Number of Jobs by Programming Language

The Viking writes "I was curious about which programming languages are hot with employers, so I did an informal search of several job search engines. The results are interesting (to me, at least). Are these numbers relevant? We can certainly debate whether or not the online job search engines are representative of the actual employment landscape."

Comments

Slashdotted

[cperciva]

That was quick. Here's the important part (without the table tags):

Number of Job Listings by Programming Language (January 3, 2003)

monster.com hotjobs.com dice.com %

Java 2739 1000* 1957 27.82%
C++ 2103 1000* 1534 22.65%
Visual Basic 2070 969 1127 20.35%
Perl 955 517 577 10.01%
Javascript 925 455 498 9.17%
C# 290 235* 183 3.46%
Ada 384 175 57 3.01%
Fortran 124 68 48 1.17%
Scheme 39* 138* 46* 1.09%
Python 58 43 33 0.65%
Smalltalk 42 27 32 0.49%
Lisp 12 4 9 0.12%

9741 4631 6101

* hotjobs.com changes a search of "C#" to a search of "C", so I averaged monster and dice.

* hotjobs.com limits the number of results that a query can return to 1000.

* Searching on the term "scheme" may result in false positives.

Re:Slashdotted

[thogard]

A copy of it is Here

Re:Slashdotted

[Alien54]

here it is, made all pretty:

monster.com hotjobs.com dice.com %

Java 2739 1000 1957 27.82%
C++ 2103 1000 1534 22.65%
Visual Basic 2070 969 1127 20.35%
Perl 955 517 577 10.01%
Javascript 925 455 498 9.17%
C# 290 235 183 3.46%
Ada 384 175 57 3.01%
Fortran 124 68 48 1.17%
Scheme 39 138 46 1.09%
Python 58 43 33 0.65%
Smalltalk 42 27 32 0.49%
Lisp 12 4 9 0.12%

9741 4631 6101

Re:Slashdotted

[larry bagina]

All C++ coders are C coders. C++ is a superset of C

int main(void)
{
int new;
return 20 //* yes this is legal */10;
}

g++ that and tell me it ain't so!

Re:Slashdotted

[Lucas Membrane]

Yes, the percentage of new hires made by small companies is high. But don't give the small companies too much credit. The percentage of employment in small companies is much lower, however, as those who work in small companies tend to need to find work much more often.

The statistics look like this:

• About 20% of private US employment is in companies with fewer than 20 employees, but about half of that is in firms so small that you have zero chance of getting hired unless you are a good friend or relative.
• About 20% of private US employment is in firms with 20-99 employees.
• About 15% of civilian US employment is in the government sector (Fed/State/Local).

Prior Language Market Data

[Baldrson]

Don't forget Ted Shieh's prior work tracking jobs for different programming langauges. Its more than a bit out-dated now but anything longitudinal is valuable.

Re:PHP???

[the eric conspiracy]

Where is it? PHP has become the defacto standard for developing new websites.

If it has, it surely isn't reflected in available PHP jobs. Last time I looked on Dice there were 50 Java and 25 ASP jobs for every 1 PHP job.

Re:Can't get to the site... It is slashdotted.

[ergo98]

This would make some marginal sense if it weren't for the fact that the author and maintainer of the page in question submitted the story.

Re:Javascript is programming???

[Zontar The Mindless]

> (yes, I know you can do fairly large and complicated projects with [JavaScript], but come on... it's very limited as far as what it's able to do... (writing to files etc) )

That depends on the environment and what objects it exposes for scripting. There are a lot more implementations out there than you'd think:

1. You can use it (as JScript) serverside in ASP (or J# in ASP.Net) and for system tasks in Windows Scripting Host. (I do nearly all my ASP work using JScript.)
2. There is (or at least used to be -- haven't checked their site in a while) also a system & server scripting environment called ScriptEase that uses JavaScript and C.
3. Dreamweaver uses it for interface scripting (I'm talking about the program interface, not the JS/DHTML in DW-generated pages).
4. Adobe has a JavaScript API for PDFs.
5. Flash ActionScript is ECMAScript compliant and will look very familiar to anyone who's done clientside JS.
6. Mozilla uses XML (XUL and XBL, actually) and JavaScript to build its UI.

There are doubtless other examples.

Re:Already slashdotted

[shaitand]

On the surface your arguement seems valid, here's the problem with it. Programming is a subject in itself, there are concepts, languages only implement those concepts, that's why a CS course involves learning many languages to illustrate those concepts. If you know the assembler of your target platform or platforms then you know what the code is doing beneath the surface, or more or less, that's the knowledge that helps avoid many glitches and helps improve performance, not the specific dialect you code in. Once you've spent a significant time coding in 4 or 5 structured languages you know how to code in a structured language proficiently, simply being able to comprehend what you read in your pocket reference combined with your knowledge of structured programming and the underlying platform makes you proficient. Specializing in one or two languages makes for a specialist who is a nightmare for any project because the individual cannot grasp the big picture of the programming world.

Re:Visual Basic in 3rd?

[vadim_t]

Well, as somebody who writes it for money I thought I'd answer...

Yes, VB is very basic, although some quite impressive stuff can be done with it. It's perfectly possible to write enterprise management stuff with it for example. If your app only needs to be a pretty interface for a database then VB is a quite good tool for that job. However, it's got a lot of problems.

There's always important functionality missing. MS has some really incredible knack for releasing a new version of VB that adds 2 or 3 features that you'd find really useful... but still hasn't found time to add unsigned types in VB6.

Lots of working around is needed. The experts in VB learn to do tricks with undocumented functions like CopyMemory, and calling the WinAPI. There's no way in VB to make a window appear on top of all the others, for example.

It's hard to use with source control tools. CVS is quite usable though, but not perfect. Just opening a project and closing it changes files, for no good reason.

And then there's the bug from Hell that sometimes makes it forget about an OCX you included and forces you to muck with project files by hand to fix it.

But, even regardless of all that people use it. I guess it's because it's really easy to do small things with it. If you need to do a quick tool that queries a database and prints a few reports then it's almost perfect. But if you're planning anything large I'd use anything else instead. Maybe Delphi, or .NET, or C. I'd say that at about 50000 lines it starts getting very annyoing.

Re:PHP???

[JimDabell]

Please troll elsewhere:

Yahoo Embraces PHP, Expands Open-Source Commitment

PHP Usage Stats

Re:He's missing.....

[thasmudyan]

Forth:
9 (Monster, search may be incorrect)
12 (dice)
Pascal:
28 / Delphi: 158 (Monster)
17 / Delphi 58 (dice)
PHP:
189 (Monster)
31 (dice)
LISP:
12 (Monster)
9 (dice)
ADA
(search inconclusive)
Fortran
123 (Monster)
49 (dice)
Assembler
10 (Monster, search inconclusive)
Algol
0 (Monster)
2 (dice)
==================
Also:

COBOL
601 (Monster) !
547 (dice) !
Visual-Studio related jobs
299 (Monster)
142 (dice)
Linux-related jobs
881 (Monster)
400 (dice)

====
Software Developers total
3901 (Monster, 2106 "programmer" +1795 (software developer)

Re:How many of those jobs are real, though?

[SpaceRook]

The job sites have been contaminated by a bunch of temp agencies looking to hire people part time. I did the whole Monster/Dice/HotJobs dance a year ago, and it just lead to a lot of dead ends. I had much more luck visiting the websites of companies I was interested in and looking at their "Employment" section. Of course, in the end, I actually got a job due to a human contact, which is usually the way it goes...

FYI, how PHP fares:

[Greedo]

PHP 189 224 31 2.12%

Which would put it somewhere between Fortran and Ada.

Re:Pity poor programmers: JOBS BY OPERATING SYSTEM

[iggymanz]

jobs by OS on dice: Windows 2229 Solaris 685 Linux 399 AIX 367 AS/400 or OS/400 287 HP/UX 191 Novell 165 VMS 61 Mac or MacOS or System 7 58 RTOS 58 VM 31 IRIX 18 BSD 18 OS/2 13 SCO 8 Darwin 6 BeOS 0 CHORUS 0 MINIX 0 HURD 0

Re:Not suprising.... except

[Lucas Membrane]

Search engine searches don't give very good stats. For examples: Many search engines won't search for the # in C#, the ++ in C++; Ada is sometimes a language, sometimes requirements for accessibility for disabled people; most jobs that make dice or Monster are posted multiple times by multiple headhunters. The biggest employers are connected to the greatest number of headhunters and have their positions, using the most mainstream (ie MS) technologies, most widely reposted. Many job postings list languages that are not really part of the job. A large percentage of current postings for Pascal, Delphi, Ada, Cobol, Smalltalk, PL1, Fortran and other formerly popular languages are really for postings for jobs re-implementing systems from such languages into other now hotter languages.

Re:PHP???

[Malcontent]

"I'd like you to point out a large retailer that uses php for its online store, or an online banking site."

I am not sure where you are getting at with this. If you mean it's not possible to build a large, complex and busy site using php you need to look no further then sourceforge. Now sourceforge is not a commercial site but I bet it gets more use then 99% of the commercial sites on the net.

I don't know why it's so special to have a commercial site in php but I know of several. Here are just a few companies that I have dealt with which use php on their web sites.

Nonetheless if you insist on an example of a large online store using php look at
Insight.com or catalog.com

Re:Delphi / Kylix ? WTF, where is it?

[aquariac]

I duplicated the search techniques on the listed sites for Delphi (but not Kylix, don't use it). The results:
monster 158
hotjobs 64
dice 58
Avg: 93
That puts it well behind C# - already! Yikes.

Are you people really taking this seriously?

[eggcozy]

This has got to be a joke. Someone types in "java" or "scheme" in monster and tries to play it off as some sort of indication of the ratio of jobs out there? I am suprised so many people are taking this survey so seriously and arguing over it. The probability for inaccuracy is probably .. hehe .. off the chart err pie chart. Large numbers of jobs are not listed on job sites, not to mention the languages this person leaves out ... C as someone mentioned, cobol, peoplcode(although it could be debated whether its really a language, there are jobs out there) .. and I'd imagine a huge number of languages I've never heard of.
Granted the person who wrote it goes over some of the problems with the study, I somehow feel it was presented and taken a little bit too seriously.

Re:typical job posting

[DuctTape]

I think that in the past where I've come up short, I've gone ahead and applied anyway, noting the delta, but still showing interest in those deficient areas. At that point, the decision is up to them, and I don't have to lie. Who knows? They might not be able to find anybody, and I'll be in line.

I've also had the experience of sending my resume out and have people call for a tech interview, and asking me about something not on the resume. Duh.

I believe that if you lie on a response or a resume, your credibility for other consideration right goes down the tubes. I don't think that it hurts to show interest, or to bone up on it and then put it on a resume as a tech that you have knowledge of, but make sure that you don't have any fake projects where you supposedly used that tech.

I've had people not be able to talk on things in the front of their tech list, and their resume hits the bit bucket, or goes to the don't-consider-this-person-again list. I've had people apply twice for a job, with their deficiency magically appearing the second time (but one applicant misspelled the key acronym). Bzzt!/i.