Job Market for Developers Evaluated

David Parmet writes "Using data from indeed.com (an aggregator for job sites), Brandon of devnulled did an evaluation of the state of the job market in the US for developers. Some interesting findings - there are more Linux jobs than Solaris jobs. Unix is still competitive with Windows (only 24,000 fewer job listings for Unix than for Windows), Java is beating .Net and overall there seem to be a lot of enterprise / corporate IT jobs available. Indeed has a web services API / XML interface available here, so if you want you can do the analysis yourself."

Comments

Java scripting

[fembots]

The article mentioned it's relatively hard to compare Java to C# as Java is a fairly generic (and sometimes misused) keyword. I have seen companies who asked for JAVA experience, which in reality is expecting you to do Javascript.

And did the analysis take into account that some "jobs" are posted by head hunters who are only interested in resumeh collection?

Re:Java scripting

[lukewarmfusion]

Good points. I've also seen "Java" misused when they're really just looking for a programmer that can handle that style of syntax (a nice way of saying "no VB programmers, please."

Of course, if you're an employer, you can list it as a high paying job with a lot of requirements. The more requirements, the less likely you will find someone to meet all of them...and that means you can justify lower pay. The high salary listing attracts more folks. You might only need 10% of the requirements to do the job.

It's not a nice tactic, but I know it happens. The same folks complain that candidates are lying on their resumes.

Re:Java scripting

[mscdex]

I don't think it's accurate to insinuate that all VB programmers have messy code, it's mostly all the beginners and lazy people that write unorganized code. I for one write neat VB code every time, I learned that even before I started coding in VB (also learned to write neatly/efficiently in C++, etc. as well).

Re:Java scripting

[plague3106]

Its not the VB programmers most have a problem with; its the programmers that ONLY know VB. And thier code is always awful.

Re:Java scripting

[lukewarmfusion]

The point is that the coding syntax for Java is far more common than VB - see C, C++, and PHP. If you're a VB only programmer, you may not be comfortable with a lot of the more common syntax.

if a = "5" then
' code
end if

if (a == "5") { // code
}

The difference is enough to shake things up for a VB-only programmer. It gets worse when you step into a for loop, arrays, etc.

Re:Java scripting

[lukewarmfusion]

I posted a reply to another comment above this one; the idea is the same. There's a particularly common family of syntax that varies slightly from language to language - C, C++, PHP, Java... you can often follow the meaning of the code if you understand that syntax.

It doesn't say anything about the individual's style where consistency, organization, and cleanliness goes. But it does indicate the learning curve as folks move from one language to the next.

I learned PHP very quickly. I had used C++ and Java before, so the style and syntax came naturally. The little bit of C I've come into contact with was pretty easy to follow (I was reading it, not developing in it).

Re:Java scripting

[Bill Dog]

Of course, if you're an employer, you can list it as a high paying job with a lot of requirements. The more requirements, the less likely you will find someone to meet all of them...and that means you can justify lower pay.

Or you can add to all the artificial jobs for which unsurprisingly no USian qualifies, thus the software industry as a whole can retain "evidence" for continued desperate need of H1-B's, that they can pay less.

Re:Java scripting

[Klaruz]

Funny you say that, I've been writting in C like languages and python for a long time. Sometimes at work I need to write a vbscript to automate something. I always takes me a while to wrap my head around the bizzaro syntax and quirks (error handling! Ahhh!!) of that language, more than others ever do. After a day or two I'm good to go, but I'm usually done with the project by then.

Re:Java scripting

[mrighi]

Companies that really know that they're looking for won't just ask for Java experience... they'll ask for things such as "J2EE","Struts","Applets" or another specific use of Java.

Also, I've been using sites like Monster.com for a while to gauge technology popularity in various cities. Living in Pittsburgh, I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of Java offerings but not as many offerings for C#. Moster.com confirmed this:

(Under the "Computer Software" category)
Pittsburgh
Java: 145 postings
C#: 9 postings

Seattle
Java: 99 postings
C#: 49 positings

Now, I wonder why Seattle would be so much more into C# than Pittsburgh? Hmm.... ;-)

If you're looking at moving to a new city, you can use these job sites to see how popular one technology is versus another. This can be very useful.

Re:Java scripting

[c0d3r]

Its better to compare java to .NET then.. they are both platforms.. c# you can compare with the java language or j# for that matter.

Re:Java scripting

[superpulpsicle]

You people are talking about C like it's all under one camp. It's not. If you are not writing basic "Hello World", C is very different off gcc and the visual studio.net for example. The M$ libraries always carry functions and calls that gcc wouldn't have. Vice versa, you can find different gccs #inlude .h from different places. Java has been probably the best in terms of matching up system to system.

I am not saying one language is better than the other at the moment. I am saying it's been like 10 years since java came out, we need another super new language again that takes the best of both world.

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

.NET was Microsoft's answer to java and it has a considerable edge: by using the many languages -> intermediate language -> many machines architecture instead of java's VM, it runs a lot faster. It also has events and delegates which streamline event handling, as well as more control over method accessability.

I'm thinking the companies' asking for java programmers when what they really want is people familiar with the C-and-Java-style syntax might be self-defeating because a bunch of people would rather have a .NET programming job.

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

you dumbass, its

if ("5".equals(a))

otherwise you do object reference comparison.

Re:Java scripting

[TheFairElf]

When I'm writing scripts for Windows Scripting Host, I almost always use JScript instead of VBScript. Anything to avoid writing VB. Of course if you're scripting an app like Excel or Word you don't have much choice.

Re:Java scripting

[JebusIsLord]

How does "many languages -> bytecode -> many machines" run faster than "one language -> bytecode -> many machines?

Both in their current forms are JIT compiled, and "should" give similar performance.

Re:Java scripting

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

It makes me feel dirty whenever I'm forced to work with a BASIC-variant. At the risk of sounding like a dork, it's like taking an alignment hit in AD&D, while decreasing my ability to code in any other language.. truly evil.

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're looking at moving to a new city, you can use these job sites to see how popular one technology is versus another. This can be very useful.

It depends on how many head hunting firms there are in the area -- I swear Dice and the others have triple and quadruple job postings as multiple companies post the same job.

Re:Java scripting

[ednopantz]

Whoever supports that will hate you.

I once outsourced an ASP 3.0 job. It came back in server side javascript. Yeah, I guess you *can* write ASP in javascript, but nobody does. I sent the code back and told them to do it like the other 99.999% of ASP.

FWIW, I started in VB and still prefer the verbose approach to flow control. Nest a while, a for, a case, and an if statement together in VB and in C# and you will immediately see which is easier to figure out. "End If" is pretty clear what it does. "}" depends on position. Of course, there is the argument that using {}'s encourages you to avoid big gnarly flow control messes, but that doesn't mean people don't do it.

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yeah, I guess you *can* write ASP in javascript, but nobody does

When Microsoft.com was in ASP, it was javascript.

Even tho JS is vastly superior as a language to VBS, there are problems with it, specifically it doesn't integrate as well with COM.

Re:Java scripting

[SageMusings]

Ha, yes VBScript. Just the other day I had to use a bit of that and accidentally used '%' where that language demands 'MOD'. I mean why reinvent such a common operator?

Java? Our HR puts Java in every job descrption we have despite the fact we use Java for absolutely nothing. I believe the pull as many acronyms they can from as many job postings they can gather. Why do the work when others have written it for you?

Re:Java scripting

[recharged95]

"I have seen companies who asked for JAVA experience, which in reality is expecting you to do Javascript."

Just like I've seen companies looking for .NET programmers and they really wanted VBScript or even DCOM (gasp!).

The face-to-face interview process is necessary for both sides fortunately.

Re:Java scripting

[gnuLNX]

LOL....without sounding like a dork...yeah I understand...I am a c++ person...figure in about 10 years I will be one of those old timers who didn't change with the times, but one that can keep pace with the young'ins...shit to much wine...good night all.

Re:Java scripting

[JamesOfTheDesert]

I have seen companies who asked for JAVA experience, which in reality is expecting you to do Javascript.

Well, the tip-off is when the incorrectly spell things using all caps, such as JAVA or PERL. This just screams, "We've heard something about this stuff and have a vague idea we may need it. Or maybe not. We're clue-free."

Re:Java scripting

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I once outsourced an ASP 3.0 job. It came back in server side javascript. Yeah, I guess you *can* write ASP in javascript, but nobody does.

Obviously someone does. But I understand your point. Much as Microsofties like to bleat that ASP supports more than just VBScript, that's really the only language which is widely supported under it (and to a lesser extent, under ASP.NET). And by that, I don't mean that other languages don't necessarily work, but the documentation and support resources are biased towards VB.

Nest a while, a for, a case, and an if statement together in VB and in C# and you will immediately see which is easier to figure out.

That depends on what you're used to working with. I'll take the C-style implementation any day, preferrably with proper indendation. Usually whenever I'm asked to maintain some BASIC code, not only is it a flow control nightmare, but the code indentation/formatting is pratically nonexistent. Badly written code is hard to read in any language.

Re:Java scripting

[JamesOfTheDesert]

Whoever supports that will hate you.

Umm, unless they really know and understand JavaScript.

It is a far, far, more dynamic and agile language than VBScript, and allows for cleaner code that is easier to read and maintain.

Sadly, most people know it from the umptizillion Web tutorials that treat it as dumbed-down variant of C or Java, ignorant of its many Lisp-like qualities.

Yeah, I guess you *can* write ASP in javascript, but nobody does.

Whatever.

Re:Java scripting

[JamesOfTheDesert]

Companies that really know that they're looking for won't just ask for Java experience... they'll ask for things such as "J2EE","Struts","Applets" or another specific use of Java.

Often that is because they don't really want someone who knows Java in any meaningful sense, but someone who knows enough to script the Struts, EJB, etc APIs.

Re:Java scripting

[cont4gion]

Your coding style by itself is enough to shake things up for any sane programmer. if(a == "5") { //code } is a helluva lot more readable for the majority of people.

Re:Java scripting

[cont4gion]

shit! *note to self.. use preview button*
if(a == "5")
{
*tab here*//code
}

Re:Java scripting

[dmh20002]

any sane programmer except maybe Kernighan and Ritchie who originated the K&R style

if (...) { // code
}

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent should be modded +5 Funny. Not sure where "Interesting" comes into this biting toungue-in-cheek expose of the VB world! :-)

Re:Java scripting

[Anthony Liguori]

CLR has a smarter JIT. It caches large portions of the JIT'd code so that the JIT only has to be performed once.

It's actually a very interesting problem for them because once you make even the smallest update to a critical baseclass you could create this massive cascade of JIT'ing. This has influenced their class design significantly.

They've got a brillant team of the best folks in the industry. At the end of the day, it's still a Microsoft product though and I still don't believe that it's the right solution to the problem.

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just pay less...most of these H1s have FAKE experience. There are these Indian 'consultants', who hire Indians (direct from india or graduate students) to work on their behalf on a contract basis. They sell the H1's service to a company by claiming he has 6 years experience when he has NONE. They even create fake references etc. and 'train' them for a few weeks in the field they might be working in.
The company benefits because they pay the H1 guy less. The Indian guy is desperate so he'll take anything.

How do I know this ? I'm indian and have seen this for the 18 months that I've been in the USA. Many people from my graduate school have gotten jobs like this. Its safe to say over half the Indian H1's in US are fakes like this.

You might ask how do these Indians guys stick to the job if they know nothing(most of them) ? Simple .. the other employees in the company are not too bright either, even if they have real 6 years exp.

Believe what you will.I know this from watching my friends/aquaintances first hand. The whole H1 thing is a scam. I hate it I would like to be hired only for my skills and not because I'm cheap. And of course, I hate it because the consultant will keep half my money.

Re:Java scripting

[The Grassy Knoll]

> thier code is always awful

There's a syntax error in the above statement...

Re:Java scripting

[rjshields]

Yeah, I guess you *can* write ASP in javascript, but nobody does.

Sure they do. I used to write ASP primarliy in Javascript - it sucks a lot less than VBScript. And I know 2 other people that used to regularly. I have also written ASP in PerlScript. I'm not sure you're gonna win many hearts and minds round here advocating VBs verbose syntax, most people think it sucks.

And if you're writing ASP (I mean "you" in the "one" sense of the word) you should be able to write and understand ASP written in Javascript.

Re:Java scripting

[rjshields]

Web tutorials that treat it as dumbed-down variant of C or Java, ignorant of its many Lisp-like qualities.

Like dynamic scoping, closures and prototypical inheritance? Javascript rocks.

Re:Java scripting

[StrawberryFrog]

The difference is enough to shake things up for a VB-only programmer.

If you can't handle minor differences in saying the same thing like that, then you have no business calling yourself a programmer.

Re:Java scripting

[iBod]

>>I mean why reinvent such a common operator?

Because % has another meaning in BASIC syntax.

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of people calling themselves programmers cannot handle differences like that. And apparently about 99% of programmers are completely unable to switch between f(x) and (f x).

Re:Java scripting

[Bedouin X]

Much as Microsofties like to bleat that ASP supports more than just VBScript, that's really the only language which is widely supported under it (and to a lesser extent, under ASP.NET)

C# is clearly the preferred language under ASP.NET so "to a lesser extent" is actually no extent at all. Regardless, with ASP, there were plenty of languages (perl and python to name a couple) that were fully supported and documented by third parties.

I think the fact that you even have language options is A Good Thing.

Re:Java scripting

[zero_offset]

When Microsoft.com was in ASP, it was javascript.

No, it wasn't. The emitted client-side code was in JS.
The server-side ASP was all VBS.

Some of the people who wrote that stuff used to work for me, many years ago...

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that is only difficult if you're RETARDED. When you move from VB to C, the biggest difficulties are due to habitual typing habits (ever use curlies in VB?), pointers and macro substitutions. I'll admit that pointers, pointers to pointers, pointers to pointers to functions, etc. are probably going to be pretty friggin' mind-bending for a VB programmer. But come on, basic syntax? It's the same, just a different alphabet.

Re:Java scripting

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

C# is clearly the preferred language under ASP.NET so "to a lesser extent" is actually no extent at all

What about the numerous examples in Microsoft's documentation that only show the VB way to accomplish something? Thankfully, it's been awhile since I've had to look anything up on their site, so maybe they've corrected that issue. (As an aside, I generally find their documentation overly complicated, as if the writer were being paid based on the complexity of the example, not it's clarity.)

I think the fact that you even have language options is A Good Thing.

Language options are nice. Platform options are even better.

Re:Java scripting

[Thieron]

I spent a lot of my career working with VB. I also know and work in Java (much more so at my latest job) and I go through the same thing when I switch over to java.

All languages have their quirks and of course their own syntax. The skills with programming should cross between them. All you are really changing is the sytax, which can take a little bit of training or work to get used to, and a different way to utilize the object models you access. I tend to write code in both languages against the same API, depeding on if I'm coding for a windows machine or one of our unix servers.

As I learned most of my skills originally with VB I'm far more comfortable with it, but the more I've been using Java at this job, the more I think I am starting to prefer it. I think it tends to be more.... organized or structured and once I get past the syntax differences, I think it generally forces code to be written a bit more logically.

Bad programmers are bad programmers and will always right messy code, but I'm finding it easier to decifer another programmers Java code more so than VB code.

Re:Java scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Java and Ruby are my two favorite languages. Does that mean I took the purple pill?

Re:Java scripting

[Bedouin X]

What about the numerous examples in Microsoft's documentation that only show the VB way to accomplish something?

Pretty much all .NET documentation has VB and C# examples. This has been the case since .NET was launched (2002?)

Language options are nice. Platform options are even better.

Now you have both :-)

Re:Java scripting

[NFNNMIDATA]

What's funny is that MS's built-in website for exchange's "outlook web access" feature is asp written entirely in javascript - and it's ugly as hell!

Re:Java scripting

[ClubStew]

You can use JScript to script the Office DOMs. They're both automation clients that provide engines for the Windows Script Host. The Office DOMs are automation server that provide functionality through IDispatch or dual interfaces.

Now, if you're talking about macros and code-behind for Office documents, then you're actually talking about VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), which is actually VB - not VBScript - tied to a particular automation server EXE.

PennState Career Services

[KingOfTheNerds]

Indeed i do not have to goto this website and do the stats for myself. I goto pennstate university and I work at the MBNA career center building where we find jobs for graduating students. We actually do our own job statistics for different departments to attempt to find out what we should push in their ciriculum. For instance we did notice that solaris has been declining for a few years now giving way to linux use, so the computer engineering/ comp sci department has switch to developing for linux from solaris. Using the data we get from recruiters, we try to keep our students top notch as far as demanded job skills.

Re:PennState Career Services

[Anonymous Coward]

I have noticed a trend away from solaris in the penn state cse department. Just recently they moved one of the solaris labs way down the hall in favor of a new shipment of dells that are dual boot linux/XP (where most of them are booted into linux all the time). Guess that's the way it goes.

Re:PennState Career Services

[balford]

Hell yeah. I just graduated from PSU, and I must say the Comp Eng department was rigorous. I did however get employed through the school. Interestingly, at my place of employment, we have about 5 software developers, one of which writes our linux drivers.

Re:PennState Career Services

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Junior in Comp Sci at PSU. Where are the Linux machines??? All I've been using is Unix. Or is this a very recent development you're speaking of?

Re:PennState Career Services

[asv108]

Third floor hammond building..

Re:PennState Career Services

[Thieron]

I'll attest to the success of the career services at PSU. I graduated in 1997 and got my first job at one of the career fairs they run. In this case, the a large one held in the Bryce Jordan center (first time, just after it was finished).

A friend of mine also go a job with the same company and there was another PSU recruit there too. The company was out of Baltimore.

The next year I went up there to rep the company at the career fair and we hired another friend of mine from that.

While I don't know what other universities do and I am sure it is comparable, PSU did a good job not only getting the companies there, but giving us help with resume prep, interviews, etc and really prepared us for getting a job.

Labor Dept. and CAO did similar thing

[moofdaddy]

The U.S. Department of labor in conjunction with the CAO did a similar study a couple of months ago. The study was request by a tech labor sub committee in the senate because they wanted to compare our tech jobs to those in other countries because of all the FUD about jobs being shipped overseas.

The labor department study was fairly inclusive though. They showed that there has been a 120% growth over the last year and a half in jobs looking for people to do web application development. They also found a 22% drop in ActiveX and Javascript workers. I doubt there are any jobs just for these skills so it is probably jobs requiring these skills.

On the Mac side of the aisle developers have moved away from C and C++ and now focus Objective C. On the Windows side there really hasn't been a replacement found for C++ so its numbers are holding fairly steady.

Re:Labor Dept. and CAO did similar thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw that study, made me wonder where all those jobs are.

Re:Labor Dept. and CAO did similar thing

[glennrrr]

As a Mac coder, I'd really like to see all these supposed Objective C jobs. The vast majority of Objective C jobs I've seen advertised have been at Apple itself, which isn't very helpful if you don't or can't live in Cupertino, Pittsburgh or Vancouver, Washington.

If anything, employers seem convinced you can save money by writing cross-platform C++ and using the Qt framework, at least it's what I've been doing the last couple years.

Personally, I'd love to write in Objective C using the Cocoa framework; it's the funnest, most productive framework I've seen. If only someone in the greater Boston area was hiring.

Re:Labor Dept. and CAO did similar thing

[NutscrapeSucks]

When I do see a Mac job on craigslist (which is rarely), it's almost always Metrowerks/C++ for a commercial product and not Objective C/Cocoa.

I think the issue is that the vast majority of programming work is for internal/vertical applications or customization. But except for publishing, Macs are generally sold right to consumers, so there isn't much demand for custom Mac software. If there were, Obj-C would probably be big.

Re:Labor Dept. and CAO did similar thing

[Reservoir Penguin]

There hundreds of companies doing Mac development and porting work. Wouldn't they need developers knowledgeble in ObjC?

Re:Labor Dept. and CAO did similar thing

[NutscrapeSucks]

I don't claim to understand the Mac Dev market, but I think the problem is that there's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of companies doing non-Mac development work.

UK Jobs

[dappleyard]

Does anyone know of any statistics for UK jobs?

Re:UK Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

dentist jobs are down

Re:UK Jobs

[eurostar]

and proctologists are high in the US

Re:UK Jobs

[mikael]

IT Sector

Engineering

Re:UK Jobs

[mikael]

Not forgetting IT Jobs Watch

replacement for c++ (Dylan)

[qwasty]

Dylan seems like a possible alternative to C++. Here's some more Dylan resources for those who want to look into the language a little further.

Re:replacement for c++ (Dylan)

[Anonymous Coward]

I think windows developers already have an "alternative" to C++: C#.

Re:replacement for c++ (Dylan)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, let's evaluate the job market for Dylan programmers ....

slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

google cache

Reverse Analysis?

[markmcb]

I was curious if anyone knew of any sort of reverse analysis. What is mean is that it seems easy to figure out what sort of jobs are available based on demand, but is there any analysis that shows what sort of IT-skill-sets are available from people in the job market? This sort of info would be nice to have if you were trying to avoid being one of the thousands of lemmings all focusing on the same job market.

Re:Reverse Analysis?

[plague3106]

Presumably the job skills with the more apperiences are the ones that are lacking.

That is, you don't see VB programemrs in many postings because there isn't really a demand for them.

BSD-related jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I apologize if this is offtopic, but how many jobs deal with BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD) in comparison to some other operating systems? How do the BSD-specific careers differ from those of Linux jobs?

Re:BSD-related jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a "job" or "career" could be to contribute something to these operating systems.

linux work

[argoff]

During the dot com flush it was really slow, but now it seems like I have more work than I can handle using Linux, both programming, network admin, and system admin. My friends who had only MS admin and development experience haven't fared so well. I guess the down-turn wasn't about who fell down, but who was able to get back up again.

Re:linux work

[Thing 1]

[...] but now it seems like I have more work than I can handle using Linux, both programming, network admin, and system admin.

Too much work to count, even!

Re:linux work

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it depends on where you are located. I am in Seattle and I have been trying to move to Linux but I am finding .NET/C# jobs much easier to find than Java/Linux. Maybe it is just my experiance, I have some Java/Solaris, a larger and growing amount of .NET/C# and a ton of Win/C++ (can you say Glockenspiel pre-processor?) but I think it has a lot to do with living in MS backyard.

Re:linux work

[Ham_belony]

The dot com flush had to happen. The wages were going through the roof, skillsets of applicants were dropping even faster and there was a major surplus of MS admin around with only that little creditation that MS handed out, the certificats. For the unix world, it has been pretty stable, although not always as pleasant. It was a shame that a lot of wannabees started moving their career from MS admin to UX admins, not the best at it. That made the prices drop drastically for ux admins with a broader knowledge of the product and apps on it. I am just glad we have passed that period of time and can concentrate on making a career work again. Where I am currently employed, it is very obvious that it is not that simple anymore for the average MS admin to move around and find better careers. About 50% of them just get stuck on lower level support, others that are being moved away from their current functions just end up as support admins at large corporations, with little to look forward too. Just waiting to see how aggressive these MS admins will get wanting to go ahead, which isn't that likely to happen without the enterprise ux knowledge they should have.

Re:linux work

[SgtChaireBourne]

My friends who had only MS admin and development experience haven't fared so well.

I checked up on many old friends and contacts last year during my travels and found the same thing. MS admins where long term unemployed and people with Linux/UNIX experience had gotten raises or better jobs.

That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[booms]

And guess what, it's on a Celeron 466 with 192 MB of RAM running on FreeBSD. I bet it died after the first 10 people got there.

I have a new server coming in exactly tomorrow according to the last time I tracked it at UPS. Figures, eh?

This is going to make finishing my final assignment for my current class rather interesting since I host it at home...

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[Linuxathome]

I apologize if this sounds like an advertisement, but have you looked into dedicated hosting services? Or the cheaper option is VPS hosting from places like RimuHosting or Linode.com? User mode linux in any of these two VPS plans can actually be very cost effective, especially if you run lots of sites each with low bandwidth needs since apache virtual hosting is allowed. Peter at RimuHosting is really knowledgeable and can help you setup the site the way you want it and will even help tweak it to its max performance. The cost is really affordable -- just skimp on Starbucks a couple times a month and you have it paid for.

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[Dominic Burns]

Dude, I hope the following helps....

"Brace! Brace! Brace!"

"Women, children and gifted first!"

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[kgp]

Well, if we can get it into the cache this this coralized link might help.

Booms might help by seeing if he can force it into the cache :-)

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[booms]

Well normally I don't get that much traffic.. about 20,000 unique visitors per month or so lately. I already have DSL, and I'm cheap (single geek with a mortgage + college), so I opt to host at home. Amoritizing the cost of a new ~$500 server every few years makes it cheap since I already expected to pay for bandwidth at home anyhow. That and it's nice to be able to fat finger an ipfw rule every now and then without having to pay someone to go fix it. ;)

Surprsingly enough, my intarweb connection still seems okay.

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[CammieCrookston]

Good luck is right ;) tcptraceroute to devnulled.com [80]: 18 216.150.223.10 119.083 ms 19 * 20 *

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[booms]

I took port 80 down temporarily to install a caching plugin for WordPress as well as cleaning up some CGI cruft in httpd.conf that was leftover from a Movable Type install. Lets see if it fares any better now..

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[lsmeg]

Look on the bright side, if we're going to toast a server, better to toast the old Celeron than the new one coming in. ;)

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[legirons]

"I have a new server coming in exactly tomorrow according to the last time I tracked it at UPS. Figures, eh?"

It could be worse.

You could have just received the new server, and been halfway through setting-up the firewall and database passwords when it got posted to slashdot...

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's on a Celeron 466 with 192 MB of RAM running on FreeBSD. I bet it died after the first 10 people got there. Did Netcraft confirm it? Oh, never mind.

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[Klaruz]

I used to do this too, but I swtiched to linode. There a two nice things about this:

1: my mail doesn't go down when the power blinks or the isp I'm with decides to burp.

2: Linode gives you console access to your machine through ssh. No need to worry about not getting in. I borked an upgrade once, shrunk the image on my main uml instance, installed a 100 meg debian rescue instance, mounted my main one, and fixed the problem. It's really pretty nice.

Re:That's My Site.. Good Luck Viewing It...

[booms]

I knew I should of worded that better once I posted it because of you silly "FreeBSD is dying" trolls.

Actually my little server that could is actually handling the load just fine now after some tuning. Go FreeBSD! I've disabled a lot of things like webstats, so I have no clue how many hits I'm getting right now though. I suppose it helps that it's a weekend...

I didn't even need to reboot or anything:

bash-2.05b# uptime
4:26PM up 62 days, 22:32, 1 user, load averages: 4.60, 4.83, 4.19

Not too bad for a box I built about 6 years ago with a relatively stock install of FreeBSD 5.2.1..

.Net vs. Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... I can see the challenges in comparing these two application development languages/frameworks given the Java/Javascript terminology issue, but it would seem that even so, there seems to be a lot more .NET interest there...

If I include ASP.NET with the .NET numbers, it would seem to push .NET over the top. Creative categorization of the information anyone? :)

I have never programmed in .Net (Python, PHP and C++ for me) but have many collegues who rave about it. I'm thinking about doing an open source project in the near future and was considering using .NET as (non-scientifically) it looked like I had more .NET than Java resources I could collaborate with.

Language popularity. Java use going down.

[zymano]

This website has a nice graph on the popularity of languages.

Damn ...

[jc42]

... slashdotted already. And it's only been about 20 minutes.

google's cache

[qwasty]

here's google's cache of the site http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:0P-b3Qx1lg8J: devnulled.com/content/2005/01/an-evaluation-of-the -current-technology-job-market-updated/+&hl=en&lr= lang_en

Oh, great ...

[jc42]

I can just see flocks of PHBs reading this, and mandating a conversion of their JavaScript to SQL, because JS is going out while SQL is holding steady.

I wonder how many readers here will understand all the things that are wrong with this ranking.

It's also amusing that Fortran, Cobol and RPG still make a top-20 list.

(Who was it that said "We don't know what programming language we'll be using 50 years from now, but we know it'll be called Fortran"?)

Re:Oh, great ...

[ralphdaugherty]

The Programming Language Popularity TCP Index was done very well, and I see it's a pretty stable list from last year.

As for RPG, I've been an AS/400 RPG programmer since 1989 but out of work for the last year and a half. Many large corporations are still running their business with RPG but scaled development way back and outsourcing to India.

So there may be some RPG work for me sometime but things would have to pick up quite a bit as there are plenty of qualified Americans for every US job opening recruiters know about, and no openings I've heard of without recruiters or Dice.

So I am just doing my own projects in Java and also will do more PHP web stuff for my site until either there's a need for RPG again or I get enough projects on the web that I can generate some work.

I did just finish rewriting my 8086 Double Deck Pinochle in Java, and have more to do before hosting it. It may sound like spaghetti, but I did it without even a tagged break so there was the same structure in the asm code, I just formalized it with while and if statements.

It's not the language, it's the programmer.

rd

Resumeh?

[ShatteredDream]

Resume, eh? You're not from Canada by any chance, eh?

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[Evil Pete]

Note the matching rise of Python and dip of Java from about Mar 04 and then a slight reversal for both. Maybe some people were using Java for scripting purposes. Or they thought Python was a better match for the problem (but thought better of it later).

I'm amazed by the effort to convince us

[Anonymous Coward]

programmers that are looking for work that jobs aren't as scarce as they seem. Why are they trying to do this? We're invisible. We don't count. If they'd stop talking about it, it wouldn't bother me as much.

Re:I'm amazed by the effort to convince us

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same thing people always tell you. "It happens to every guy", "Size doesn't matter", "I love you for your personality". It's all bullshit.

Here we are, freshly graduated, young and naive yet ready to learn and grow, and the world says, "Fuck you".

I have no real purpose in this world. If I die tomorrow, will anyone care? Will anyone shed a tear at the loss? Of course not.

There is nothing left for me to do but to die.

Re:I'm amazed by the effort to convince us

[Bill Dog]

Ah, so much to say:

1. It only appears that the world is saying fuck you now because before, in your really young and naive days, it seemed like it was welcoming you with the promise and hope of a good life. There was no such promise. As it is throughout the rest of the animal kingdom, it's survival of the fittest. Buck up and find a job and do the best you can. You're no different than myself or anyone else in this sense. The world isn't saying fuck you, the world just doesn't care. Only people care. Which brings me to #2:
2. Your folks and siblings and cousins and friends etc. will obviously care if you die tomorrow. Even if you don't land that way cool job the first time, there's oh so much more to life than work. You'll probably get married, and give your spouse, and maybe children, if that's your thing, a lifetime of happiness. Don't sell yourself short just because some clueless PHB's and HR droids want to pretend you're not worth much. Find someone who you can prove it to that you're valuable.

work per person

[bersl2]

We always say that it takes fewer *nix admins to maintain a *nix system than it does Windows admins to maintain a Windows system performing the same tasks.

Should we factor this in, or does the headline really mean it when they say "developers"?

Re:work per person

[Ham_belony]

True, it does take less ux admins to admin their systems, while the crap of windows require more people to admin them because they fail at what they are created for : usability

doesn't have much of a chance

[idlake]

If Apple had seriously pushed Dylan when they were first working on it, it might have had a chance. But, today, we have Python, C#, Java, and C++, with mature implementations, lots of libraries, tons of books, and excellent environments to support them. Even if Dylan is arguably better, it is not enough better to catch on.

Maybe if the Dylan community created a killer IDE with a really high-quality implementation, it might still take off...

Re:doesn't have much of a chance

[qwasty]

Maybe if the Dylan community created a killer IDE with a really high-quality implementation, it might still take off...

Have you seen Functional Developer? It's a commercial windows IDE from Functional Objects, and it's recently been open sourced. From zesiger.com's blurb on FunDev:

Also known as FunDev, this is a popular, commercial Windows IDE for Dylan that has just recently been made free to the public. There is talk that it could be open-sourced soon (18 June 2004). It is still being actively developed by the same people who are working on the Gwydion Dylan compiler.

Looks like the blurb is a bit outdated since it's already been open sourced...but anyways, did you know about FunDev when you made a call for a "really high-quality" IDE from the Dylan community?

Of course, besides FunDev, there's Gwydion Dylan, a nice commandline compiler for unix/linux.

Re:doesn't have much of a chance

[ewg]

No new language has much of a chance, historically speaking. The set of dominant languages changes very, very slowly. Organizations and individual developers have huge investments in their existing skill bases.

Searching monster.com, the keywords java, c++, perl, visual basic, and (regrettably) cobol all yield over a 1,000 hits each.

python finds 447 technology jobs, ruby language 2, but dylan none.

Python and Java are the only newer languages that beat Fortran and Pascal. monster.com is only one way to look for a programming job, but I think these numbers are representative.

Re:doesn't have much of a chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the blurb is a bit outdated since it's already been open sourced...but anyways, did you know about FunDev when you made a call for a "really high-quality" IDE from the Dylan community?

I couldn't find any description or screenshots. Part of being a mindblowing IDE would be to advertise oneself as such...

Re:doesn't have much of a chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Dylan has had about as much time to succeed in the market as Python and Java; I think it's safe to say its time has passed, no matter what its technical merits may have been.

Re:doesn't have much of a chance

[rubycodez]

w0h00, 2 ruby jobs on monster! For the last 2 years, there was 0 for my favorite language (on all U.S. job sites together) 8D

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You should note that the position and Ratings changes is based on the position from last year at this time." (TIOBE Programming Community Index)

Java, Jan 2005 => 17.478%

Java, Mar 2005 => 18.871%

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[eyeye]

It is POPULARITY thats graphed there - not usage, or demand.

I would love to see an equivalent graph that does graph the demand for languages over the last few years as it really would help me plan my future, whereas peoples fads could be a more dangerous (though more fun) trend to follow.

Not a web service API

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I missed something, this is NOT a web service in any way. There is no WSDL available.

Sure, there is http hosted query interface and it sends back XML.

But it's not a web service and should not be referred to as such.

Australian trend

[tonejava]

Have a look at www.jobnet.com.au which shows the trend in Australia. Lately Unix is on top with Java the dominating language. Not sure how accurrate these stats are (ie do they see "JAVA" as a keyword or not) but are usually pretty accurrate. Internet technologies shows that .NET and JAVA are competing head-on-head for dominance but the market is pretty much evenly split between the two.

".net" jobs

[xswl0931]

What exactly does it mean to say ".net" jobs (which is #2 about 6000 jobs behind Java. ".net" probably includes both C# and VB.Net (and possible others). However, C# has it's own category. Combined, there's more ".net" + C# jobs than Java jobs.

Re:".net" jobs

[the eric conspiracy]

The question that you didn't consider is whether or not those C# jobs also appear as .Net jobs in the search results.

Re:".net" jobs

[booms]

I consider .NET a framework/platform and not a language persay. Sort of like what J2EE is like for Java. However I'm not a .NET developer, so that notion could certainly be invalid.

Not to mention most any posting that has C# in it will also mention .NET... while there are plenty of Java jobs that don't involve J2EE at all (like say if you were working on some sort of Swing application).

.Net languages won't really take off til v2.0

[Bill Dog]

The .Net framework and it's languages/technologies (e.g. ASP.NET) are 1.0 or 1.1 (2.0's in beta). How dominant was the Java language/platform in its 1.0/1.1 days. I was there, doing Java then at my first company. It was not unheard-of, but not dominant. .Net and C# (I don't think VB.Net will ever be big, nor anywhere near as big as VB was) won't really take off until its 2.0 technologies and Longhorn and all the Avalon/Indigo stuff. That is, when there is much more advantage, with the newer GUI and Web Services tools, to adopt it. Right now I view .Net as mostly an MS-only Java alternative, which is not exactly compelling to me, as a Windows C++ developer. I don't need another wrapper around the Win32 API. But I expect MS to leap ahead of the competition in a year or two, and only then will we really know how things are going to shake out.

Re:.Net languages won't really take off til v2.0

[the eric conspiracy]

How dominant was the Java language/platform in its 1.0/1.1 days.

Not very dominant at all, but on the other hand Java wasn't (and still isn't) heavily marketed by the company with a 96% desktop market share, and it isn't following (ripping off some would say) a well established path of how to do a VM based programming model,

Personally, considering that Microsoft has dumped VB 5 support and they don't offer VB tools any more I can't see where they will get any more market share than they currently have.

FWIW, the company I work for used to be a VB shop. After taking a look at .Net they said no thanks and moved to Java so that they had a clear path to larger iron than .Net can address. And I don't want to hear about Mono. Every one of our enterprise customers would laugh us out the front door if we suggested that we run their production systems on software written using Mono.

Re:.Net languages won't really take off til v2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

If your VB shop was like one I did a stint at during the dot-com days, filled with IS majors instead of CS folk, who laughed at C/C++ programmers for having to fiddle with tiny details instead of just programming high-level business logic, who didn't know the first thing about the "engineering" part in "software engineering", your people must've taken an absolute collective shit when they first tried to move to Java. Not that it's as taxing as C++, but it's much lower-level along with being a completely different syntax from VB.

Re:.Net languages won't really take off til v2.0

[anpe]

And I don't want to hear about Mono.
That's case today. However, Mono is envolving rapidly, and the same customers who would laugh at you now, could become interested in a year or two.

An indeed search for 'slashdot'...

[mthreat]

Someone's even hiring to surf slashdot!

what about new trends?

[LuxFX]

I'd be interested in how many job posting were already asking for Ajax experience.

Of course, with the modal intelligence of headhunters I've worked with, most of the adverts probably read:

min. 10 yrs. in A.j.a.x. development REQUIRED

Uh-oh

[wumpus188]

Most of these "available" jobs are in fact advertisiments required by INS for someone's H1B.

Re:Uh-oh

[thoalex]

You are correct. When I was in management I had to do that. An absolutely appaling requirement of the goverments. Making a manager who has a perfectly good employee, put out an advertisement for a job that really doesn't exist. Then you have to wade through reams of resumes (some of which are very good) and look for a reason not to hire someone. Absolutely ridiciulous.

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[greg_barton]

Oh, yeah. And according to the same chart the popularity if ABAP is skyrocketing.

WTF is ABAP, anyway?

java v .net

[mgkimsal2]

Not sure if this is ever considered, but are there more job listings for java people because it takes more java developers to get stuff done? Honestly, really, I'm not a .net fan at all. It's goe some good ideas, but you're hobbled to one platform to be productive with MS tools. Dev tools often make people more productive. I've seen relative newbies make .net do moderately impressive stuff in just a few weeks, while twice as many java people were half as productive. I'm only speaking from my obviously limited perspective (there's only one of me!) but is this ever considered a factor when people talk about the relative number of job postings?

Re:java v .net

[the eric conspiracy]

I really really doubt that it takes 4x more Java developers than C# developers to get the same thing done. There are perfectly good Java dev tools (Eclipse is IMHO significantly better than Visual Studio, and WSAD is even better) and the language syntax is pretty damn close. And to top it off the Jakarta project offers a giant metric buttload of free stuff that you can leverage bigtime.

It's gotta be a non-factor.

Re:java v .net

[kaffiene]

Rubbish. Java development tools are better than C# (compare Eclipse to... well, anything, but MSVC in particular)

In addition, Java has a very mature and fully featured set of API's when compared to .NET which doesn't even have a general purpose table component nor a decent (== not amazingly slow like the .net bitmap classes) image class for image manipulation.

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[Sweetshark]

The chart says almost nothing, (esp. in short term) because it just measures search engine hits.

Death to Ajax!

[darekana]

I am death-to-the-AJAX troll!

Hear me roar!

All your ajax are belong to us.

Kawarini "remote scripting" tukatte itadakereba ureshiku omoimasu. naniiuttondeirunokanakimiha, yurusan.

.NET and ASP.NET

[jbplou]

The article mentions 47,000 .NET programming and only 5500 ASP.NET jobs. Almost every job I've ever interviewed for that uses .NET is using it mainly for ASP.NET.

Sadly...

[WindBourne]

on the same order as SCO unix. Makes you wonder how much truth there is to the "BSD is dieing", because SCO sure as heck is.

Re:Sadly...

[Ham_belony]

To my supprise, visiting the sco website, they are selling the sco openserver version, after they abandonned it like 4 years ago. My first job was with SCO openserver and AIX and last I remembered was they made openserver obsolete in favor of unixware.

Yes, but...

[WindBourne]

this guy is simply scanning. He is only looking for keywords (with the ability to back out if other words where detected).So, it is quite possible( even probable) that many of the .net are actually saying things like ".net useful", etc. Like a number of the java are actually java script (even thought it would be easy to back that out as well).

I would guess that most of the asp are for asp jobs (even though it could easily be pimp houses looking to fill out their resume files).

How ridiculous...

[jth213]

using job sites to get analyze the state of the job market.

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[corblix]

Interesting! Thanks for the link.

I wonder what happened in March '04, though. There seems to have been a general convulsion that affected most of the top languages. I have a hard time believing that. I'll bet something changed about the search engines. Did Google or Yahoo make some significant change in March '04?

QUESTIONING the count

[JCOTTON]

Looking at the numbers...
You can't really have "COBOL 6,713" and no MVS/zOS? There is pretty much a one to one correspondence in COBOL and MVS.
I still think that I could complete my career as a COBOL programmer....

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[dmh20002]

I like that site, since I am a tired old C programmer so maybe I'll be able to keep a job for a while.

Re:Language popularity. Java use going down.

[xeno-cat]

ABAP is SAP's 4GL. Clear as mud? :-)

SAP is a big German ERP dinasour. ABAP is what their product, R3, is scripted with. Their hayday was the mid 90's. They are probobly still doing quite well though.

Kind Regards

Flawed Methodology.

[luh3417]

Companies often post fake job listings to bolster their case for more offshoring and H1-B hiring. A significant percentage of those jobs just don't exist. At least not if you're an American and/or over 40. Soon, many of you reading this will become American. Soon, many of you reading this will become over 40. Hear me now, believe me later. Let's call it karma.

A "Truck Driver" who can manage C++ builds !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. I typed "Bangalore" in Where and look what I got:

Truck Driver
Lucent Technologies - US-IN-Bangalore
Manage C++ builds, Make file, Clearcase configuration management experience. Strong UNIX skills. Experience of working as a configuration team member in multi-site projects. Experience in build and re...
From HotJobs - 10 Days ago

Re:Java scriptinga

[rjshields]

FWIW, I started in VB That explains a lot.

Geeks knowing a trade.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Truck Driver
Lucent Technologies - US-IN-Bangalore
Manage C++ builds, Make file, Clearcase configuration management experience. Strong UNIX skills. Experience of working as a configuration team member in multi-site projects. Experience in build and re...
From HotJobs - 10 Days ago"

I'm not certain why you're laughing? How many times has the "learn a trade" advice been dispensed here? Usually everytime an "outsourcing Geeks" story shows up on Slashdot.

Snapshot versus Trend

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a very interesting evaluation. Although a good deal of folks are in the job market now, there are a good deal set to join in a few years. An interesting set of statistics would point out the trends in the data. The gentleman on the site points out that he's done an analysis before. I tried to look at the services he used to create the evaluation in the first place, but they are for registered users (didn't have any time to look further - have to run to class and work).

So how about it? Anyone up for doing an evaluation of the trends in the data to get a realistic picture of what those employers will want in 2, 4, 5 years for those still in high school and college? (I think any picture longer than that may not take sufficiently future technologies into account).

That's not what they're saying

[Anonymous Coward]

They're saying, we need you to make a huge investment up front in acquiring skills which we may or may not need later on. People stupid enough to fall for this may believe they're owned something. Most people aren't falling for it anymore. This allows the so called employers to come up with a new argument, Americans are losing (loosing to you spelling challenged) their technological edge. EMC does this a lot. That does smell a little fishy considering the numbers of programmers out of work.

Experience...

[dantheman82]

I just started as a developer in a wholly-owned, independent subsidiary of large financial corporation in NYC. We are generally a MS-friendly company (whereas the parent is more interested in Java). However, there is a hesitancy to fully adopt C# or .NET here because it is seen (rightly) as a language at v1.0 whereas Java has a bit more history. I would say when .NET 2.0 comes around, both C# and the .NET Framework itself will be both more used than currently.

I've gome more work than I know what to do with

[retendo]

[snip]

programmers that are looking for work that jobs aren't as scarce as they seem. Why are they trying to do this? We're invisible. We don't count. If they'd stop talking about it, it wouldn't bother me as much.

[/snip]

Depending on your skill set and where you are in the country the job market for tech folks has been steadily improving. Here in Atlanta, GA there is plenty of work right now in both .NET and Java. I'm even seeing a bit of Linux, networking, sysadmin and security work. Perhaps it's time to expand your horizons!

Experience?

[Sierpinski]

At least there wasn't any mention of jobs wanting 5+ years experience with Windows 2003 Server.

Re:15 years of .NET experience?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen that myself. There are some jobs that require 10 or 15 years of .NET programming experience which no one has, not even any Microsoft employees.

That's called a REST web service

[alienmole]

REST web services via Google

I hear ya, pal

[ulatekh]

Here we are, freshly graduated, young and naive yet ready to learn and grow, and the world says, "Fuck you".

I can imagine that would hurt. Me, I was in the industry for 12 years, breezing through problems that my idiot peers found insurmountable, and now I get bizarre rejection letters like this one . Either way, this sucks.

I'm not even sure what to get a degree in. Bioinformatics would be a great match for me, but that's already being outsourced to India. Even medicine is being outsourced; India now has "medical tourism" for major operations like heart bypass surgery. About the only thing that's safe is an MBA or law degree, and to be one of the bastards causing the mess, but I never wanted to do that for a living.

There is nothing left for me to do but to die.

See my sig for good news on that front.

Re:I hear ya, pal

[thoalex]

I am in the exact same boat. 15 years of experience but I can't get hired to save my life (which is becoming the problem). What's amazing me is some of these employers are wanting you to have experience in Java AND .NET AND C++ AND C# AND (the list can go on). I was always considered the "Maverick" until for the last few years I became Management. But, even that doesn't help. I don't care what these surveys are saying, there aren't as many jobs out there as they are trying to lead you to believe. There are job *postings* but there aren't jobs.

Y'know what unemployed geeks need?

[ulatekh]

Apparently, the scam is that companies post these job listings, with a mind-numbingly long list of requirements that matches the H1-B person they want to bring on board, then when no one else in humanity matches, the H1-B person gets approved by the government. Nice, huh?

What us unemployed geeks need is a pied piper! Someone to start the atheistic-rationalistic equivalent of a cult, so we can combine our geek skills together and make the world sorry they gave us so much free time. Someone like John Galt, but real. And a project like Linux, but even more disruptive.

service vs. product development

[jaboydjr]

I'd think web development is mostly so-called "in-house development" (or contract work for client-specific projects, etc), i.e., development for support or service purposes as opposed to development of saleable product. I'd be curious to see a study of service vs. product development hiring, or more generally, service sector vs. product sector hiring. If the DOL is concerned about offshoring and other such issues, I would think they would be concerned about this sort of distinction, especially since the anecdotal trend seems to be that new jobs these days are mostly service sector jobs (that require less skill, education, etc, in general) while product sector jobs have been moving to other countries (for some time now), where (often US-educated) high-end employees are significantly less costly. Of course, service sector jobs are now being offshored as well.

An adverse effect of this trend is that education in the US is being dis-incentivized, since more educated and experienced workers from the product sector are getting the message not that they need more education, but that they already have too much education for the service sector jobs they must compete for, against less educated and thus less expensive candidates.

One might think that the information technology sector is exempt from this; not so at all, and that's my point. Web development is in many respects like getting a job at McDonald's, and employers favor candidates with less education and experience, simply because they cost less to employ.