Which Programming Language Pays the Best? Probably Python 277
Nerval's Lobster writes: What programming language will earn you the biggest salary over the long run? According to Quartz, which relied partially on data compiled by employment-analytics firm Burning Glass and a Brookings Institution economist, Ruby on Rails, Objective-C, and Python are all programming skills that will earn you more than $100,000 per year. But salary doesn't necessarily correlate with popularity. Earlier this year, for example, tech-industry analyst firm RedMonk produced its latest ranking of the most-used languages, and Java/JavaScript topped the list, followed by PHP, Python, C#, and C++/Ruby. Meanwhile, Python was the one programming language to appear on Dice's recent list of the fastest-growing tech skills, which is assembled from mentions in Dice job postings. Python is a staple language in college-level computer-science courses, and has repeatedly topped the lists of popular programming languages as compiled by TIOBE Software and others. Should someone learn a language just because it could come with a six-figure salary, or are there better reasons to learn a particular language and not others?
Ada Engineer... (Score:5, Informative)
Ada is paying me ~$140k
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Ada tells all her men that, until...
Re:Ada Engineer... but why? (Score:2)
A lot of that is the Security Clearance and nature of the work you do with Ada. Not the language per se, but what you're doing code for.
You can make a mint on certain embedded assembler coding for highly classified projects.
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Should you be telling people that?
Re:Ada Engineer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exceptions???
I very much doubt that a high salary for an Ada engineer is an exception, it would be suprising if there are any low-wage Ada jobs at all. The same goes for COBOL, without doubt.
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For a senior level position??? They need to update their salary reference tables.
Re:Ada Engineer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sigh.... *Raises hand*
Hey, in my defense, when most people say mid-west they really mean Chicago. And the cost of living there is not the same as here in miniscule Quad Cities. I know it's only three hours away, but it's still a difference.
Here, I only know of CTOs and one developer making over 6 figures. Most of the makerspace is making under 80K, with a couple exceptions.
The biggest factor is that, for an embedded guy like me, there are only about 3 companies that would employ me. And only one big fish. (It's John Deere). There are plenty of small side players for general business-level developers, and web-devs can live anywhere, right?
But yeah, with about a decade experience, I'm kinda feeling underpaid. The good news is that the whole family is headed for Colorado, where I hear there's more opportunity.
With a combined income of ~150k, we live a comfortable life in a 3 bed 3 bath and have saved up a net worth of about 300k.
That's two engineers with no kids most of that time. We certainly feel like one of the wealthier people in the area.
Re:Ada Engineer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even cost of living adjusted you're being screwed. A senior in Seattle (more expensive, but not silicon valley prices) will make 120K plus stock. A senior in the valley can make 160+ not counting equity and bonuses. A senior coming off a big success like working at a sold startup can make twice what your combined salary is (that's not counting what he makes on the sale itself). And cost of living isn't as huge a deal as many people make it for two reasons:
1)The only thing that's hugely different is housing. Even if you pay 2-3x rent, you won't pay 2-3x for car insurance, the car itself, food, etc. That tends to be more 10-15% max (and usually much less, some things are even cheaper). You're most likely figuring the COLA wrong. The right way to do it is to break your costs into categories and figure out the adjustment for each category, not straight multiply by the rent adjustment.
2)If you save the same percentage in either place, you should still prefer the place that pays more because you can downsize someplace cheaper at retirement.
If you have personal reasons for wanting to live out there, that's totally different and understandable. But understand that you are getting fucked financially by it, it isn't just a cost of living difference.
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What is that in salary adjusted for local cost of living. $80k is minimum wage in Silly Valley, but in the mid west, which is a huge swath of land from Western PA to Eastern CO, $150K can buy you a nice house in a decent neighborhood. While in Silly Valley you would probably have to pay $500K + a horrific commute.
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250K what? Rupees? Rubles
Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Should someone learn a language just because it could come with a six-figure salary, or are there better reasons to learn a particular language and not others?
Yes.
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Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I was wondering what languages I should learn myself. I have some experience with C++, but that's over 10 years ago, and only as a hobby. I've been thinking about picking it back up, but wasn't sure if there were better options. Since I'm an adult and looking to be able to support my family, money certainly is one of the leading factors as to which language I want to get into.
A more relevant question than money may be what interests you? Automation, mobile apps, database, web, etc.? You may have the potential to make more money as a Python programmer, but will a few thousand on average more per year make the job itself more worthwhile? Would, say, only $95k per year to program C++ -- if the specific job was more to your liking -- be a deal breaker?
Another way to look at it: If you are happier doing the job, might that make you perform better and therefor out-perform the industry average?
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This. Mod parent up.
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All of the reasons that you like Java are the very same reasons that I opt to feed my family coding in the various .Net technologies (ASP.NET, C#, Javascript, HTML, etc.). Microsoft is very developer friendly (just as Balmer).....but seriously, Visual Studio is a great IDE.
But I firmly agree with the aspect of taking less money to do what you love; that's far more important than money. My worst day doing my current job is better than the best day at my previous job.
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I'd wager that people who are doing what they're interested in make more anyway because they learn how to do things their uninterested peers don't care about.
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Indeed.
Plus by having an outside interest, they tend to have a greater domain awareness and are able to talk more intelligently to customers and maybe even contribute business ideas.
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it's complete failure to prevent its stated goal
Speaking of shitty code, you do realise that expression resolves to "met its goal", right?
Problem domain, not language (Score:5, Informative)
It's the problem domain, not the language. Front-end webdev seems more concerned with language fashion, and kernel work still scoffs at anything but C, but in-between language doesn't seem to matter that much.
I've most of my career writing no-UI usermode code, and employers haven't much cared which language I knew. It's sort-of moved from C++/C#/Java being interchangeable to Java/C#/Python, though many hiring managers still seem skeptical of Python as a "real language" (I expect that will change over time).
It's not your ability to bang out code in any language that will advance your career anyhow - whether tech track or management, it's one set of leadership skills or another that come to matter most.
Re:Problem domain, not language (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly right. I'm a scientist, not a programmer, and we use Python in my group because it is clean, easy, and gets the job done. When we hire people for scientific programming they typically use some mix of Python, C++ (ROOT, anyone?), and Fortran. These engineers are sought-after because they know how to solve tricky large-scale mathematical problems using computers, not because of a specific language.
So it isn't a matter of "programming language x is valuable", but more a matter of "valuable people use programming language x".
Re:Problem domain, not language (Score:5, Informative)
With Python many problems have either already been solved or there are several, typically free resources that make solutions easier. I also use Matlab which, far from free, is also supported widely.
Re:Problem domain, not language (Score:4, Funny)
So if I program in python people will stop calling me retarded?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he said. And I kinda doubt people will ever stop calling you retarded.
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Front-end webdev seems more concerned with language fashion, and kernel work still scoffs at anything but C, but in-between language doesn't seem to matter that much.
Unless you're doing extremely challenging things...the kind that is often high-risk but also high-reward.
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Leadership skills... Sorry I agree with most of what you said except that part. Never has such a word had such an ironic meaning as the word "leadership" in context of the corporation.
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Every corporate development team I've been on has had a leader, even if unofficially. Technical leadership is essential for developing talent, authoritatively resolving conflicts, and mentoring new and younger developers. A team without such leadership is dysfunctional from the get-go.
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context of the corporation
and your response
dysfunctional from the get-go
is basically the same thing :)
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There are major software-focused corporations where the software developer culture is not dysfunctional, and it's probably no accident they're many of the industry leaders (outside of gaming, for whatever reason, where the larger the corporation the deeper the circle of Hell for the devs).
Re:Problem domain, not language (Score:5, Insightful)
Never confuse "leadership" with "management". I'm quite well compensated, and a key reason is my ability to drag projects across the finish line, and the primary obstacles are often managers and petty territorial pissing. Another reason is that I make a concerted effort to raise both the code quality and developer morale around me - often by forcing a change in toolchain or automation through the bureaucracy to address whatever's frustrating developers most day-to-day. Sure, some companies don't value that sort of thing, but plenty do - enough for a solid career.
False advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a single programming language makes the best figures in a year for you..but the ability to adapt and learn new technologies as well as completing your task does.
Keep Learning (Score:3)
Once you learn a certain number of programing languages it becomes really easy to pick up new ones in the same style. Python, C, C++, Perl, Java, Ruby, etc. are all very similar and there's a point where you'll know enough that you'll just have to google the 'if' and loop syntax and you're good to go. After that you can learn different programming paradigms like functional programming or how assemblers work. And once you're there, you can pretty much pick up any programming language or API you need to
Re:False advertising (Score:4, Insightful)
Contrary to your popular belief, COBOL and Fortran are not disappearing. But they do pay well. They are left out of these type of surveys because they are not sexy and not buzz worthy. There will be millions (billions) of lines of COBOL still in production long after Ruby is dead and buried.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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The most lucrative programming career is one where you constantly jump between short-term fads.
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Re:How much of that is big data-driven? (Score:4, Informative)
Why program in Python (Score:3, Insightful)
You should program in Python because it's a great language.
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It's also the slowest [debian.org] language, at least among the common ones. In fact it's so slow that it's even a lousy replacement for Basic, because most Basic implementations are faster. And it's not standardized.
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I agree, but remember that Python is interpreted in exactly the same way that Java is: both compile high level code to bytecode and run it on virtual machines. PyPy selectively uses LLVM to compile that bytecode into assembler for some enormous performance boosts, much as the Java JIT compiler does.
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I don't know. While I personally don't really care which programming language is used and have no quirks with programming in Python if I had to (I've done it in the past), it's not easy to see why Python became so popular except for confirming the widely held suspicion that only lousy programming languages can become popular. Even Ada has higher productivity, testability and maintainability, and it's as fast as C.
To make things worse, Python is also slower than Ruby, Scala, Clojure, Racket, Common Lisp (sbc
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As a roundabout answer to your final question... when there is a "technology" (I use that word loosely when describing computer languages) that takes all of 5 minutes to grasp then you are going to get a lot of practitioners of that tech being the type who picked it up in 5 minutes or less. Had they spent the requisite number of years using different idioms in different languages in different industries you can be sure that they would have firmly placed python back down after playing with it for a few weeks
Re:Why program in Python (Score:5, Insightful)
They think it's great because, in a tragic case of hilarity, jumping into code with minimal design is what python is great at.
We think it's great because, among other things, it has first-class functions and a very high code:boilerplate ratio. This lets us write very concise, readable, and maintainable code.
If you're a diligent programmer in python/php/javascript/etc then, in each function you write, you're going to double-check that the type passed in is correct, anyway.
Eww, no. I've never seen good Python code that asserts types because it's not the idiom for you to care. For instance, suppose you write a function like:
In this case, obj might be a file, or a web request, or a string (via the StringIO interface). Who knows? Who cares? As long as obj.read returns something, it works. BTW, this is supremely nice for unit testing when you don't really want to hit an SQL server 1,000 times in a tight loop.
Now, you could write something like assert isinstance(obj, file) to guarantee that you're only dealing with file objects. Of course, that lays waste to the whole concept of duck typing and people will laugh at you for doing it. So dropping that bad idea, you could write assert hasattr(obj, 'read') to ensure that the object has the needed methods. But why? Python gives you that check for free when you try to call the method. Let it do the heavy lifting and concentrate on the parts of the problem you actually care about.
Exceptions are one of the worst things to have become common - an "error" is almost always only caught outside the scope that it occurred in, hence the stack has already been unwound and thus there is no sane way to fix the error and retry the operation that caused the exception.
Yeah, that would be terrible. You almost never use them in Python like that, partially because Python tends to have a vastly shallower call stack than, say, Java (largely because you don't need 10 layers of abstraction between bits of code thanks to the duck typing we just talked about).
I think it boils down to you not knowing idiomatic Python. That's OK. I'm ignorant about lots of things, too. But I think you'd find that you enjoy it more if you stop trying to write C or Java in Python, because that almost never works out well.
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Whatevs. I co-built a web service on Python that handled 250,000 requests per second with a horizontally scaleable design. We could bump that up to 1,000,000 requests per second by deploying 4 times the servers (which isn't as easy as it sounds because most things don't scale out well like that). I left that company and went to another employer that handled "only" 80,000 requests per second, averaged over a month. If you can ditch the chattiness of HTTP, well, I've written single-threaded UDP servers in Pyt
Re:Why program in Python (Score:4, Informative)
That's not really fair. There are really only two versions: Python 2.7, which is mostly backward compatible earlier Python 2.x, and Python 3.x, which is a new, incompatible language similar in spirit to Python 2. The stated reason for radically breaking compatibility with Python 3 is "because Unicode". I don't much buy that, but whatever. Python 3 uptake has been slow because of the backward incompatibility, but it's clearly the future of the language. At the same time, Python 2.7 is still by no means a bad language, as long as you don't care about Unicode.
There's also Jython and IronPython, but those aren't official versions of the language.
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P.S. I would have thought your statements more appropriate to Perl than Python:
I came to python after using perl for over 10 years - and have never looked back. Hands down it can do everything perl can do - while providing clear, readable code that is consistent from one developer to the next...you have to really dig down into the bowls of python to create anything that would make me scratch my head - whereas that is trivial to accomplish with perl - and was the cause of many headaches over the years whe
Re:Why program in Python (Score:4, Interesting)
Hands down it can do everything perl can do - while providing clear, readable code that is consistent from one developer to the next.
My experience is different. Dramatically different, actually. I've seen very few examples of readable python, and very little consistency between developers.
I suppose you're referring to the controversial the white space rules? The killer-feature that can be replicated for any sensible language with a keystroke in virtually every editor? Or, if you prefer: The reason that anonymous functions in Python are crippled?
I'd even go as far as to say it's white space rules make Python code significantly more difficult to read, as you can't clearly see where blocks begin and end, particularly when the indentation level changes by more than one, which happens quite frequently.
I debugged my last hanging curly brace/missing semicolon long ago.
I'll bet it was easier than hunting down the invisible bugs from mixed tabs/spaces or introduced by your editor mangling indentation while moving bits of code around. You know, problems you're actually likely to encounter when using Python, unlike your examples.
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My experience is different. Dramatically different, actually. I've seen very few examples of readable python, and very little consistency between developers.
Every language can be made readable or unreadable, which depends on the programmer. Python culture though actively pushes writing in a 'pythonic' way, which mostly boils down to as simple and readable as possible and repeating yourself as little as possible. That results in very readable code. Perl culture on the other hand often actively takes pride in getting as much code as possible into a single line which makes code completely unreadable, or actively trying to make it unreadable. If your developers are
Nag, Nag, Nag. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bet it was easier than hunting down the invisible bugs from mixed tabs/spaces or introduced by your editor mangling indentation while moving bits of code around.
Which is easily solvable by setting spaces-for-tabs in your editor (and which I do when working in Python, ... or Java... or C/C++... or pretty much everything because that really solves a whole bunch of issues.)
And violations of spacing/indentation rules are trivially caught by with automated testing/CI, which I do with Jython... or Java... or even C/C++ .... or pretty much everything whenever possible because it is the sane thing to do.
I've only been doing Python for 2 years, including C-to-Python bindings using Python 2.7x, Java-to-Jython/WLST integration (with Jython/WLST being based on Python 2.2), and a tiny bit of Windows automation with IronPython.
Most of my background is Java for enterprise development and C/C++ for embedded/system-level development.
As such, I initially I stumbled across some of the nuisances with Python, the spaces, the lack of a stack trace on exceptions, or the fact that exception hierarchies are slightly, but oh-so-different between Python 2.2 and 2.7. But past those stumbles, I simply use tool configs, procedures and coding standards to deal with them.
And that is the same when I do Java or C++. Each has their own gotchas and effective Java/C++ developers simply do the same - use tool configs, procedures and coding standards to deal with them.
Why would anyone mix tabs with spaces. Use one or the other, regardless of whether you do Python or not. If I see a code base in any language that has that shit mixed up, I know I'm bound to find some other stupid shit in the code.
Why? Because mixing tabs with spaces all over the place, like spelling errors, lack of meaningful comments and/or deeply nested code (arrow anti-patterns [codinghorror.com]), these are all proxies for bad coding practices.
I originally found Python indentation rules to be annoying. After all, how hard is it to auto-indent from an IDE or a command line (or force an auto-indent of code before checking in, or en mass before merging back to the trunk)?
But you know what, people are idiots, and I've learned IN GENERAL not to expect them to write clean code (nor tell clean code from apple pie.)
It is still possible to write horrible Python code, but it is a lot harder to do so in it than in Java or C++ or C#. I would still have preferred to see Python having start and end markers for blocks (a-la begin/end or curly braces) on top of indentation rules.
But it is still a good compromise. Hard to see where code blocks end? Increase indentation. Better yet, refactor that shit out. If I see I have a harder time telling the end of a block, chances are that block is already large (time to refactor out), or that there is a lot of code around it (time to split it into better levels of abstraction).
You know, the kind of stuff we are supposed to do in any language anyways.
Besides, accidental violations that render Python code invalid, those things are trivially solvable by doing shit we are supposed to be doing anyway (namely, avoiding mixing tabs and spaces, automated testing, keeping code small and at least dry-run your shit before committing it to source control.)
I'm not saying programming in Python is Nirvana (for some things, it truly sucks.) But some of the things people complain about, they are just asinine complains for shit that broke because, on a fundamental level, they are not following good industrial practices IMO.
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Within 2.x, you'll find many problems with backward compatibility. 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5 -- 2.6 got a lot of bad press, but it did break less stuff than the previous versions, so I'm excluding it for fairness.
I'm not sure what you're complaining about; no one is forcing you to upgrade versions if you don't want/need to, right?
How long will users be able to maintain an installation of, for example, 2.4 if their software depends on it? Will there even be anyone around who remembers that requirement in 5 or 10 years time? What about security issues? 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 all have notable security issues.
Software should have a life-
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Would you care to enlighten us with an example of a popular real-world language that has not had problems with backwards compatiblity?
Which job website pays the best? (Score:5, Funny)
Fuuuuuck Yoooooouuuuuuuu Dice!
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Nerval's Lobster strikes again with another Dicevertisement. For those who don't know, Nerval's Lobster is the unofficially official Dice astroturf account. And everything he posts is drivel.
C pays well. (Score:2)
But only in coins.
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What does learning a language really mean? (Score:2)
Sometimes, the more you learn, the more you understand you are not an expert.
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That would be the ability to not look like a fool when your knowledge of the language is challenged in an interview.
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Well, then the correct answer is actually what the GP said: You're "good enough" in a language when your command of it is sufficient to make it past the interview.
At what level can you say the same about any foreign (human) language? When can I say "I speak English"? When I can make Shakespeare look like he needs a thesaurus to compete with me, or is it enough to read enough LOLcats and mimic their expression? Same deal, you're good enough when you're good enough.
C++/Ruby hotness (Score:5, Funny)
and Java/JavaScript topped the list, followed by PHP, Python, C#, and C++/Ruby.
C/C++ is old, C#/C++ is tired, but C++/Ruby is so hot right now.
Not COBOL? (Score:2)
I thought maintaining legacy systems using COBOL was the road to riches. Is that a myth?
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The data is compiled from job listings. How often do job listings show salaries? Not very often. The ones that do tend to be government jobs or fake job postings trying to fulfill the requirement for an H1 visa.
Furthermore, the salaries listed are crap. If you look here, even developers in the midwest make more than what they are listing. [wealthfront.com]
To add randomness to this post, someone told me about a COBOL project that was the best he'd ever worked on. It had buil
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The best reasons to learn Python (Score:2)
For the best reasons to learn Python, see The Zen of Python [python.org]. If Python happens to pay more, that's just gravy.
That said, it seems hard to believe that people would get paid extra to work in such a pleasant language. If so, maybe Adam Smith had it all wrong when he said [econlib.org]:
First, The wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment...The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
Perhaps florists soon will be making more money than plumbers. Which would really stink.
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For the best reasons to learn Python, see The Zen of Python [python.org]. If Python happens to pay more, that's just gravy.
That said, it seems hard to believe that people would get paid extra to work in such a pleasant language. If so, maybe Adam Smith had it all wrong when he said [econlib.org]:
First, The wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment...The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
Perhaps florists soon will be making more money than plumbers. Which would really stink.
I see no beauty, simplicity or elegance in the pythonic way variables are handled when shadowed (for example, global scope). You can read them BUT writing them fails silently! Explain how this is intuitive in any way.
Perl! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not about the money. It's about the love.
Not as tedious as C++; not as clunky as Java; not as lame as VB.
Scoff all you want! I feel blessed while coding in Perl.
Thanks Larry & friends!
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I love Perl as well (and I make well over that). But I'll be honest with you. After 20+ years of programming in Perl I love programming in Python a whole lot more.
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The christian propaganda everywhere is part of why Perl has been abandoned.
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I shall replace you with a perl script!! A very simple one will do.. :)
from Economics-land (Score:3)
"Past performance is no guarantee of future returns."
Learn as many languages as you can/want and try to find employers who recognize that adaptibility is much more valuable than existing capability with a specific tool.
Now where are all those $250k jobs requiring R ? :-)
C/C++ at $160k/yr (Score:5, Interesting)
But it's not the language, it's the domain knowledge I bring to the table. I was hired to write embedded software for scientific instruments. As a former research scientist and current software engineer I can understand the problem, the solutions, and write code to do what the device needs to do. C/C++ just happens to be the tool I use to build the device. Python, Java, and so on just wouldn't cut it.
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Which language is that? Phython? C++? C? Java? A language "does not cut it" ... how retarded.
It's not retarded at all; it's a simple fact that each language comes with its own set of design decisions that make some tasks easier and some tasks more difficult. Thinking that all languages are equivalent would be a newbie mistake.
For example, Python, while it is a great high-level language and easy to learn and use, will almost never produce software that runs at the speed of an equivalent compiled C or C++ program. Furthermore, its continuing reliance on a Global Interpreter Lock [python.org] means that multithr
$100k is not adequate information (Score:5, Insightful)
Or are we talking $100k in a mansion on the golf course in Arkansas?
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I've tried that once, but I passed out from the smell.
Not in the Austin job market (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty savvy with all the listed languages except Objective-C (only maintenance on existing apps), and have used them all at one time or another in a job. My linked profile garners around 3-4 recruiter contacts a week, and in my own little silo, I can say that while there may be 6 figure salaries out there for the Python and RoR, they are few and far between. The salaries I'm seeing on the top end for those development jobs rarely crest 70k.
On the other hand, there's bigger salaries for Java or C#. It's not too hard to find a 100k-110k senior Java or C# developer position.
Anecdotal evidence is not scientific data, but their results just don't match my personal experience in 2 decades of doing this.
However, I think I can see how they got the numbers.
According to the article, the data was retrieved by searching job ads, as opposed to taking a survey of people actually working at those jobs, and then permuting and filtering it. Given that:
- Development job availability, especially with new technologies, is heavily skewed towards the west coast, where the cost of living is higher. From Austin to San Jose, the cost of living increase is between 50 and 75 percent - the 100k job is at least a 150k.
We can make a reasonable assumption that there will be more positions open, and that more of them will be higher paying relative to the entire US job market, likely breaking the 100k cap, as 100k is low relative to the cost of living.
- Established development languages already have a majority of their positions filled, as opposed to emergent technologies which have more open positions
This will naturally result in a higher number compared to a language with less open positions, if the bar (100k) is low relative to the cost of living.
- Emerging technologies lack experts simply because they haven't been around long enough to develop as many
So positions will be open longer, and more aggressively marketed by recruiters, meaning that they're more likely to double- or triple- count job postings that are unknowingly for the same job
&
Employers using recruiters often prefer to using a limited number of recruiters who themselves maintain a pool of direct-contact individuals with experience in a given field, meaning that those jobs are less likely to be publicly posted, whereas the new technologies require public announcement and investigations.
So in summary: I don't doubt the statics they used, but I think their methodology may be affected by a heavy bias, and therefore invalid.
Laughable methodology (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting into speculation here, but I would guess that the higher premium on things like python would be because non-tech firms hiring python devs probably need scripts for efficient data mining, analysis, and reporting, a skill requiring far more expertise than run-of-the-mill software development.
C#, which I don't think anyone would argue is vastly more marketable than python, Ruby, or Objective-C in the highly lucrative tech sector, is likely so low because the sort of want ads they are looking at are mostly going to be positions that build web-based business management sites on the
Beyond the stupid methodology of only looking at want ad compensation (a better - though still suspect - method would be to look at something like glassdoor for salaries and then correlate those to the skills asked for in want ads for the same position and company), they should really be including the full requirements list for this to be at all meaningful. If one ad asks for "python, plus 7 years of experience working with large scientific datasets, strong understanding of statistics, and experience with one or more data visualization libraries" and the second asks for "c#, knows what a website is", then saying the first one is better paying because of python is silly.
Wrong question (Score:3)
Smart programmers pick up new languages very quickly. I'd rather hire someone smart who doesn't know Python, than someone mediocre and only knows Python.
Someone may make $100K today in Python, but what about a few decades from now. I know COBOL, and still know people writing COBOL supporting legacy code. But the majority of the ones unwilling/unable to learn a new language are out of a job.
I'd rather be learning new things and have several tools in my belt than just one and be limited.
And easily replaced.
Use just one? (Score:2)
Which Programming Language Pays the Best?
Seriously, just one? I use several languages, on the same project:
I'm 51 and get paid over $125K (in southeastern Virginia) and generally work when and on what as I please. There are 3 senior and 1 junior people on my team and we develop/support a ~300k lines of code for our cross-platform application.
Causality? Who knows? (Score:4, Interesting)
I love Python because it maps very neatly onto how I model problems in my head. I'm not averse to using other languages, but Python is my comfort zone because Guido and I apparently think about algorithms in the same ways. As it turns out, I make a decent living with it.
So, do I have a good job because I know Python, or is it because the thought patterns of the people who are drawn to Python are the same ones that companies want to pay for, regardless of language? If the former and you want a good job, then by all means learn Python. But if knowing Python is just a side effect of the properties that employers are actually looking for, then it's probably not going to help you all that much.
Topping the list of most popular US Fast Foods is: (Score:4, Funny)
Ham/Hamburger
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Dice (Score:2)
Yeah. I'm totally going to change my career path based on a Dice article. Unless my horoscope tells me otherwise, of course.
Dice's recent list of the fastest-growing tech... (Score:2)
Consulting FTW (Score:2)
Realistically speaking if you want to make the Benjamins then you need to be a Senior level developer in a widely adopted language and 1099 corp to corp bill through a smaller consulting firm. You will likely make $100+/hr and be able to do it while living in relatively inexpensive fly over country. No need to bunk of with half a dozen Brogrammers in the Valley.
Just to give you a bit of a data point, at my last consulting gig, in the midwest, WiPro told them their H1B contract Business Analysts were going
C language (Score:2)
Hey, in the 1980's, C was supposed to pay the best. What happened?
A more interesting metric would be how many languages and frameworks one must learn per year in order to maintain compensation in inflation-adjusted dollars, and then chart that over time. I suspect a) it would come out as an exponential and b) that this indicates our acceleration toward the singularity.
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Still does.
There isn't as much work, but what needs to be done is critical.
So there aren't a lot of candidate.
A Sr. C programmer should be making 200K; which is down from 400K in '99
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Shadowstats is crap.
http://azizonomics.com/2013/06... [azizonomics.com]
Java (Score:2)
Python might have the higher average, but Java is more popular, and I would guess more people are making big money in Java. I think Java has a very high ceiling. Many of the people making big money in Python probably have significant non-software engineer skills.
Embedded Systems (Score:2)
In Germany embedded systems make up 22 billion eur while information systems are only 8 billion. In embedded sys. you need c and that ISO language bundle.
In both cases entry is 30 or 40 k eur. And real good figures normally involve an architectural or management role where only little programming is left.
Job Satisfaction (Score:2)
I'd rather work with a language that paid a little less than one that I found hard to use.
High demand for few positions (Score:2)
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Re:Your baseline is wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate this comment.
I probably hate it because I make about $90k (plus one of the best benefits/retirement packages in the United States...you can suck your 401k, I gots me a pension!)
But really, I hear this all the time. "Oh, you only make $90k? You must suck. Any mid-level programmer can make more than that."
First, it really isn't just about the take-home. The benefits are really important.
Second, there are sooo many other factors, it is incredible. I live about 70 miles from Silicon Valley. My salary *is* something to scoff at by the denizens of the Valley, but for quality of life? I have most of them beat.
I live in a beautiful house that I can easily afford. I average 40 hours per week- with the variance being about 3 hours each way. A 'crazy' time means that I come in at 7:30, and maybe stay as late as 5:30 if I have some process running.
I get to lift my head out of the screen and go do REAL things during my work. I am consulted on many different business processes- my opinion is valued well beyond the technical side of my job.
Someone else mentioned 7 brogrammers huddled together in some Santa Clara shit-shack, all making $150,000. That's a miserable existence that I want no part of- no matter how great they are at programming, or how many Google logoed items they own.
It isn't all about the dollars- don't let some HR firm tell you it is! Don't base your career/life trajectory on your paystubs.
**As an aside, I have visited the Google campus a few time for different projects- meeting with 'fairly high level' employees. We typically compare quality of life notes...I haven't talked to any Google employees over the age of 35 who thought they had made a good life decision to be there. Except for the former CEO's of companies Google has purchased...those guys are happy as shit.
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Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for reaffirming my faith in humanity. It took me almost to the bottom of the thread to FINALLY come across someone who gets it.
The language does not fucking matter! Imperative language is imperative language. Unless we're talking about some completely different concept that requires you to alter your thinking completely, the choice of language matters little. If anything, you may make a difference between interpreted and compiled languages due to the workflow behind them, but that's already leadin