Re: Any money in programing ?
Greg Haberek wrote:
> Apparently in Java programming in South East Michigan. Every day I
> have to wade through these ads to see if there are any non-Java jobs,
> but every other add says "Java" or "J2EE" next to it. So if you know
> Java, move to MI and you'll have your pick of jobs.
Ugh, I always thought Java was way too overrated.
Back to the original question.
> So my question is where is the money in programming?
It's still there they're just more selective now. IT and support are the bigger
computer based jobs right now due to the increased need for them but programming
is still far from dead. I think that what's being programmed now commercially has
changed though. Now it's all about the shiny GUI's for controlling everything on
your computer but not that many new programmers need to be hired for this though.
However, hardware driver writers are (and will always) be needed expecially now
that CS grads know less and less about the low-level stuff. Programming compilers
and operating systems doesn't have any real market anymore unless you're already
well established and EVERYBODY wants to try to get into game programming (whose
market is expected to tighten considerably soon). There still seems to be a
decent market in scientific programming though (my job) but since more physics
and math grads are now able to program you have to be good and know what you're
doing.
Also, the languages that are "a must-know" now vary considerably. Everyone
either uses Delphi or Visual Basic for GUIs but the VB market is getting tighter
now that more know it and the Delphi market is still pretty small (although it's
been growing recently). Other than Delphi Pascal is essentially dead except for
legacy code and tenured scientists. C is still a must-know since there's so much
of it out there and it's general purpose enough for everything (meaning that you
can do GUIs and you can do device drivers). C++ is practically essential for many
places since it's just a more usable object-oriented C. Objective-C is only
really used in the Mac (and occasionally the Linux/UNIX) world so if you want to
program the Mac it's worth knowing. FORTRAN is still around in the
scientific/engineering sector especially in old places that use legacy code but
is losing some of its grip due to Matlab. Forth is dead except in old engineering
shops. Assembly is only used for a very few tasks nowadays. If you know you'll
never need to interface with hardware directly you won't need it. COBOL seems to
be legacy code only now except for a few new programs for banks that need to use
existing COBOL routines. Everyone thinks Ada's dead but for high-risk computing a
few places still use it but it's not widespread enough for general use. Perl is
still going strong with no end in sight and is practically a necessity for *nix
programmers and network admins. Python isn't necessary but there are enough
people that like it and use it that it could be useful to know. C# is odd. Some
people are swearing by it others are vehemently opposing it and both have good
reasons but it's so new that it's hard to gauge the market for C# programmers.
Java is another oddity like C#. Some places want to use it others don't use it.
So far it seems to be only for in-house tool programming. However, all these
things are relative. We hired a Java and XML programmer at my job to work on a
mail client or something for us and then laid him off shortly after finishing it
and hired a FORTRAN 77 programmer instead. We had no use for keeping a Java
programmer around but were able to move the FORTrAN programmer around from dept.
to dept. fixing all their legacy code.
|
Not Categorized, Please Help
|
|
