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.Net Programmers Fall in CNN's Top 5 In-Demand
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Feb 04, 2006 07:36 AM
from the cha-ching dept.
from the cha-ching dept.
GT_Alias writes "CNN Money is reporting that .Net programmers are one of the top 5 most in-demand jobs. Of the positions where recent surveys have indicated a labor shortage, .Net developers and QA analysts are the two that fell under the 'technology' category. According to CNN Money, .Net developers can make between $75-85K starting out in major cities, with the potential to make 15% more if they have a particular proficiency. Additionally, QA workers can make $65-75K a year with the ability to negotiate a 10-15% pay jump if they switch jobs. How does this information compare with the Slashdot crowd's real-world experience?"
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Qué? (Score:4, Funny)
It must be because I can only program Java. *sigh*
Top In Demand Job: #6 (Score:5, Funny)
They don't know what .NET is (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA: "Microsoft's software programming language .NET"
.NET's a platform or function library if you will not a programming language. Not getting your facts straight doesn't inspire me to have a lot of confidence.
Re:They don't know what .NET is (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They don't know what .NET is (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone else see the problem with this?
Re:They don't know what .NET is (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing learned while programming is non-portable. The basic concepts of programming, as well as everything built on those concpts, are the same in any language.
I'd say thats about right (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I see a lot of new QA jobs emphasizing programming skills, thus driving up the wages. These days, excellent QA organizations will devote at least 50% of their efforts towards automation, either by building their own suites or leveraging off-the-shelf solutions. This is good for QA folk who eventually want to migrate into development, as they'll gain valuable skills along the way.
What is a .Net Developer? (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, wihtout specifying the phrase ".NET Developers" more precisely the discussion will become meaningless.
My POV: a new college graduatre who can barely create encapsulated objects is not going to be pulling the same money as a Java turned C# enterprise framework analyst who writes the patterns published in those clever books.
OOP != OOP (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, I'd say the first two years after graduation I was a pretty crappy developer. I didn't know it of course, but later it has really hit me.
Large groups of employers (Score:3, Insightful)
Why isn't something that's more portable (perl/python) in such demand? Really bakes my noodle.
Re:Large groups of employers (Score:4, Insightful)
Because .NET is the major development platform of the major operating system.
Neither perl nor python are very popular for large application development, even on unix. So there isn't much demand.
Re:Large groups of employers (Score:3, Funny)
Bah, that's because we already solved all the problems
Re:Large groups of employers (Score:3, Insightful)
Perl -- Had a shot at commercial app dev relevance in the 90s, but the world passed it by, and is used rarely for new projects. Largely relegated to Unix syst
Re:Large groups of employers (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever try and write an enterprise level application, even a web application, in perl? It's great for small internal applications; that CPAN doo-hickey works just great.
But CPAN bites you back when you hit the limits of what those modules can do in a large-scale application. When you hit the limit of what is the easiest and arguably the best (and arguably not) ORM out there, Class::DBI, there's 150 different, incompatible modules out there to do what you want. Which one will be maintained? Which one silently overwrites methods deep within more established modules and doesn't tell you? Want one that adds support for limit and sort by? One module gives you that easily, but not with the same interface as the other 10 that are more full featured. Which do you choose?
Don't even get me started on trying to send an email with Perl. CPAN seems to have a new module for sending email every other day. It's become less of a one-stop shop for the modules you need and more of the perl newbie ftp drop site for modules no one could possibly need or want.
As an example, check out what's been uploaded today. Version 0.02 of JavaScript::MochiKit, helpfully described as 'makes perl suck less', with 15 classes and less than a page of documentation. Great! Just what I was looking for!
There's also a module for interacting with MySpace, two versions in the same day of of an XML parser (writer? who knows, I didn't read it) for a data format used by the library of congress (from the same proud author of version 0.3 of Acme::Voodoo, described as 'Do bad stuff to your objects'), version 0.18 (version 0.17 was yesterday's) of DBIX::Class::Loader, a copycat of Class::DBI::Loader for this self-proclaimed CDBI replacement (which is probably needed, but god help a perl newbie who shows up on CPAN looking for ORM nowadays). It's 2pm my time (Austria), meaning it's 5:30 central time, and there are already 9 modules with version numbers less than 1.0 uploaded to CPAN.
Now don't get me wrong, this is fantastic for a small scale app. I'm sure someone will get some use out of a MySpace profile accessor in perl. But what makes CPAN, and perl, great for small-time stuff makes it just terrible for enterprise applications.
As for perl's portability...do you really expect to make an argument that a language that is, in quite official terms, defined by the official compiler is portable? Perl runs on windows, but since perl.exe IS the language, differences between it and the unix versions aren't even technically bugs...they just ARE! It's not a proper way to 'run a language', so to speak.
I've been programming in perl for years. I get paid well for it. I don't plan to stop using it for my insignificant applications. But I know damn well why it's not in demand.
nobody
Re:Large groups of employers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly why
This attitude is exactly why the perl culture is not going mainstream. This is the attitude of someone who refuses to work with a team that hasn't forced him to respect them. This is how primadonnas think, and not the way the people who have those
This misses the point of my original post. I never said I couldn't find a tool to send an email. I said that CPAN is a clearinghouse for unfinished, in development, and first-time libraries. Net::SMTP does in fact work rather well. I've used it. But, say I were showing up to CPAN the first time. A search for 'Send Email' (most people are thinking about emails, not SMTP), brings me to Email::Send, Email::Send::Sendmail, Email::Send::NNTP (this doesn't make much sense), Email::Send::Qmail, Log::Dispatch::Email, Test::Nightly::Email, Mail::Spool, Mail::Sender, Mail::Sendmail, Mail::Send, Mail::SendEasy, and there are even more. This is ridiculous; it would be impossible to make a business justification for choosing one over the other.
Compare this to the MFC, which, while not NEARLY as extensive as CPAN, is MUCH better documented, is standardized, and it's a safe bet.
Why not just use the MFC and write your own, if you have to pay attention to the guts of the library code? A business wants to be able to say: we can be SURE of our library code, and we wrote everything else ourselves.
I'm not trying to say it's better or worse, the whole perl culture thing. It can be quite good, actually, and I think other language communities should take a hint from perl in some areas, especially some of those libraries which arose out of the system I am so quick to disparage. There should be something as good as DateManip in every standard library, and Date::Simple lets one use dates almost as easily as a primitive, which makes life SO much goddamn easier, to be frank. I understand that perl has definite advantages.
But that is just not what a business is looking for. Both of the parent posts to this smack to me of elitism. That perl is better than some other language for some reason. It's not the language. It's the culture surrounding it. It is, no offense, people like yall who think that management is stupid for going with the trend. Software is a means to an and, and not a means unto itself. The tools for creating a tool, by and large, should not be out of the o
the 'dot net' language? (Score:4, Interesting)
A whole bunch of langauges actually target the dotNet runtime (c#, visualbasic.net, j#, etc). My guess is that after a few years of head-in-the-sand, a metric crapload of legacy visual basic projects suddenly need porting to a platform with a future.
Yes! They're Right! (Score:4, Interesting)
To my surprise, the IT crowd with the big voices on the net are not in-tune with reality.
Most of the jobs out there require you to use
Re:Yes! They're Right! (Score:5, Insightful)
For years, one could blame Microsoft for cheap amateur hack coding. No more -- Open Source "LAMP" now totally owns that market.
Wow, wish I made that much... (Score:4, Informative)
One thing though, I got sick of the constant crap in C++ just spending more time on the stupid COM plumbing and myriad datatypes than actual applications work. Going to C# was a damn breath of fresh air. I LOVE it. I can actually get useful shit done that does stuff for the END USER of the the product and after all that's what the company pays me for. Perhaps I should just move to the US but with the god-bothering, shootings and rampant intake of GE food I think I'll give it a miss thanks. Oh and the lack of more than a week or two holidays... gackkk.
Re:Wow, wish I made that much... (Score:4, Insightful)
The shootings... I am not exactly sure what you mean by this. People do get shot yes.. but it is not like we all run around in fear of being shot. Statistically it is one of the least likely ways for you to die. Heart disease is much worse over here.
I am no apologist, but please pick on us for stuff that is actually bad like our idiot politicians that are bankrupting the country and such.
Jeremy
Better: be wide-minded (Score:5, Insightful)
In the long way, you'll have to switch between many OS, compilers, languages, etc. Sometimes you have to be pragmatic, just to pay the bills, but take conscience about that the IT field is very variable in the surface, but sound in the fundamentals. This is why I recommend generic Computer Science formation when young people ask me for an advice (plus some other "last wave" preparation, just in case).
Why .Net? (Score:5, Insightful)
Java gives you choice. Choice of IDE, choice of framework, choice of application server and perhaps most importantly choice of platform. All that and it runs as fast as
So is it any wonder that there are less
Re:Why .Net? (Score:4, Insightful)
So is it any wonder that there are less .Net developers.
More likely the story is that the old Windows developers are clinging to VC++ and VB instead of making the transition to the new .NET languages. Many of these .NET jobs are probably converting legacy Windows apps to the .NET platform. You can't just throw away a codebase worth years of labor and start over with Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, or some other buzzword compliant flavor of the month.
I know we have to deal with this transition at work, so probably many others will have to, too.
Web RAD (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why .Net? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why .Net? (Score:5, Insightful)
It can't be because CLR is faster than the JVM, it isn't.
The performance of the two runtimes are comparable. Neither kicks the other's butt. Like all things, you can find a benchmark that proves one is better than the other. At the end of the day, the apps that both Java and
as soon as you start to push its framework (as all real applications do) the
I would beg to disagree with this statement. Personal experience has dictated the exact opposite. But, it would help if you provided an area where you feel
Java gives you choice. Choice of IDE, choice of framework, choice of application server and perhaps most importantly choice of platform.
All that choice, as someone else pointed out, can be confusing. If you're building an application for an enterprise system you want to know what will get the job done. Not only that, but you want to know that it will be supported in a meaningful way down the road. The fact that Java has hundreds of frameworks (most of which duplicate functionality of other previously written frameworks) is actually a disservice. It's the old "jack of all trades, master of none", but applied to frameworks. The frameworks also mimic the fashion/pop culture than being technical solutions. This week it's struts, next week velocity, the following week some other framework. Enterprise solutions prefer solid choices, not the fad of the week.
You could make the argument that if the framework is open source, then you are guarranteed to have the framework down the road. But, that involves getting into the code and supporting the codebase. If it's critical to the company's environment they will do that regardless. In fact, likely the would have written/extended most of it themselves. The thing is that most of these frameworks are *not* critical in the "it gives us a market edge" sort of way. It doesn't make business sense to drain limited resources by supporting a toolset that turned out to be a fad and not properly supported down the road.
and expect to move over to Ruby on Rails (or whatever is flavor of the month) in 5 to 10 years
And that, dear
Despite what most
demand is back up (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thre
Software quality management is maturing into a discipline unto itself, and becoming much broader than testing. Manual testing is being replaced by automated tools.
Up here in Canada, I have seen an increase in the number of
QA is not testing, testing is not QA (Score:5, Insightful)
(Sorry, I'm not going to summarize a couple of decades of SWEng experience for Slashdot, just do more reading on the subject.)
Work experience (Score:5, Funny)
What's .NET? (Score:4, Informative)
What the article says is that Windows Programmers Fall in CNN's Top 5 In-Demand.
Resume interest (Score:4, Informative)
Crossover skills (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a lot of money to be had if you can understand business people and turn there needs into tools and applications quickly.
Supply and demand (Score:4, Funny)
And unfortunately, the guy we ended up hiring had lied on his resume about his 2 years of .NET experience... he was hoping to learn "on the job" as it were, and we ended up having to fire him and rewrite all the code he had written, which was, of course, awful.
And Tomorrow... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real skill that a programmer needs if he or she is going to make it is adaptability. Stop thinking in terms of languages, period. At the core, unless you're having to do some pretty wild coding, most work pretty much the same. Think in terms of projects. If you're a freelancer, you'll want to have your finger in lots of pies, and if you're an in-house programmer, well, you know, the boss man is going to tell you what you're coding in. Flex the conceptual skills, because last week it was Delphi and VB, yesterday it was Java, today it's .Net, tomorrow it will be Ruby, and who the hell knows what next week will bring.
Like it or not, the programmer is just as much a slave to consumerism as anyone else, though it comes from a different angle. Managers and customers are sold platforms and languages by marketing guys (you know, the kinds of guys that get these sorts of articles planted in CNN), and you're going to have to adapt. It's really sucky, but that's the nature of the game. It's not like the olden days where a guy could learn Cobol and have a job until he dropped dead into the card reader.
C#/ .Net Devs REALLY are in huge demand (Score:4, Interesting)
Enough ramble from me;
Chris
Re:I'm Job Searching (Score:5, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Visual Studio isn't a good IDE - it's a great one (especially compared to some of Microsoft's other software offerings). And I'm usually in the *nix crowd. Possibly vim or emacs are better, but they have a really high entrance barrier...
Re:I'm Job Searching (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm Job Searching (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm Job Searching (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm Job Searching (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm Job Searching (Score:4, Interesting)
This is probably a bit O/T, but since it seems people are interested enough to reply/mod up in this subthread...
That was the trend a few years ago, but I get the feeling it's been reversing for a while now. Java is a decent tool for plenty of jobs, but teaching really isn't one of them, and never was. There's just too much overhead and irrelevant detail before you get to the core concepts, and then part of the point of Java is that it's very limiting in what you can do in some key areas. For example, you can't teach a comprehensive understanding of OO when the assumption is that all classes share a common root and there's little consideration for multiple inheritance and mix-ins. You can argue that Java is a better language without those things, but how can you explain that to someone who doesn't know what they are?
I suspect the same is true of using any .Net language as your first. You're better off learning underlying programming techniques using something simple -- try Python for procedural, Smalltalk to understand objects, ML to learn functional programming, C to learn low-level stuff and basic data structures, etc. Then there are only a fairly small number of somewhat unique features in .Net languages, which you can pick up fairly quickly if you understand the basic ideas: delegates aren't particularly challenging to anyone who's done a bit of functional programming or even worked with function pointers, for example, though they might seem a bit strange to people who haven't experienced either. The rest is just a class library, and you learn it on demand, just as you would with Java's, or with CPAN, or whatever.
Re:I'm Job Searching (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. Shame has nothing to do with it. Feeding 3 kids, paying down a mortgage and putting gas in my Saturns has much more influence over me than your philosophical bullcrap. Shame... What Ever.
Final analysis: code is code is code. If coding for OSS projects floats your boat, then do so, Its a free world. I use Debian too, just not @ work.
BN, MCAD
Cheers, my man
Re:Kill me...kill me please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, just because C/C++ is a "faster" language, that doesn't imply its better suited to web development, or even windows app development. A strongly typed language with a predefined API like the
Now, this is the same argument as most people with common sense make with Java -- no on says its the right tool for every job, but it certainly can be the right tool for a lot of jobs. The same with C++. Do you really think we ought to code our web apps in C/C++? IF so, then why not just go all out and do it in assembly?
Re:Kill me...kill me please. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but sooner or later it means that there are a bunch of colleges churning out people who've become "experts" having taken a 6 week course in the language with no prior IT experience.
Doesn't take long for it to become apparent that so many people who claim to know the platform are inexperienced fools. Once that happens, salaries drop.
Re:Kill me...kill me please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule number 1) gain a solid understanding of computer, programming, design, network fundimentals. I doesn't matter if its Linux/Windows, Java/C++/.NET, etc, etc.
Once you have this solid foundation to build on then decide what industry segment you'd enjoy working in and learn that business segment inside and out.
I know as techies we often don't like dealing with getting our selfs "dirty" dealing with the business, we just like the tech but that will lead to a frustrating career in my opinion. Programming is becoming easier and easier, there is getting to be less and less value in being able to program any certain langauge, you can spend you entire life jumping between industries chasing the a few extra bucks in the lastest langauge or become an expert in an industry (where the real money is). When I'm looking to hire someone I couldn't care less what languages they know! As long as they are decent programmer its easy to teach them a new langange. Whats much more difficult is teaching them the fine points of our industry. So be it finance, retail, manufacturing, gaming, ect, etc. I think knowing a busniess well is much more important than what langauge you know.
Re:Kill me...kill me please. (Score:3)
No. Once that happens, salaries *increase* but hirings decrease.
Most employers try to *avoid* hiring
Re:.NET? Who cares? (Score:4, Funny)
Windows and/or
What list/article were you looking at?
Re:.NET? Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
He don't need no stinking lists! He once talked to a guy who once sat next to a guy who's brother read the VS.NET EULA! Live and in person!!! 'nuff said! Do not question his authoritaaaaa!
Re:.NET? Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember COM+, ActiveX, etc.? Every 3-4 years Microsoft comes out with their latest interfaces, buzzwords, etc. In a few years MS will be moving from Visual Fred t