With programmers in high demand, InfoWorld asks if it's really worthwhile for software developers to pursue certifications? "Based on input from those in the field, company executives, and recruiters, the answer is a resounding yes," "The primary benefit of certifications is to verify your skill sets," says Archie Payne, president of the recruiting firm CalTek Staffing... Certifications can be used to "reinforce the experience on your resume or demonstrate competencies beyond what you've done in the workplace in a prior role." Certifications show that you are committed to your field, invested in career growth, and connected to the broader technology landscape, Payne says. "Obtaining certification indicates that you are interested in learning new skills and continuing your learning throughout your career," he says...

In cases where multiple candidates are equally qualified, having a relevant certification can give one candidate an edge over others, says Aleksa Krstic, CTO at Localizely, a provider of a cloud-based translation platform. "When it comes to certifications in general, when we see a junior to mid-level developer armed with programming certifications, it's a big green light for our hiring team," says MichaÅ Kierul, who is CEO of software company INTechHouse.

"It's not just about the knowledge they have gained," Kierul says. "It speaks volumes about their passion, their drive to excel, and their commitment to continuous learning outside their regular work domain. It underscores a key trait we highly value: the desire to grow, learn, and elevate oneself in the world of technology."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Android is slowly entering the RISC-V era. So far we've seen Google say it wants to give the up-and-coming CPU architecture "tier-1" support in Android, putting RISC-V on equal footing with Arm. Qualcomm has announced the first mass-market RISC-V Android chip, a still-untitled Snapdragon Wear chip for smartwatches. Now Google has announced a timeline for developer tools via the Google Open Source Blog. The last post is titled "Android and RISC-V: What you need to know to be ready."

Getting the Android OS and app ecosystem to support a new architecture is going to take an incredible amount of work from Google and developers, and these tools are laying the foundation for that work. First up, Google already has the "Cuttlefish" virtual device emulator running, including a gif of it booting up. This isn't the official "Android Emulator" -- which is targeted at app developers doing app development -- Cuttlefish is a hardware emulator for Android OS development. It's the same idea as the Android Emulator but for the bottom half of the tech stack -- the kernel, framework, and hardware bits. Cuttlefish lets Google and other Android OS contributors work on a RISC-V Android build without messing with an individual RISC-V device. Google says it's working well enough now that you can download and emulate a RISC-V device today, though the company warns that nothing is optimized yet.

The next step is getting the Android Emulator (for app developers) up and running, and Google says: "By 2024, the plan is to have emulators available publicly, with a full feature set to test applications for various device form factors!" The nice thing about Android is that most app code is written with no architecture in mind -- it's all just Java/Kotlin. So once the Android RunTime starts spitting out RISC-V code, a lot of app code should Just Work. That means most of the porting work will need to go into things written in the NDK, the native developer kit, like libraries and games. The emulator will still be great for testing, though.

"More developers are looking for or are open to a new job now compared to the last two years," writes Stack Overflow's senior analyst for market research and insights — citing the results of their latest survey of developers in 107 different countries.

"More than 1,000 developers responded to this year's survey about jobs and 79% are at least considering new opportunities if not actively looking." New insights from these survey results show that new tech talent and late-career developers are both more likely to be looking. New developers have increasingly switched jobs compared to early- and mid-career developers in the last three years... Interest in looking for a new job drops as developers get older for new to mid-career (44 and younger) respondents (86% to 74%), but picks back up for those 55 to 64 (88%). Late-career developers acknowledge curiosity about other companies as their second top reason to look for a new job this year behind "better salary," which all age groups rank as their top reason. Curiosity grew in importance for late-career developers since last year more than all other age groups (32% vs. 22%) and is more important to this group than reasons other groups ranked higher such as working with new technology and growth opportunities...

In our 2023 Developer Survey, we started asking about AI and the sentiment around it in our developer community; results were very similar when we checked in again through this pulse survey (70% are using AI or planning to). Developers may also feel less enthusiastic about learning opportunities now that AI tools are rapidly developing to help many be more productive in their jobs (30% cite this as the top benefit).
Other interesting findings from the survey:

• Compared to the 2023 Developer Survey, 8% of developers have exited the technology industry and are increasingly filling roles in manufacturing and supply chain companies (11% vs. 7%)

• Technology is the industry most developers currently work in (46%), followed by manufacturing/supply chain (14%) and financial services (13%)

• New tech talent is onboarding at as many jobs by 24 as those up to 10 years their senior and this rapid experience cycle could rival the knowledge and experience of those they report to.

Long-time Slashdot reader CJSHayward shares "an attempt at Python virtual shell."

The home-brewed project "mixes your native shell with Python with the goal of letting you use your regular shell but also use Python as effectively a shell scripting language, as an alternative to your shell's built-in scripting language... I invite you to explore and improve it!"

From the web site: The Python Virtual Shell (pvsh or 'p' on the command line) lets you mix zsh / bash / etc. built-in shell scripting with slightly modified Python scripting. It's kind of like Brython [a Python implementation for client-side web programming], but for the Linux / Unix / Mac command line...

The core concept is that all Python code is indented with tabs, with an extra tab at the beginning to mark Python code, and all shell commands (including some shell builtins) have zero tabs of indentation. They can be mixed line-by-line, offering an opportunity to use built-in zsh, bash, etc. scripting or Python scripting as desired.

The Python is an incomplete implementation; it doesn't support breaking a line into multiple lines. Nonetheless, this offers a tool to fuse shell- and Python-based interactions from the Linux / Unix / Mac command line.

theodp writes: The BBC reports that Pope Francis has endorsed a global project aimed at getting more children into computer programming. The Code with Pope initiative, championed by Cosmose AI founder Miron Mironiuk, aims to bridge "the glaring disparities in education" across the globe by providing access to Python coding education through the free online learning platform Codeforia for students aged 11-15 across Europe, Africa and Latin America. Mironiuk will meet the Pope at the Vatican, but he admits he's not anticipating the pontiff to emulate his students in acquiring new skills. "I don't expect him to know Python very well," he said.

This is not the first time the Pope has encouraged young people to get into coding, having helped write a line of code together with tech-backed nonprofit Code.org in 2019. Pope Francis has also blessed AI's potential for good, meeting with Microsoft President Brad Smith (a Code.org Board member) to sign the Rome Call for AI Ethics early this year just ahead of Microsoft's $10B OpenAI investment and announcing "Artificial Intelligence and Peace" as the theme for World Day of Peace 2024 in August.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: SiFive, one of the key companies in the RISC-V ecosystem, is undergoing a significant restructuring marked by extensive layoffs and apparently a shift in business focus, reports More Than Moore. The company is seemingly retracting from its pre-designed core offerings, which means it may focus on custom cores instead. Meanwhile, the move casts uncertainty over SiFive's future in general along with its contributions to the RISC-V.

RISC-V has become quite a popular choice for making miniature low-cost cores, but there are several companies who are working on higher-performance RISC-V-based offerings. SiFive is one of such companies offering ready-to-use designs and also making custom cores based on what customers need. But now, SiFive has laid off somewhere between 100 to over 300 employees from around 700 in mid-October. Most of these were engineers, along with some sales and product personnel. Meanwhile, the company's leaders, including CEO Patrick Little, are still there. SiFive issued the following statement to Tom's Hardware: "As we identify and focus on our greatest opportunities, SiFive is shifting to best meet our customers' fast-changing requirements by undergoing a strategic refocusing of all our global teams. Unfortunately, with this realignment, approximately 20% of employees across all different business groups and levels were impacted. The employees are receiving severance and outplacement assistance.

SiFive continues to be excited about the long-term opportunities for the company and for RISC-V. The growth of the company has never been stronger and the opportunities never better. We are well funded for years in the future and continue to work with the market leaders in every segment. We remain focused on our four product groups, essential, intelligence, performance and automotive, and as we explained in a press event earlier this month, have a robust roadmap to meet the needs of these markets. We see tremendous new opportunities in AI and with Consumer products like wearables and mobile as Google brings Android to the RISC-V ecosystem. We will continue to offer customization for specific customers, offering standard and custom products where it makes sense from a business standpoint."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used a system called Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST) to help the agency scrutinize social media posts, determine if they are "derogatory" to the U.S., and then use that information as part of immigration enforcement, according to a new cache of documents reviewed by 404 Media. The documents peel back the curtain on a powerful system, both in a technological and a policy sense -- how information is processed and used to decide who is allowed to remain in the country and who is not.

GOST's catchphrase included in one document is "We see the people behind the data." A GOST user guide included in the documents says GOST is "capable of providing behavioral based internet search capabilities." Screenshots show analysts can search the system with identifiers such as name, address, email address, and country of citizenship. After a search, GOST provides a "ranking" from zero to 100 on what it thinks is relevant to the user's specific mission. The documents further explain that an applicant's "potentially derogatory social media can be reviewed within the interface." After clicking on a specific person, analysts can review images collected from social media or elsewhere, and give them a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." Analysts can also then review the target's social media profiles themselves too, and their "social graph," potentially showing who the system believes they are connected to.

DHS has used GOST since 2014, according to a page of the user guide. In turn, ICE has paid Giant Oak Inc., the company behind the system, in excess of $10 million since 2017, according to public procurement records. A Giant Oak and DHS contract ended in August 2022, according to the records. Records also show Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the State Department, the Air Force, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service which is part of the U.S. Treasury have all paid for Giant Oak services over the last nearly ten years. The FOIA documents specifically discuss Giant Oak's use as part of an earlier 2016 pilot called the "HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] PATRIOT Social Media Pilot Program." For this, the program would "target potential overstay violators from particular visa issuance Posts located in countries of concern." "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts and decide which of us is 'risky.' And agencies certainly shouldn't be buying this kind of black box technology in secret without any accountability. DHS needs to explain to the public how its systems determine whether someone is a 'risk' or not, and what happens to the people whose online posts are flagged by its algorithms," Patrick Toomey, Deputy Director of the ACLU's National Security Project, told 404 Media in an email. The documents come from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by both the ACLU and the ACLU of Northern California. Toomey from the ACLU then shared the documents with 404 Media.

theodp writes: In July, Seattle-based and tech-backed nonprofit Code.org announced its 10th policy recommendation for all states "to require all students to take computer science (CS) to earn a high school diploma." In August, Washington State Senator Lisa Wellman phoned-in her plans to introduce a bill to make computer science a Washington high school graduation requirement to the state's Board of Education, indicating that the ChatGPT-sparked AI craze and Code.org had helped convince her of the need. Wellman, a former teacher who worked as a Programmer/System Analyst in the 80's before becoming an Apple VP (Publishing) in the '90s, also indicated that exposure to CS given to students in fifth grade could be sufficient to satisfy a HS CS requirement. In 2019, Wellman sponsored Microsoft-supported SB 5088 (Bill details), which required all Washington state public high schools to offer a CS class. Wellman also sponsored SB 5299 in 2021, which allows high school students to take a computer science elective in place of a third year math or science course (that may be required for college admission) to count towards graduation requirements.

And in October, Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi appeared before the Washington State Board of Education, driving home points Senator Wellman made in August with a deck containing slides calling for Washington to "require that all students take computer science to earn a high school diploma" and to "require computer science within all teacher certifications." Like Wellman, Partovi suggested the CS high school requirement might be satisfied by middle school work (he alternatively suggested one year of foreign language could be dropped to accommodate a HS CS course). Partovi noted that Washington contained some of the biggest promoters of K-12 CS in Microsoft Philanthropies' TEALS (TEALS founder Kevin Wang is a member of the Washington State Board of Education) and Code.org, as well some of the biggest funders of K-12 CS in Amazon and Microsoft -- both which are $3,000,000+ Platinum Supporters of Code.org and have top execs on Code.org's Board of Directors.

Coding help forum Stack Overflow is laying off 28 percent of its staff as it struggles toward profitability. From a report: CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar announced today that the company is "significantly reducing the size of our go-to-market organization," as well as "supporting teams" and other groups. After the team doubled its employee base last year, Chandrasekar told The Verge's Nilay Patel in an interview that about 45 percent of those hires were for its go-to-market sales team, which he said was "obviously the largest team." Prosus acquired Stack Overflow in a $1.8 billion deal in mid-2021.

ZDNet's senior contributing editor also maintains software, and recently tested ChatGPT on two fixes for bugs reported by users, and a new piece of code to add a new feature, It's a "real-world" coding test, "about pulling another customer support ticket off the stack and working through what made the user's experience go south." First...

please rewrite the following code to change it from allowing only integers to allowing dollars and cents (in other words, a decimal point and up to two digits after the decimal point). ChatGPT responded by explaining a two-step fix, posting the modified code, and then explaining the changes. "I dropped ChatGPT's code into my function, and it worked. Instead of about two-to-four hours of hair-pulling, it took about five minutes to come up with the prompt and get an answer from ChatGPT." Next up was reformatting an array. I like doing array code, but it's also tedious. So, I once again tried ChatGPT. This time the result was a total failure. By the time I was done, I probably fed it 10 different prompts. Some responses looked promising, but when I tried to run the code, it errored out. Some code crashed; some code generated error codes. And some code ran, but didn't do what I wanted. After about an hour, I gave up and went back to my normal technique of digging through GitHub and StackExchange to see if there were any examples of what I was trying to do, and then writing my own code.
Then he posted the code for a function handling a Wordpress filter, along with the question: "I get the following error. Why?" Within seconds, ChatGPT responded... Just as it suggested, I updated the fourth parameter of the add_filter() function to 2, and it worked!

ChatGPT took segments of code, analyzed those segments, and provided me with a diagnosis. To be clear, in order for it to make its recommendation, it needed to understand the internals of how WordPress handles hooks (that's what the add_filter function does), and how that functionality translates to the behavior of the calling and the execution of lines of code. I have to mark that achievement as incredible — undeniably 'living in the future' incredible...

As a test, I also tried asking ChatGPT to diagnose my problem in a prompt where I didn't include the handler line, and it wasn't able to help. So, there are very definite limitations to what ChatGPT can do for debugging right now, in 2023...

Could I have fixed the bug on my own? Of course. I've never had a bug I couldn't fix. But whether it would have taken two hours or two days (plus pizza, profanity, and lots of caffeine), while enduring many interruptions, that's something I don't know. I can tell you ChatGPT fixed it in minutes, saving me untold time and frustration.
The article does include a warning. "AI is essentially a black box, you're not able to see what process the AI undertakes to come to its conclusions. As such, you're not really able to check its work... If it turns out there is a problem in the AI-generated code, the cost and time it takes to fix may prove to be far greater than if a human coder had done the full task by hand."

But it also ends with this prediction. "I see a very interesting future, where it will be possible to feed ChatGPT all 153,000 lines of code and ask it to tell you what to fix... I can definitely see a future where programmers can simply ask ChatGPT (or a Microsoft-branded equivalent) to find and fix bugs in entire projects."

"The gap between C# and Java never has been so small," according to October's update for TIOBE's "Programming Community Index".

"Currently, the difference is only 1.2%, and if the trends remain this way, C# will surpass Java in about 2 month's time." Java shows the largest decline of -3.92% and C# the largest gain of +3.29% of all programming languages (annually).

The two languages have always been used in similar domains and thus have been competitors for more than 2 decades now. Java's decline in popularity is mainly caused by Oracle's decision to introduce a paid license model after Java 8. Microsoft took the opposite approach with C#. In the past, C# could only be used as part of commercial tool Visual Studio. Nowadays, C# is free and open source and it's embraced by many developers.

There are also other reasons for Java's decline. First of all, the Java language definition has not changed much the past few years and Kotlin, its fully compatible direct competitor, is easier to use and free of charge.
"Java remains a critical language in enterprise computing," argues InfoWorld, "with Java 21 just released last month and Java 22 due next March. And free open source binaries of Java still are available via OpenJDK." InfoWorld also notes TIOBE's ranking is different than other indexes. TIOBE's top 10:

1. Python (14.82%)
2. C (12.08%)
3. C++ (10.67%)
4. Java (8.92%)
5. C# (7.71%)
6. JavaScript (2.91%)
7. Visual Basic (2.13%)
8. PHP (1.9%)
9. SQL (1.78%)
10. Assembly (1.64%)

And here's the Pypl Popularity of Programming Language (based on searches for language tutorials on Google):

1. Python, with a 28.05% share
2. Java (15.88%)
3. JavaScript (9.27%)
4. C# (6.79%)
5. C/C++ (6.59%)
6. PHP (4.86%)
7. R (4.45%)
8. TypeScript (2.93%)
9. Swift (2.69%)
10. Objective-C (2.29%)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla has officially released its API documentation to support third-party apps -- after years of operating in a gray zone with an unofficial API. For now, it is geared toward fleet management, but developers are hoping it is a first step toward creating a healthy app ecosystem. [...] So far, it still only covers the command that you can send to your car through the Tesla app, and it can ping the data from your car that goes to the app. In short, it is going to make official all the third-party fleet management apps, smartwatch integration apps, etc.

In the documentation, Tesla writes that all third-party apps are going to have to go through the new API starting next year: "Following the release of Tesla Vehicle Command SDK support for REST API vehicle command endpoints is now reaching end of life. Starting 2024 most vehicles will require sending commands via Tesla Vehicle Command SDK." Tesla put together a process to onboard those apps on its website. If you are using some of those apps, you will likely receive a notification to give them official authorization to access car data.

Tom Mitchelhill reports via CoinTelegraph: Crypto exchange FTX used hidden Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance fund -- a pool of funds meant to prevent user losses during huge liquidation events -- according to testimony from FTX co-founder Gary Wang. In a damning testimony on Oct. 6, FTX's former chief technology officer, Gary Wang, said that FTX's so-called $100 million insurance fund in 2021 was fabricated and never contained any of the exchanges' FTX tokens (FTT) as claimed. Instead, the figure shown to the public was calculated by multiplying the daily trading volume of the FTX Token by a random number close to 7,500.

When the prosecution surfaced the above tweet -- among other public statements of its value -- and asked Wang whether this amount was accurate, he replied with a single word: "No." "For one, there is no FTT in the insurance fund. It's just the USD number. And, two, the number listed here does not match what was in the database." An exhibit in the Oct. 6 trial shows the alleged code used to generate the size of the so-called "Backstop Fund" or public insurance fund.

FTX's insurance fund was designed to protect user losses in case of huge, sudden market movements and its value was often touted on its website and social media. According to Wang's testimony, however, the amount contained within the fund was often insufficient to cover these losses. [...] In addition to revealing the allegedly fraudulent nature of FTX's insurance fund, Wang claimed that Bankman-Fried prompted him and Nishad Singh to implement an "allow_negative" balance feature in the code at FTX, which allowed Alameda Research to trade with near-unlimited liquidity on the crypto exchange.

Tom Singleton reports via the BBC: A man got so fed up with foxes and badgers fouling in his garden that he adapted cameras to help repel them. James Milward linked the Ring cameras at his Surrey home to a device that emits high frequency sounds. He then trained the system using hundreds of images of the nocturnal nuisances so it learned to trigger the noise when it spotted them. Mr Milward said it "sounds crazy" but the gadget he called the Furbinator 3000 has kept his garden clean.

Getting the camera system to understand what it was looking at was not straightforward though. "At first it recognised the badger as an umbrella," he said. "I did some fine tuning and it came out as a sink, or a bear if I was lucky. Pretty much a spectacular failure." He fed in pictures of the animals through an artificial intelligence process called machine learning and finally, the device worked. The camera spotted a badger, and the high frequency sound went off to send the unwanted night-time visitor on its way and leave the garden clean for Mr Milward's children to play in. The code for the Furbinator 3000 is open source, with detailed instructions available in Milward's Medium post.

Thomas Claburn reports via The Register: Microsoft has stopped developing VBScript after a 27-year relationship and plans to remove the scripting language entirely in a future Windows release. The Windows biz said on Monday that VBScript, short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition, has been deprecated in an update to its list of "Deprecated features for Windows client." "VBScript is being deprecated," Microsoft said. "In future releases of Windows, VBScript will be available as a feature on demand before its removal from the operating system."

VBScript debuted in 1996 and its most recent release, version 5.8, dates back to 2010. It is a scripting language, and was for a while widely used among system administrators to automate tasks until it was eclipsed by PowerShell, which debuted in 2006. "Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition brings active scripting to a wide variety of environments, including Web client scripting in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Web server scripting in Microsoft Internet Information Service," Redmond explains in its help documentation. Unfortunately, Microsoft never managed to get other browser makers to support VBScript, so outside of Microsoft-exclusive environments, web developers tended to favor JavaScript for client-side tasks.

Dean Takahashi reports via VentureBeat: John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, has resigned from the company in the wake of a pricing controversy that left developers in open revolt. Unity said in a press release that James M. Whitehurst has been appointed interim CEO and president of the company. Meanwhile, hoping to avoid a stock panic, Unity said that it is reaffirming its previous guidance for its fiscal third quarter financial results, which will be reported on November 9.

Roelof Botha, lead independent director of the Unity board, has been appointed chairman. Riccitiello will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition, the company said. The news isn't a surprise as Unity angered a lot of its loyal game developers a few weeks ago after pushing through a price increase based on numbers of downloads -- and then retracted it after an uproar. Unity said the board will initiate a comprehensive search process, with the assistance of a leading executive search firm, to identify a permanent CEO. "It's been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve our employees, customers, developers and partners, all of whom have been instrumental to the company's growth," Riccitiello said in a statement. "I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the company's future success."

Still using Python 3.7? Even Microsoft thinks it is time to move on after the Windows behemoth finally deprecated support for the language in the October 2023 release of its extension for Visual Studio Code. From a report: Python 3.7 reached its end of life in June but remains popular. According to some statistics, many sites use version 3.7 -- 17.2 percent of those using Python 3.x by some estimates. Python 3.6, which reached the end of life in 2021, accounts for 28.9 percent and is still the most popular. Python 3.8 sits between the two, accounting for 23.3 percent.

Doubtless mindful of its popularity, Microsoft confirmed there were no plans to strip the code from the Visual Studio Code extension deliberately, saying: "We expect the extension will continue to work unofficially with Python 3.7 for the foreseeable future." However, there are no guarantees that something won't go wrong without official support. Python has moved to an annual cadence for end of life. Python 3.8 is due to reach end of life in October 2024, meaning that official support in Microsoft's Visual Studio Code extension will end with the first release of 2025, and so on. According to Microsoft, the Python extension for Visual Studio works with all actively supported versions of Python. 3.12 is the latest version and, unsurprisingly, has yet to influence the statistics too much. 3.13 is penciled in for release next year.

"OpenAI has unveiled the Beta version of its Python SDK," reports Analytics India Magazine, "marking a significant step towards enhancing access to the OpenAI API for Python developers." The OpenAI Python library offers a simplified way for Python-based applications to interact with the OpenAI API, while providing an opportunity for early testing and feedback before the official launch of version 1.0. It streamlines the integration process by providing pre-defined classes for API resources, dynamically initialising from API responses, ensuring compatibility across various OpenAI API versions...

Developers can find comprehensive documentation and code examples in the OpenAI Cookbook for various tasks, including classification, clustering, code search, customising embeddings, question answering, recommendations, visualisation of embeddings, and more...

This comes just weeks before OpenAI's first developer conference, OpenAI DevDay.
More details in OpenAI's official announcement at PyPi.org.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "42 states to go!" exclaimed Code.org to its 1+ million Twitter followers as it celebrated victorious efforts to pass legislation making North Carolina the 8th state to pass a high school computer science graduation requirement, bringing the tech-backed nonprofit a step closer to its goal of making CS a requirement for a HS diploma in all 50 states. But as states make good on pledges made to tech CEOs to make their schoolchildren CS savvy, Education Week cautions that K-12 CS has a big certified teacher shortage problem.
From the article: When trying to ensure all students get access to the knowledge they need for college and careers, sometimes policy can get ahead of teacher capacity. Computer science is a case in point. As of 2022, every state in the nation has passed at least one law or policy intended to promote K-12 computer science education, and 53 percent of high schools offered basic computer science courses that year, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Code.org."

"'There's big money behind making [course offerings] go up higher and faster,' thanks to federal and state grants as well as private foundations, said Paul Bruno, an assistant professor of education policy, organization, and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "But then that raises the question, well, who are we getting to teach these courses...?"

Bruno's work in states such as California and North Carolina suggests that few of those new computer science classes are staffed with teachers who are certified in that subject."

"Python 3 was by far the choice over Python 2 in a late-2022 survey of more than 23,000 Python developers," reports InfoWorld, "but the percentage of respondents using Python 2 actually ticked up compared to the previous year." Results of the sixth annual Python Developers Survey, conducted by the Python Software Foundation and software tools maker JetBrains, were released September 27. The Python Developers Survey 2022 report indicates that 93% of respondents had adopted Python 3, while only 7% were still using Python 2. In the 2021 survey, though, 95% used Python 3 while 5% used Python 2. In 2020, Python 3 held a 94% to 6% edge. Dating back to 2017, 75% used Python 3 and 25% used Python 2...

The 2022 report said 29% of respondents still use Python 2 for data analysis, 24% use Python 2 for computer graphics, and 23% used Python 2 for devops. The survey also found that 45% of respondents are still using Python 3.10, which arrived two years ago, while just 2% still use Python 3.5 or lower. (Python 3.11 was released October 24, 2022, right when the survey was being conducted.)
Other findings from the survey:

• 21% said they used Python for work only, while 51% said they used it for work and personal/educational use or side projects, and 21% said they used Python only for personal projects.

• 85% of respondents said Python was their main language (rather than a secondary language).

• The survey also gives the the top "secondary languages" for the surveyed Python developers as JavaScript (37%), HTML/CSS (37%), SQL (35%), Bash/Shell (32%), and then C/C++ (27%).

• When asked what they used Python for most, 22% said "Web Development", 18% said "Data Analysis," 12% said "Machine Learning," and 10% said "DevOps/System Administration/Writing Automation Scripts."