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Not even MIT teaches LISP anymore

So what? That was just an example. Someone who can write a program but who does not know how to use a spreadsheet program is going to be OK, except in cases where their teachers fail them for not using Microsoft's software.

They do all need to write papers

I do not doubt that, but if you have the choice between preparing people for lightweight writing using Word or writing in general using LaTeX, why would you choose Word? Engineers, math majors, etc. need more than what Word gives them; humanities majors need less than what LaTeX gives them. If we are teaching people to use Word, we are not preparing them for technical disciplines or for research; if we teach people LaTeX or something similar, we are not failing to prepare them for non-technical disciplines.

know how to do Boolean searches in google

Which takes all of one day to teach.

insert footnotes in papers

\footnote{Here is a footnote}

Not hard to do, not hard to teach, not hard to learn.

Not play around in the CLI in latex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX

https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/

http://www.tug.org/mactex/

There are plenty of TeX or similar GUI front ends. Nobody needs to play around; I use AucTeX for almost everything I do.

Wake up

That is an ironic thing to hear from someone who says things like this:

All statistics today is done with Excel

Hm...

http://www.indeed.com/q-Statistics-Spss-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-SAS-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-R-Statistics-jobs.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

In fact, I have several friends who work as statisticians, and not any one of them uses Excel or any spreadsheet package on a day to day basis.

Not even MIT teaches LISP anymore

So what? That was just an example. Someone who can write a program but who does not know how to use a spreadsheet program is going to be OK, except in cases where their teachers fail them for not using Microsoft's software.

They do all need to write papers

I do not doubt that, but if you have the choice between preparing people for lightweight writing using Word or writing in general using LaTeX, why would you choose Word? Engineers, math majors, etc. need more than what Word gives them; humanities majors need less than what LaTeX gives them. If we are teaching people to use Word, we are not preparing them for technical disciplines or for research; if we teach people LaTeX or something similar, we are not failing to prepare them for non-technical disciplines.

know how to do Boolean searches in google

Which takes all of one day to teach.

insert footnotes in papers

\footnote{Here is a footnote}

Not hard to do, not hard to teach, not hard to learn.

Not play around in the CLI in latex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX

https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/

http://www.tug.org/mactex/

There are plenty of TeX or similar GUI front ends. Nobody needs to play around; I use AucTeX for almost everything I do.

Wake up

That is an ironic thing to hear from someone who says things like this:

All statistics today is done with Excel

Hm...

http://www.indeed.com/q-Statistics-Spss-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-SAS-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-R-Statistics-jobs.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

In fact, I have several friends who work as statisticians, and not any one of them uses Excel or any spreadsheet package on a day to day basis.

Not even MIT teaches LISP anymore

So what? That was just an example. Someone who can write a program but who does not know how to use a spreadsheet program is going to be OK, except in cases where their teachers fail them for not using Microsoft's software.

They do all need to write papers

I do not doubt that, but if you have the choice between preparing people for lightweight writing using Word or writing in general using LaTeX, why would you choose Word? Engineers, math majors, etc. need more than what Word gives them; humanities majors need less than what LaTeX gives them. If we are teaching people to use Word, we are not preparing them for technical disciplines or for research; if we teach people LaTeX or something similar, we are not failing to prepare them for non-technical disciplines.

know how to do Boolean searches in google

Which takes all of one day to teach.

insert footnotes in papers

\footnote{Here is a footnote}

Not hard to do, not hard to teach, not hard to learn.

Not play around in the CLI in latex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LyX

https://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/

http://www.tug.org/mactex/

There are plenty of TeX or similar GUI front ends. Nobody needs to play around; I use AucTeX for almost everything I do.

Wake up

That is an ironic thing to hear from someone who says things like this:

All statistics today is done with Excel

Hm...

http://www.indeed.com/q-Statistics-Spss-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-SAS-jobs.html

http://www.indeed.com/q-R-Statistics-jobs.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

In fact, I have several friends who work as statisticians, and not any one of them uses Excel or any spreadsheet package on a day to day basis.

He also has issues like having to have 2 different X-Ray machines because different insurance companies have different diagnostic requirements before they'll authorize procedures.
Back in the 80s, he worked 10 hours a day, saw 40-50 patents a day and made more than $250k a year. Now, he works 10-12 hours a day and the made less than $40k. His practice actually operates at a loss, he only makes anything because he spends a month in South Africa training doctors there.

Willie Nelson was wrong. You can do better as a Cowboy than you can Doctor these days.

He also has issues like having to have 2 different X-Ray machines because different insurance companies have different diagnostic requirements before they'll authorize procedures.
Back in the 80s, he worked 10 hours a day, saw 40-50 patents a day and made more than $250k a year. Now, he works 10-12 hours a day and the made less than $40k. His practice actually operates at a loss, he only makes anything because he spends a month in South Africa training doctors there.

Willie Nelson was wrong. You can do better as a Cowboy than you can Doctor these days.

Why is this comment +4 "Interesting"? You're comparing average salaries across a nation to salaries within a particular city. (A great city, by the way; I love Munich.) If you want to do a comparison, try this.

An experienced C programmer costs more than an experienced C++ or Java programmer these days, simply because C is no longer taught by default.

That statement is hard to verify. I looked and the best I could come up with is this, which shows that C programmers are actually cheaper. Maybe you can find some other numbers that back up your claim.

Of course, you might ask yourself why the market moved away from C, when it was initially neither cheaper or readily available to do so. The simple facts are that C is error-prone and low-level, and people have moved on to more productive languages.

Perhaps, but people generally buy their HQ once. Unless the analyst can find a publisher that relocates every time they publish (other than ones on terror hit lists), the cost of the building is covered. The employees - ok, that's a reasonable claim, but you obviously don't need to hire any more printers, just editors, to cover e-books. How many new editors do they need to hire? Let's say 10 to cover all the additional books they're publishing. How much does an editor earn?

http://www.indeed.com/q-Editor-jobs.html

I'd say $80,000 is a good estimate. That means 10 will cost $800,000 per year. Allowing for taxes, and the limitations of my brain, I'll increase the cost to the company to a round million.

http://www.publishers.org/bookstats/formats/

114 million e-books were sold in 2010. How much does that actually equate to, given the current costs of e-books? From the publishers.org link above, we can see that publishers earned $878 million from e-book sales (net).

This means you'd need to have 878 publishers of e-books at 2010 level of sales before you eliminate all the profits, assuming each publisher has 10 editors.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how many publishers the market can support without ANY increase in costs AND with reasonable profit margins being maintained for publisher and author.

"But everyone seems to be missing the REALLY NASTY little problem nobody is talking about...the for profit 'colleges' like De Vry and Remington and ITT."

Again, this is mostly the student's fault. Yes, the recruiters lie, lie like car salesmen, but the students still decide to pay $25,000 to be a veterinary assistant that doesn't require any education at all.

True, the government should do something to stop some schools from claiming to offer a "bachelors" degree that is worthless because no other university recognizes the degree.

Education is like anything in life, you need to do your research. Would you buy a car without doing research on reliability, repair records, carfax, etc? Would you buy a house without hiring an inspector or researching the history? I found information that ITT degrees are worthless and vet assistants don't even need to go to college within a few minutes for a /. post, yet thousands of people attend ITT every year for worthless degrees and others pay $$$ to become vet assistants. Who's fault is that? Why didn't these people spend 5 minutes googling it? Who's fault is it that they're stupid? The school for taking advantage? The govt for giving loans to stupid people or allowing them to go to a worthless school?

On the other hand not all for-profit are bad. Sanford Brown offers an LPN program where you become a licensed practical nurse by the state after you graduate. LPNs do alright considering it's a ~1 year degree for ~$25,000. I personally have called around to local universities and asked if they would accept the Sanford Brown LPN to bridge to RN and was told yes, as long as you are a licensed practical nurse by the state you can bridge into a registered nurse (RN) degree.

You're not looking in the right places, here's 4,500 COBOL jobs http://www.indeed.com/q-Cobol-jobs.html . Major city newspapers list them also. Latest COBOL is COBOL 2002, which includes object orientation (already de facto standard since early 90s by the major compiler vendors), web and XML extensions, locale sensitive processing, cobol javabeans. The next version is shaping up already, dynamic tables, structured constants, ISO 8601:2000 dates. Propose new extensions for the next version of COBOL include aspect oriented programming. So, it's still a living growing language, and its main application is hardcore money moving and logistics in highly available fault tolerant systems with uptimes of decade or more.

Contrary to what you may think, almost no one becomes a developer to "get-rich-quick"... but if that is your only concern, your average kernel developer gets paid a little better than your average web developer. My advice... don't go into either with the expectation of becoming a billionaire :-p They generally pay well, but the rich and famous developers are by far the exception, not the rule.

On the other hand, if you've got the NextBigIdea(tm), then by all means feel free to prove me wrong! I know I would :)

Contrary to what you may think, almost no one becomes a developer to "get-rich-quick"... but if that is your only concern, your average kernel developer gets paid a little better than your average web developer. My advice... don't go into either with the expectation of becoming a billionaire :-p They generally pay well, but the rich and famous developers are by far the exception, not the rule.

On the other hand, if you've got the NextBigIdea(tm), then by all means feel free to prove me wrong! I know I would :)

I sincerely doubt that, as no decent programmer should be doing work for less than 50 bucks an hour. Which is around 100k a year before taxes.

Wow. I hate replying to AC's but this is just idiotic and arrogant...

http://www.worldsalaries.org/computerprogrammer.shtml
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Programmer&l1=United+States
http://www.suite101.com/content/computer-programming-career-information-and-wage-expectations-a247160

All of these vary somewhat on what they report incomes to be but they all solidly put the vast majority of programmers short of 6 figure incomes. I'm more than confident that there are a LOT of competent programmers out there making making less than 100,000/year.

If you are getting paid less, it is either because of the industry you are in is surfeit with programmers or you are not specialized enough.

The vast majority of programmers make less. I'm sure some of them are incompetent. And some of them are inexperienced. But there are a lot of experienced competent programmers making less than 6 figures.

Indeed.com finds many more job listings for Ruby than Objective-C, despite their relative TIOBE ranking.

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22Ruby%22%2C%22Objective-C%22&l=

• .Net
• VB6
• Java
• Windows XP
• ??? Version 1.0001 (tsk tsk, you have 1.0000, 4 more years for you, pay up!)

The fact that U.K. schools are reimporting this stupidity will maintain the unnovation balance of power. Yes it's challenging to write a "commercial technology" neutral exam, but we should be striving for that so that graduates with training in version (n-1) won't be completely lost. Meanwhile I look forward to the day when I'm up against graduates with a PhD in cloud computing or whatever the technology buzzword du jour is.

As long as having a good working relationship with a vendor that you and your company knows is incompetent and unethical is more important than your security and the principle of doing things right, then you get what you deserve.

You know what the exploit is. But what makes you think you are the only one? What makes you think no unethical hackers know about and won't find out about it for the life of this exploit (which seems from the vendor attitude that it could be very long)?

You (your company) needs to take steps to protect yourself, now, immediately. Do whatever it takes to make the exploit unusable from within your network and from outside. Send the bill to the vendor ... on your law firm's letterhead. Mention the names of several sleazebag debt collectors for extra points. If you are afraid of ruining your relationship for that, then, again, you deserve what you get.

I also suggest updating your resume and your LinkedIn profile, and keep an idea on the Indeed listings.

What worries me about that chart is that Ruby is dropping. Wasn't Ruby supposed to be gaining momentum and be the Next Big Thing? Being overtaken by Objective-C I can understand, given the iPhone's popularity, but Delphi? That can't be right.

The thing is, the TIOBE metric is about number of hits found for a particular language. That will give a higher figure for a purely academic language (ie - Pascal) than a heavily used commercial counter part (ie - VBSCRIPT). The reason is that a monkey could VBSRCRIPT in their sleep without needing to search for help on it so their will not be very many links on the web suggesting methods. Pascal is going to have more hits as far more novice programmers will use the web to compare notes when they are learning it at university.

I learnt Pascal when I was studying but it has long since fallen off my CV as I was never asked about it while applying for jobs. A quick search elicited this site which seems to more reflect the spread I would expect for commercial languages:

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java%2C+c%2B%2B%2C+pascal%2C+c%23%2C+vb%2C+ruby%2C+perl%2C+python%2C+eiffel&l=

Interestingly, if you click on the relative link it will show the rate of change in percentage that indicates why people keep referring to Ruby as the next big thing:

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java%2C+c%2B%2B%2C+pascal%2C+c%23%2C+vb%2C+ruby%2C+perl%2C+python%2C+eiffel&l=&relative=1

Disclaimer - I know nothing about Ruby, but looking at the second graph I might learn.

What worries me about that chart is that Ruby is dropping. Wasn't Ruby supposed to be gaining momentum and be the Next Big Thing? Being overtaken by Objective-C I can understand, given the iPhone's popularity, but Delphi? That can't be right.

The thing is, the TIOBE metric is about number of hits found for a particular language. That will give a higher figure for a purely academic language (ie - Pascal) than a heavily used commercial counter part (ie - VBSCRIPT). The reason is that a monkey could VBSRCRIPT in their sleep without needing to search for help on it so their will not be very many links on the web suggesting methods. Pascal is going to have more hits as far more novice programmers will use the web to compare notes when they are learning it at university.

I learnt Pascal when I was studying but it has long since fallen off my CV as I was never asked about it while applying for jobs. A quick search elicited this site which seems to more reflect the spread I would expect for commercial languages:

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java%2C+c%2B%2B%2C+pascal%2C+c%23%2C+vb%2C+ruby%2C+perl%2C+python%2C+eiffel&l=

Interestingly, if you click on the relative link it will show the rate of change in percentage that indicates why people keep referring to Ruby as the next big thing:

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java%2C+c%2B%2B%2C+pascal%2C+c%23%2C+vb%2C+ruby%2C+perl%2C+python%2C+eiffel&l=&relative=1

Disclaimer - I know nothing about Ruby, but looking at the second graph I might learn.

Again, you need to compare C# + VB.NET to get a meaningful comparison of .NET vs Java.

And if you want to count Groovy and Scala, sure - but then let's also count Boo and F#.

Oh, and the link is from 2006. Here is a newer comparison, from 2009 (though they don't give the methodology they used to determine what ".NET" is). Still shows Java roughly 1.5x ahead in terms of job count, which isn't surprising, considering the head start.

Salary distribution is more interesting. It shows that .NET salary distribution is skewed more towards lower pay, while Java spikes at a higher rate. This also produces an average salary disparsity. Overall, I'd take it to mean what I wrote previously - that .NET has more people in it who are new to this whole programming thing, while Java has more senior devs that specialize in the platform.

Here is a job trend graph for a typical job search web site. Notice how both C# and VB on themselves, and even combined, are way below Java, but .NET is above. Just goes to show how many job postings specify ".NET" without detailing the language...

An unrelated, but also interesting trend is that of technical book sales - have a look, and notice how rapidly Java in particular is falling.

Then also there are studies like this one - but I'm not sure what to look at there, since they don't give neither their sources nor methodology, so the numbers could all just as well be conjured from thin air.

Still can't find a job, or still can't find a job that allows them to live "their prior lifestyle"

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/unemployment

The numbers say "still can't find a job."

Maybe a few can go to a company and say "hello there, I'll work for minimum wage, hire me" and the company will find something for that person to do, but most likely HR will thank them for their time and tell them they'll keep the resume on file.

While you still have Internet, check indeed for work. There are hundreds of IT-related postings in my area.

Nope. Nice try though.

Click on the link that the average of 77k is based off of. It is coming from one job, that is that of a "SUPERINTENDENT Nassau County Coop Building." It just happened to have the words "garbage" and "one 'man' job" in the description.

http://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=2865f82583fa2637

As Linux geek myself, this doesn't justify going with Windows in my mind, but to a business, its all about reliability and support.

Unfortunately it isn't all about reliability, otherwise Microsoft would not have lasted as long as it has. It is well known MS products have had problems with reliability. Personally, I've used versions of Windows from 3.x to XP and the only one I found that was reliable was NT4 Workstation. Heck the first tyme I used XP the brand new Dell it was installed on froze while booting up. Vista is supposedly a lot more reliable, but it is demanding of hardware. Many of the supposedly "Vista Ready" PCs in the months before Vista was released were anything but Vista ready. Then the software wasn't ready for Vista either. There were a number of horror stories about new software that ran fine on XP just would not run on Vista.

On the other hand, I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro which came with Tiger, 10.4. I'm running Leopard on it now and am getting ready to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Of the software I got that ran on Tiger I only need to upgrade one, my anti-virus software.

Try to convince your CTO or CEO to go with a Linux desktop and lock it down using open source tools and hire expensive and expert Linux Admins

That's an MS straw man. Windows admins are expensive too, according to indeed a Windows administrator salary is $75,000 whereas a mac administrator's salary is $61,000. That was just a quick google, there may be different results if more tyme is spent looking.

But if you have an issue with the Windows GUI, call up one of those many Vendors who sell lock down software or call up Microsoft. And for $100 a ticket or whatever they charge, they will be happy to tell you how to piss off your employees even more when they have to call IT in order to change their classpath for Java on their machine, because that tab in the system properties gives an "Inaccessible, Please Contact Your System Admin" when you click on it...

Ergo Windows is expensive. What was really expensive for me was constantly having my Windows PCs crashing, having to replace hardware (admittedly not MS's fault), and having to reinstall Windows and my software. Switching saved me a lot, of tyme, money, and frustration.

Falcon

As Linux geek myself, this doesn't justify going with Windows in my mind, but to a business, its all about reliability and support.

Unfortunately it isn't all about reliability, otherwise Microsoft would not have lasted as long as it has. It is well known MS products have had problems with reliability. Personally, I've used versions of Windows from 3.x to XP and the only one I found that was reliable was NT4 Workstation. Heck the first tyme I used XP the brand new Dell it was installed on froze while booting up. Vista is supposedly a lot more reliable, but it is demanding of hardware. Many of the supposedly "Vista Ready" PCs in the months before Vista was released were anything but Vista ready. Then the software wasn't ready for Vista either. There were a number of horror stories about new software that ran fine on XP just would not run on Vista.

On the other hand, I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro which came with Tiger, 10.4. I'm running Leopard on it now and am getting ready to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Of the software I got that ran on Tiger I only need to upgrade one, my anti-virus software.

Try to convince your CTO or CEO to go with a Linux desktop and lock it down using open source tools and hire expensive and expert Linux Admins

That's an MS straw man. Windows admins are expensive too, according to indeed a Windows administrator salary is $75,000 whereas a mac administrator's salary is $61,000. That was just a quick google, there may be different results if more tyme is spent looking.

But if you have an issue with the Windows GUI, call up one of those many Vendors who sell lock down software or call up Microsoft. And for $100 a ticket or whatever they charge, they will be happy to tell you how to piss off your employees even more when they have to call IT in order to change their classpath for Java on their machine, because that tab in the system properties gives an "Inaccessible, Please Contact Your System Admin" when you click on it...

Ergo Windows is expensive. What was really expensive for me was constantly having my Windows PCs crashing, having to replace hardware (admittedly not MS's fault), and having to reinstall Windows and my software. Switching saved me a lot, of tyme, money, and frustration.

Falcon

As Linux geek myself, this doesn't justify going with Windows in my mind, but to a business, its all about reliability and support.

Unfortunately it isn't all about reliability, otherwise Microsoft would not have lasted as long as it has. It is well known MS products have had problems with reliability. Personally, I've used versions of Windows from 3.x to XP and the only one I found that was reliable was NT4 Workstation. Heck the first tyme I used XP the brand new Dell it was installed on froze while booting up. Vista is supposedly a lot more reliable, but it is demanding of hardware. Many of the supposedly "Vista Ready" PCs in the months before Vista was released were anything but Vista ready. Then the software wasn't ready for Vista either. There were a number of horror stories about new software that ran fine on XP just would not run on Vista.

On the other hand, I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro which came with Tiger, 10.4. I'm running Leopard on it now and am getting ready to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Of the software I got that ran on Tiger I only need to upgrade one, my anti-virus software.

Try to convince your CTO or CEO to go with a Linux desktop and lock it down using open source tools and hire expensive and expert Linux Admins

That's an MS straw man. Windows admins are expensive too, according to indeed a Windows administrator salary is $75,000 whereas a mac administrator's salary is $61,000. That was just a quick google, there may be different results if more tyme is spent looking.

But if you have an issue with the Windows GUI, call up one of those many Vendors who sell lock down software or call up Microsoft. And for $100 a ticket or whatever they charge, they will be happy to tell you how to piss off your employees even more when they have to call IT in order to change their classpath for Java on their machine, because that tab in the system properties gives an "Inaccessible, Please Contact Your System Admin" when you click on it...

Ergo Windows is expensive. What was really expensive for me was constantly having my Windows PCs crashing, having to replace hardware (admittedly not MS's fault), and having to reinstall Windows and my software. Switching saved me a lot, of tyme, money, and frustration.

Falcon

I know I already replied to this. But if you click "relative" you get an idea of the growth in language jobs (though I suspect that the y axis needs to be logarithmic). On a whim I decided to include web frameworks too. e.g. Django, ruby on rails. SQL and C are still on top (followed by VBA) in the absolute, but in relative Ruby on Rails and Django appear to smoke everything else.
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=
relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=&relative=1

I have no idea whether the growth in jobs is matched by the growth in programmer numbers in those areas. Also any new languages/frameworks/whatever are probably going to grow like crazy if they are any good. But even among web frameworks it seems that the growth of the top 3 is exceptional. Drupal, Ruby on Rails and Django are still top. (I added a bunch more from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks). That's not to say that the most popular language/database/web framework/whatever are the best. e.g. I'd never willingly use mysql over postgresql, even though there are way more mysql jobs. Growth rate is the same however. Another factor is the payscale. If you were after money you'd pick a language that is both well paid and growing at a rapid rate. Intuitively, a more powerful but harder to use language should pay more because the supply is more limited.

relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=&relative=1
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=

This site is pretty cool too.
http://www.hotscripts.com/blog/determining-programming-language-popularity/

I know I already replied to this. But if you click "relative" you get an idea of the growth in language jobs (though I suspect that the y axis needs to be logarithmic). On a whim I decided to include web frameworks too. e.g. Django, ruby on rails. SQL and C are still on top (followed by VBA) in the absolute, but in relative Ruby on Rails and Django appear to smoke everything else.
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=
relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=&relative=1

I have no idea whether the growth in jobs is matched by the growth in programmer numbers in those areas. Also any new languages/frameworks/whatever are probably going to grow like crazy if they are any good. But even among web frameworks it seems that the growth of the top 3 is exceptional. Drupal, Ruby on Rails and Django are still top. (I added a bunch more from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks). That's not to say that the most popular language/database/web framework/whatever are the best. e.g. I'd never willingly use mysql over postgresql, even though there are way more mysql jobs. Growth rate is the same however. Another factor is the payscale. If you were after money you'd pick a language that is both well paid and growing at a rapid rate. Intuitively, a more powerful but harder to use language should pay more because the supply is more limited.

relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=&relative=1
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=

This site is pretty cool too.
http://www.hotscripts.com/blog/determining-programming-language-popularity/

I know I already replied to this. But if you click "relative" you get an idea of the growth in language jobs (though I suspect that the y axis needs to be logarithmic). On a whim I decided to include web frameworks too. e.g. Django, ruby on rails. SQL and C are still on top (followed by VBA) in the absolute, but in relative Ruby on Rails and Django appear to smoke everything else.
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=
relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=&relative=1

I have no idea whether the growth in jobs is matched by the growth in programmer numbers in those areas. Also any new languages/frameworks/whatever are probably going to grow like crazy if they are any good. But even among web frameworks it seems that the growth of the top 3 is exceptional. Drupal, Ruby on Rails and Django are still top. (I added a bunch more from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks). That's not to say that the most popular language/database/web framework/whatever are the best. e.g. I'd never willingly use mysql over postgresql, even though there are way more mysql jobs. Growth rate is the same however. Another factor is the payscale. If you were after money you'd pick a language that is both well paid and growing at a rapid rate. Intuitively, a more powerful but harder to use language should pay more because the supply is more limited.

relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=&relative=1
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=

This site is pretty cool too.
http://www.hotscripts.com/blog/determining-programming-language-popularity/

I know I already replied to this. But if you click "relative" you get an idea of the growth in language jobs (though I suspect that the y axis needs to be logarithmic). On a whim I decided to include web frameworks too. e.g. Django, ruby on rails. SQL and C are still on top (followed by VBA) in the absolute, but in relative Ruby on Rails and Django appear to smoke everything else.
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=
relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql%2C+postgresql%2C+mysql%2C+django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+cobol%2C+assembler%2C+MATLAB%2C+VBA+visual+basic&l=&relative=1

I have no idea whether the growth in jobs is matched by the growth in programmer numbers in those areas. Also any new languages/frameworks/whatever are probably going to grow like crazy if they are any good. But even among web frameworks it seems that the growth of the top 3 is exceptional. Drupal, Ruby on Rails and Django are still top. (I added a bunch more from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks). That's not to say that the most popular language/database/web framework/whatever are the best. e.g. I'd never willingly use mysql over postgresql, even though there are way more mysql jobs. Growth rate is the same however. Another factor is the payscale. If you were after money you'd pick a language that is both well paid and growing at a rapid rate. Intuitively, a more powerful but harder to use language should pay more because the supply is more limited.

relative: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=&relative=1
absolute: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=django%2C+ruby+rails%2C+zend%2C+zope%2C+pylons%2C+symfony%2C+cakephp%2C+drupal%2C+fuse%2C+turbogears&l=

This site is pretty cool too.
http://www.hotscripts.com/blog/determining-programming-language-popularity/

Add SQL to the list and it beats even C.

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=c%2C+java%2C+perl%2C+php%2C+python%2C+ruby%2C+sql&l=

Perl has plummeted in use in last five years

Really? Or are you just making stuff up?

Yep, there was definitely a jump in postgresql around that time too, but the slope for MySQL appears to have gone up. There wasn't any sort of mass exodus from MySQL to PostgreSQL.

Maybe some of that was people afraid of what would happen to MySQL as a result of Sun's acquisition but it could also be a result of Sun providing support for PostgreSQL and including it in Solaris 10. Around June 2007 there was a big spike and that was when Sun came out with the first industry standard benchmark Sun put out with PostgreSQL, Sun Java App Server on a T2000 UltraSPARC T1 server.

I could really care less what happens to MySQL, I'm more concerned what happens with Sun's future contributions to PostgreSQL.

When Sun was buying MySQL, there was a lot of FUD how it was going to ruin it, but looking at MySQL job trends it seems as if MySQL adoption has increased.

Curiously, PostgreSQL job trends show an almost identical percentage increase (if 10x lower in absolute numbers).

When Sun was buying MySQL, there was a lot of FUD how it was going to ruin it, but looking at MySQL job trends it seems as if MySQL adoption has increased.

Curiously, PostgreSQL job trends show an almost identical percentage increase (if 10x lower in absolute numbers).

That's a very good point.

When Sun was buying MySQL, there was a lot of FUD how it was going to ruin it, but looking at MySQL job trends it seems as if MySQL adoption has increased.

Even after the acquisition, people try to paint Sun in a bad light over what's been going on with MySQL. For example, when it was announced that MySQL was going to come out with some features that would only be available in the closed source, enterprise version, the decision was attributed to Sun, when it seemed like it was really Mickos' decision. He was the former CEO of MySQL AB.

When Sun reversed the decision, the news was the MySQL made the change.

Even recently, what's been going on with Monty Widenus leaving Sun has been used to make Sun sound like it was hurting MySQL, but if you read Monty's blog about why he left Sun, it sounds more like he was unhappy with MySQL management, and not Sun.

I get the impression that Monty wasn't all that happy with MySQL AB even before they were bought by Sun. When Sun bought them, he was hoping for things to improve but that never happened.

Unfortunately, even a company like Sun is not the same as a startup before VC money and board members come in. It seems it's not as stifling as other companies though, but not what Monty was expecting.

People like Monty probably aren't meant for that type of atmosphere. Probably why people like Andy Bechtolstein come and go frequently.

Please tell them not to kill NetBeans :(

I think there's good reason to keep Netbeans around for Oracle.

It looks like Oracle gave up on JDeveloper as a general purpose IDE and it's more geared towards Oracle developers. I understand that Oracle has done quite a bit to clean up JBuilder and that it can also be used as a RCP like Eclipse and NetBeans, just that Oracle hasn't opened the API (or the source code).

There are many ways that NetBeans is better than JDeveloper though, not just in terms of features, but also in performance. Oracle was able to come up with plugins for Eclipse but not Netbeans.

While Eclipse has the lead, NetBeans has been doing better and it provides a much better out of the box experience than Eclipse. If you want to start J2EE development, it's much easier to get started with NetBeans than Eclipse.

Creating a set of plugins to make a JDeveloper based on NetBeans is not trivial but I believe a worthwhile endeavor. JDeveloper and NetBeans are both behind Eclipse but combining efforts would make both more relevant. Oracle has a lot of people that made JDeveloper great, and Sun has a strong group that made NetBeans great. The combination could help skyrocket marketshare. Personally, I don't know how anyone could use Eclipse these days, especially in a corporate development setting.

Netbeans is also the basis of a lot of Sun's infrastructure products. These will be important to Oracle. While Oracle claims they are not interested in cloud computing, the technology used for Sun's Cloud is the same used for it's virtualization and provisioning systems, which Oracle is interested in. Basically a private cloud. It's also the basis of some of the developer tools such as Sun Studio.

In addition to stored procedures, I think you should also look into triggers, which are more powerful in postgresql.

A lot of people these days seem to be using the database as just a data store, and not using a lot of the power in the DB. That makes the application development a little harder.

If you put DB specific things in the DB it's also easier to separate tasks, so the app developers aren't doing all the work except schema generation.

While I like PostgreSQL more than MySQL, I think all this paranoia over Sun buying MySQL and then Oracle buying Sun is overblown. Sun's acquisition of MYSQL hasn't seemed to hurt it. In fact, the slope seems to be bigger after Sun bought it. There was a dip af ew months ago but that's a seasonal thing that's happened in the past as well.

I really don't understand what it is that people think Sun has done to hurt MySQL. The only public controversy was when the old MySQL AB guys announced they were releasing some stuff in the closed source version only, but then Sun was the one that came in and assured everyone it would be open. The way it played out in the press though was that it was Sun's decision to keep the new stuff closed, but that wasn't the case.

If someone could point to ways that Sun has hurt MySQL I would be genuinely interested in hearing them. From what I can see, MySQL has been growing in deployments and revenues (after a dip post sale) and it looks good for MySQL. Might not be good for the founders of MySQL (except for the bankrolls) but that usually happens in these cases where the top dogs in their own yard feel uncomfortable being part of a larger pack.

My title is Web Producer. I didn't pick it, and I sometimes introduce the title with a joke about shooting spider webs from my wrists, or making prosthetic webbed feet for ducks who have lost their paddlers in tragic accidents. It's meant to be "web producer" as a role, like "movie producer" or "music producer", but it sounds stupid. Mainly it means I "do HTML" plus a lot of other digital/interactive design stuff (including programming and database work), and I manage other people who do this stuff.

IMO, there is a difference between a "web designer" and a "web developer" -- the former is closer to a graphic designer and focuses on making stuff pretty, while the latter is closer to a programmer and focuses on making stuff work. In big web studios, there are fleets of "web designers" who create interfaces in heavily-layered Photoshop files, and turn them over to "web developers" who convert them into working web interfaces. It lets people focus on a specific aspect of the process. However, I think something is lost in the process... if possible, a web designer ought to understand the power and limitations of HTML/CSS/etc. Maybe I spent too much time in art school, but I liken it to advanced painters who learn how to make their own paint from pigments/oil/etc., or ceramists who can make their own clay from the raw powders. In a similar vein, I think a web designer should know how to mix their raw materials too: pixels, code, etc.

That's my ideal, anyway.

Really?

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=linux+.NET%2C+silverlight%2C+ruby&l=

This search is moot, the querry ignores the '.', you just searched for Linux network-related jobs.

Really?

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=linux+.NET%2C+silverlight%2C+ruby&l=

I originally redicted Mono's demise in Dec, 2005 (reconfirmed in Jan, 2006), well before Neil McAllister and received quite a bit of jeering and obnoxious commentary -

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=mono_meme_update_mono_still

However, as we all know now, it has indeed been dead for the past 2 1/2 years and it will stay dead. Check out the relative trend strength for Mono versus Silverlight or Ruby.

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=linux+mono,+silverlight,+ruby&l=

He's still dead, Jim.

PHP?

Java still dominates PHP in the web application job market. Just do a search in most major job sites.

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java%2C+php%2C+j2ee&l=

This is not megacorp that is the only employer in a tiny "company town". This is a group of 103 individuals -- in Southern California where many other employment opportunities exist -- who would like to freely associate with each other while pursuing a livelihood in software. And they're not even trying to claim tax exempt status because of the religious nature of their organization.

Discrimination of all sorts is already largely tolerated for companies under 50 employees. It is expected, for example, that small family businesses will practice nepotism. 103 employees is not a big business, especially given the population and economy of Southern California.

Look at actual available jobs. Not silly popularity contests. Do you honestly believe Delphi is more common than Javascript??

http://www.indeed.com/salary

Job vacancies:

relative PHP job growth over past 3 years:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=php&l=&relative=1

relative Java job growth over past 3 years:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java&l=&relative=1

If you want the full picture, you'll have to click on "absolute". Then you'll see Java has about 5 times as many jobs. And does this also count job description that ask for Java technologies without asking explicitly for Java?

One might simply argue that it takes more people longer to do stuff in Java than in other languages, hence the need for more developers.

Yeah, sure, its lack of productivity is why Java is such a success. Not that I'm claiming that Java is terribly productive, mind you. Ruby is much better, and I suspect so is Python. PHP is no doubt more productive for smaller applications, but I have my doubts about large applications.

But the real reason Java is so popular is because it's established, well-supported, reliable technology running on one of the best (safest, fastest) VMs currently availlable. You don't do bank transactions in PHP. Lots of people do bank transactions in Java, however.

I'm primarily talking about the 'shared hosting' market

But that's only a small part of the market. I'm talking about web development in general. This includes hobby projects and web forums, but also corporate websites, webservices, internet banking, and tons of other stuff.

in reply to your comment (it was yours, right?) that "java dominates the web market". "Dominate" is a strong word, and I just simply don't accept that word. Difference of definition perhaps? What constitues 'domination'?

Well, Java certainly dominates the enterprise end of the market, and that's pretty big.

Ofcourse there are a lot of ways to measure size. Is it number of websites, number of servers, number of programmers, amount of money, lines of code?

I believe a while ago there was a slashdot article about the most discussed languages on the web, and I believe Java was #1 or #2 on that list.

This is exactly why I question the term 'dominate'. The huge majority of work out there is not with large corps with 'complex' projects.

That depends entire on how you calculate your huge majority. For number of websites involved perhaps not, but if you look at number of man-hours involved, it changes.

It is with small busineses dealing with more narrowly defined (but often still very complex) problems. PHP/Perl/Ruby are eating Java's lunch in this space.

Are they? I know a lot of Java companies that are quite successful at building websites for small companies. A lot of our older customers are small.

I also knew of a government website that was built in PHP for that matter, but it fell over everytime people had a reason to visit it. We redid it in Java and now it's rock solid.

And guess what? Many of those companies grow up to be larger companies. They will not be running wholesale to adopt Java as they grow up because of some idea that Java 'dominates' the web arena.

There is a reason why Java dominates. As they grow up, their needs and requirements will grow too. Even my employer did some sites in ASP and PHP in its early days. But it turned out Java fit our requirements much better.

Java's good for some problems. However, it does not lend itself to rapid prototyping (Grails helps)

I'll grant you that. Although there are also some very productive Java frameworks.

nor does it lend itself to shared hosting scenarios (which is the majority of 'the web').

I disagree on both counts. Shared hos

Job vacancies:

relative PHP job growth over past 3 years:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=php&l=&relative=1

relative Java job growth over past 3 years:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java&l=&relative=1

If you want the full picture, you'll have to click on "absolute". Then you'll see Java has about 5 times as many jobs. And does this also count job description that ask for Java technologies without asking explicitly for Java?

One might simply argue that it takes more people longer to do stuff in Java than in other languages, hence the need for more developers.

Yeah, sure, its lack of productivity is why Java is such a success. Not that I'm claiming that Java is terribly productive, mind you. Ruby is much better, and I suspect so is Python. PHP is no doubt more productive for smaller applications, but I have my doubts about large applications.

But the real reason Java is so popular is because it's established, well-supported, reliable technology running on one of the best (safest, fastest) VMs currently availlable. You don't do bank transactions in PHP. Lots of people do bank transactions in Java, however.

I'm primarily talking about the 'shared hosting' market

But that's only a small part of the market. I'm talking about web development in general. This includes hobby projects and web forums, but also corporate websites, webservices, internet banking, and tons of other stuff.

in reply to your comment (it was yours, right?) that "java dominates the web market". "Dominate" is a strong word, and I just simply don't accept that word. Difference of definition perhaps? What constitues 'domination'?

Well, Java certainly dominates the enterprise end of the market, and that's pretty big.

Ofcourse there are a lot of ways to measure size. Is it number of websites, number of servers, number of programmers, amount of money, lines of code?

I believe a while ago there was a slashdot article about the most discussed languages on the web, and I believe Java was #1 or #2 on that list.

This is exactly why I question the term 'dominate'. The huge majority of work out there is not with large corps with 'complex' projects.

That depends entire on how you calculate your huge majority. For number of websites involved perhaps not, but if you look at number of man-hours involved, it changes.

It is with small busineses dealing with more narrowly defined (but often still very complex) problems. PHP/Perl/Ruby are eating Java's lunch in this space.

Are they? I know a lot of Java companies that are quite successful at building websites for small companies. A lot of our older customers are small.

I also knew of a government website that was built in PHP for that matter, but it fell over everytime people had a reason to visit it. We redid it in Java and now it's rock solid.

And guess what? Many of those companies grow up to be larger companies. They will not be running wholesale to adopt Java as they grow up because of some idea that Java 'dominates' the web arena.

There is a reason why Java dominates. As they grow up, their needs and requirements will grow too. Even my employer did some sites in ASP and PHP in its early days. But it turned out Java fit our requirements much better.

Java's good for some problems. However, it does not lend itself to rapid prototyping (Grails helps)

I'll grant you that. Although there are also some very productive Java frameworks.

nor does it lend itself to shared hosting scenarios (which is the majority of 'the web').

I disagree on both counts. Shared hos

EDS is an infamously bad place at which to work; check out http://www.indeed.com/forum/cmp/EDS/05390c183c137e1e747b46 Typical (pre-merger) quote: "My spouse was RIF'd at the end of January after 8 years of putting in overtime and everything. He hopes they go down the tubes, to be quite honest."

I think TIOBE is flawed. For real statistics I use indeed.com. It's the mother of all job sites, and it also does trending. http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22C%2B%2B%22%2C+%22C%23%22%2Cjava%2C+Perl%2CPython&l= thats the view of the current job market. Perhaps C/C++ is slipping in some areas, but it will not go away. I work on Wall Street, and fast trading systems are written in either Java or C/C++. There will always be a need for speedy software. As for Perl/Python. Sure there are people using Python out there. I'm sure its a great language, but I haven't really found a reason to move off or Perl yet. Every systems engineer I know uses Perl. A while back some twit said that anything more then 100 lines of Perl becomes difficult to manage. This quote has gotten lots of publicity, but I don't agree with it. I've actually seen entire Quantitative Trading Systems written in Perl (thousands and thousands of lines of code) that were quite easy to maintain. The real issue with maintaining code is writing good code and commenting the code where it needs to be commented to begin with. Its really quite simple. As for not having a new release of Perl .. I fail to see why so many people make an issue of it. It works .. really well as a matter of fact. I could see getting my underwear in a bunch if it didn't work well; but it does.