital assets, content, etc. For example, your favorite World of Warcraft armor could also be used to dress your avatar in Fortnite, and even be given to a friend on (or via) Facebook. No more digital worlds acting like shopping malls where each shop uses its own currency, requires identity cards for every customer, or uses different units of measurement for things like shoes or clothing.
- They will be populated by "content" and "experiences", created, operated and consumed by a wide range of contributors, some of whom will be individuals, others informal organized groups, and of course commercial companies.
Metaverse: who will be the main players?
As you've probably understood, there won't be a single metaverse, but many: some for business, others for commerce, others for education and others for entertainment...
Many companies will invest in this new space: Facebook, of course, which chose to rename its entire company to make a statement. But also Microsoft, which is already very present. And the trend will become much stronger: in fact, almost all tech companies, all retailers and all entertainment firms want to take part.
Think about what Disney, Netflix, Amazon and others could do in such a context?
If we try to understand what will follow, then we will see many metaverses flourish. Take the entertainment industry as an example. Disney It has recently announced that it will "connect the digital and physical worlds" for its stories and theme park attractions. Who wouldn't want to step into a Disney movie (in 3D or as an avatar) and talk to the characters? Disney proclaims its ambition to become "the happiest place in the metaverse."
And finally, what about the shopping metaverse? Imagine going into an Amazon (or Darty, Ikea...) store to buy furniture, do your grocery shopping, buy a book, go directly to chat with the author, or see a food product in 3D. Besides, Amazon owns Twitch, the world's largest gaming network: do you think Amazon isn't working on something while waiting with its arms crossed?
Metaverse: which programming languages?
The metaverse will have a constant need for engineers, developers, and programmers. Almost all of the world's largest (and most influential) companies, like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, as well as "new" companies like OpenSea, Roblox, Niantic, The Sandbox, Decentraland… are already hiring for metaverse-related positions, whether in AR (augmented reality) or VR (virtual reality), or a mix of both, or via blockchain. Since the metaverse encompasses many facets of technology and society, the knowledge and skills you can apply are very diverse.
Whether you code for augmented reality, virtual reality, or the field of blockchain and cryptocurrency, there are a number of programming languages you will need to know in order to contribute to building the metaverse. Let’s see which ones.
C#
C# was created by Microsoft in 2000: it has been the primary programming language for the Unity game engine since 2005. Unity is a very popular platform for developers building virtual reality applications. The platform already has over 750,000 developers, including major game publishers, independent studios, and even students or hobbyists. Unity is one of the two main game engines, very popular with developers.
C++
The other game engine uses C++ as its main language. Created by Epic, it’s Unreal.
Often considered more powerful and faster than C#, you will often see job descriptions requiring knowledge of both of these languages, as well as Unity and Unreal: the two go hand in hand.
JavaScript
Considered the language of the Internet, JavaScript is complex but relatively easy to learn. You can build on a blockchain with JavaScript and, since it is familiar to many browsers, it is often used in Web-based Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality applications. It’s a safe choice for beginners, an excellent "core" language that leads to many uses.
Python
Because Python follows an open and transparent development process, with an open-source codebase and many third-party modules, it’s the ideal language for learning to create scripts or virtual reality interfaces. It’s regarded as one of the easiest languages to master and is often used in industrial VR and AR applications. With Python, it’s also easy to move on to a more advanced language like C#.
Solidity
Developed by Ethereum, the popular blockchain, Solidity is an object-oriented language primarily used to write and deploy "smart contracts" on the Ethereum blockchain. If you have already bought or sold an NFTthe chances are high it was created using Solidity. A free support forum is available for those interested in or wishing to get involved with the Solidity language and its surrounding ecosystem.
Rust
Rust has existed since 2010. It is a compiled, multi-paradigm programming language designed and developed by Mozilla Research. It was created to be "a reliable and practical language," supporting purely functional programming styles as well as object-oriented aspects.
Solana, the rising blockchain, uses Rust for its programs. Solana has a rapidly growing developer and application ecosystem — it’s a good time to get on board!
Our advice
If you want to develop applications for the metaverse, we recommend learning these programming languages.
Alternatively, you can hire a freelancer on Codeur.com to support you in your metaverse projects so you don't miss the train!
