Since majority of 'programmers' we have in nigeria are web developers and majority program in PHP, i want to list some skills that we need to know and be conversant with, especially if u want to seek a paid job cos these are some of the things u would be asked about:

1. U should know object-oriented PHP and php 5.4 (square-bracket arrays, namespaces, interfaces etc).

2. U should know design patterns (observer, factory, singleton and co) and OOAD/software design principles(SOLID)

3. U should know software testing like unit-testing n co.

4. U should know relational design, entity
relationship and be very good with SQL.

5. U should know how to use PHP built-in server or apache or nginX and install d different components individually instead of using wampserver.

6. U should know about security: SSL, side-jacking, SQL injection, CSRF, etc. Generally u should be familiar with OWASP principles.

7. U should be familiar with Jquery and at least one Javascript framework, e.g backbone(the simplest of d big 3), angular(the most popular and most-hyped) or ember(d best bust most difficult), if u can't then at least be familiar with one JS templating engine like handlebars or UnderscoreJS.

8. U should also be familiar with front and backend debugging, especially with chrome dev tools.

9. U may or should also be familiar with at least one PHP framework (like laravel, codeigniter, symfony and yii)

10. U should or may also be familiar with at least one PHP templating engine(in case u don't want to use a framework) like twig or smarty and also be familiar with using composer to leverage on and use other packages that have been built by other developers
.

11. U should know how to use git or any other versioning system.

12. U should also be familiar with some other 'jargons' like TDD, BDD, SOLID and co.

You may add others as u feel it's necessary.

Your NO1 really got me tired. I discovered lately Nairaland programmers only reped OOPhp because of it's "intimidating look".

Programmers are forgetting simplicity these days. When writing some kinda projects, you'll discover OOPhp is not worth it!

- When I learn a language, I use it so well that I seldom use a framework

- I agree with NO 6