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Programming Java Python

Employers Want JavaScript, But Developers Want Python, Survey Finds (infoworld.com) 222

An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: When it comes to which programming languages are in demand by employers, JavaScript, Java, Python, C++, and C -- in that order -- came out on top in a recent developer survey. Developers, however, want to learn languages like Python, Go, and Kotlin. A survey of developers by technical recruiter HackerRank, conducted in October, found no gap between languages employers want and what developers actually know, with JavaScript barely edging out Java...

HackerRank also found gaps in JavaScript frameworks between what employers want and what developers know. The React JavaScript UI library had the biggest delta between employers and developers, with about 37 percent of employers wanting React skills but only about 19 percent of developers having them... [But] problem-solving skills are the most-sought by employers, more than language proficiency, debugging, and system design.

The survey involved 39,441 developers, and concluded that "Python ruled among all age groups," according to Application Development Trends, "except for those 55 years or older, who narrowly prefer C."
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Employers Want JavaScript, But Developers Want Python, Survey Finds

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  • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Saturday January 27, 2018 @11:55AM (#56014951)

    Companies want flashy pretty webpages. Developers prefer to produce something else.

    I only look for jobs that use Simulink, Matlab, and embedded C/C++. But that's because I have no desire to ever be near the web front end. I know nothing professionally about TCP/IP but have CAN memorized.

    • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Saturday January 27, 2018 @12:10PM (#56015027) Homepage Journal

      I only look for jobs that use Simulink, Matlab, and embedded C/C++.

      We're hiring right now. Do you know C++ one seven? Give me a call if you have at least 5 years experience.

    • Companies want flashy pretty webpages. Developers prefer to produce something else.

      I only look for jobs that use Simulink, Matlab, and embedded C/C++. But that's because I have no desire to ever be near the web front end. I know nothing professionally about TCP/IP but have CAN memorized.

      CAN! They sure did a good job putting security features into that protocol.

      • Security is not relevant for a CAN bus.
        And: TCP/IP has no 'security' build in either, that would be on much higher levels.

        • And: TCP/IP has no 'security' build in either, that would be on much higher levels.

          Actually, IPsec (initially developed as part of the requirements for IPv6, but back ported as an option of IPv4) *is* at the "Internet Layer".
          (It sits at the "IP" part of "TCP/IP", right under the "TCP" / "UDP" transport layer).

          But yeah, most other the other encryption is usually happening in the application layer (HTTPS, SSH, etc.)

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by mark-t ( 151149 )
      I like JavaScript, but hate using it inside of a browser. It is most useful, imo, embedded into a client program as a means of allowing a mechanism for user-added functionality that is simple for the end user to use while also being expressive enough to do anything, even beyond what the developers might imagine.
      • That seems more like something for Lua, or even Python, rather than Javascript. I definitely see Lua as the embedded scripting language in a lot of modern apps, particularly games, so there's something to that.

        • Having used Lua, Python, and Javascript I for one vote for Perl for almost anything being done with any of the above. A few years back I'd have to give javascript a big edge because of node.js but as it always does Perl 5 has already absorbed its strengths.
          • Mod up. Damn, I used all my mod points on less worthy stuff. I speak most all of the languages (and asm for a 2 digit number of cpus), and quickly learn any new ones I'm interested in - the libraries might take longer. For anything where scripting is the thing - perl's the #1 go to language, and is faster and less bloated than most. Due to CPAN, yeah, there's lots of stuff - but you only include what you want, cutting bloat and increasing speed quite a bit over most of the others (cleaner resulting names
            • Perl faster and less bloated than Lua?
              • It's probably faster (based on what I know of the internals) but more/less bloated I haven't a clue. I admit I know diddly about lua and tons about perl. The only place I've even seen lua so far is in an ESP8266, where I instantly erased it to put in C/C++ programs to fully use the chip and get my money's worth.
                I doubt any scripting language would have let me do what I do in C++ re interrupts, real time, all kinds of cool multitasking and so forth - and still fit easily in cycles and memory.
                Perl tends to
                • Actually, because you commented, I RTFM on Lua and I'm gonna try it. I'm likely to keep using C++ for embedded and opsys uses, but for simple stuff, Lua looks great on the surface. Time, of course, will tell how handy it is on a PC. Where you've got resources, it's easy to be seduced by something with more features...nothing perfectly fits everything.
          • Let me throw out a few more suggestions for you:

            ChaiScript. A header-only library that implements an scripting layer for C++. If you saw the words "header-only library" and felt a warm glow, then this is for you.

            GameMonkey Script. Essentially Lua, but easier to integrate as a scripting layer.

            Squirrel. Similar to Lua/GameMonkey. It does have built-in OOP brain damage, though.

            Pawn. The lightest-weight scripting layer you will ever see.

        • by mark-t ( 151149 )
          Perhaps, but Javascript is far more ubiquitous than Lua, so for business-oriented software that has such end-user programmable extensions, you probably won't have to train any of your customers how to use it, while if you used Lua... you'd almost certainly have to supply language tutorials with your product just to get most people to square one... and as far as the end user is concerned, it would not be significantly different than if you had developed your own proprietary extension programming language tha
          • "Far more ubiquitous", yet the actual embeddings seem to favor Lua in higher-end applications. Unless "ubiquitous" means "it's in my browser, dammit".
            • by mark-t ( 151149 )

              I mean "ubiquitous" as in it is much more widely known, and you are less likely to have to supply all of your clients with training in the extension language than you would if you used Lua.

              Lua is a fine embedded script language, but I sincerely think Javascript is preferable simply because it is more likely that the end user is going to have a passing familiarity with it even before they see your product, and will thus find the notion of developing such extensions, if they are inclined to do so, less int

    • Companies want flashy pretty webpages. Developers prefer to produce something else.

      My first thought was that I don't want to be anywhere near a potential employer who wants to use JavaScript or a potential colleague who wants to use Python.

  • Yep. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27, 2018 @11:56AM (#56014955)

    Yep, my employer is starting a new project in nodejs because they want to attract "top talent" so there is a big pool of nodejs developers, over my objection that the "top talent" isn't actually in that pool in the first place (and suggested Go, as there is also a performance requirement).

  • But I like Basic, not C.
    Guess I'm an outlier.
  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday January 27, 2018 @12:03PM (#56014987)

    I would have answered the survey with the majority.

    Personally I learned and started using both Python and Javascript late in my career that goes all the way back to writing assembly language on the CDC 6000 and I can't remember how many languages I used. (DIBOL anyone? APL?). As with most software engineers I read Javascript seems to be one of the most unprofessionally crafted languages ever put into wide use.

    The updates to Javascript (ES5/ES6) go a long way to fixing things. However I have often wondered how much the world would be different had Python been used as the in-browser programming language rather than JS (ECMAscript) from the start.

    The only problem I think Python would introduce is its dependence on white space as a syntactically significant element. That seems like a small compromise. Anyone else think this?

    • by itsdapead ( 734413 ) on Saturday January 27, 2018 @12:37PM (#56015161)

      However I have often wondered how much the world would be different had Python been used as the in-browser programming language rather than JS (ECMAscript) from the start.

      Well, yes, we'd probably all be using Python, but we'd have a Microsoft preprocessor called "PyScript" that let you use curly-bracket delimited blocks instead of significant whitespace , and which automatically converted Python 3 syntax to Python 2... :-)

    • Netscape originally wanted to embed Scheme in the browser, Sun wanted them to use Java.. they settled on creating something new with syntax similar to Java: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      In 1995, Netscape Communications recruited Brendan Eich with the goal of embedding the Scheme programming language into its Netscape Navigator.[8] Before he could get started, Netscape Communications collaborated with Sun Microsystems to include in Netscape Navigator Sun's more static programming language Java, in order to compete with Microsoft for user adoption of Web technologies and platforms.[9] Netscape Communications then decided that the scripting language they wanted to create would complement Java and should have a similar syntax, which excluded adopting other languages such as Perl, Python, TCL, or Scheme. To defend the idea of JavaScript against competing proposals, the company needed a prototype. Eich wrote one in 10 days, in May 1995.

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Can you imagine if Netscape had won that battle, and all those web designers had to learn Scheme as their first programming language?

        On the flip side, all the web scripting code would compress well, with all the pages of close parentheses at the end. Maybe they could compress it further by just dropping trailing close parentheses entirely. Imagine the kilobytes of savings!

    • It's interesting how truly experienced people uniformly dislike Javascript. While I don't think python is the answer to everything without knowing the question - I can let that go - though I'd sure prefer something where whitespace wasn't part of the language in that way.
      It's almost as if we old guys who've done this a lot might have learned something, and are trying to help by telling it to everyone. We can all disagree about the minor stuff and be fine, but a disaster is what it is and there seems to b
    • I have often wondered how much the world would be different had Python been used as the in-browser programming language rather than JS (ECMAscript) from the start.

      Python seems... fine. But the language itself seems pretty meh. It doesn't seems any more compact than any other. The amazing amount of libraries, on the other hand, make it a language worth using.

      Which means it would have ended up getting a lot of frontend JS-style libraries (and DOM control), and a lot fewer command and control style ones (

    • by jasno ( 124830 )

      I couldn't care less about Python's whitespace handling. Once you accept it, it just fades away and you deal with it. I'm much more annoyed by Python's dynamic typing. I work at a place that has decided to use Python as a 'systems language' on an embedded platform. Navigating large Python codebases is difficult because you can't say what a function expects or returns without thoroughly examining it. I started my current job with a deep fondness for Python but now I'm less fond of it. Python, like many

  • by Wycliffe ( 116160 ) on Saturday January 27, 2018 @12:08PM (#56015007) Homepage

    I don't mind javascript as language. The problem is the DOM, CSS, cross browser incompatibilities, and all the rube goldberg machines like jquery and select2.
    The russian doll that is modern web programming is a nightmare. Things like jquery remind me of script kiddies who think they are cool when they use a source filter and/or operator overloading to completely redefine a language.
    The hacking that has gone into things like jquery is impressive but it should never have become the standard for production code. It should have stayed in the "that's a cool hack" category.

    • Javascript has the problem that you can type obj.typo = 5 and it will run just fine, and you won't ever be notified of your typo unless there are some behavioral issues. Whereas many languages will catch that typo before you even run the code. Python, of course, has the same problem.
      • That is why the dynamic language ccrowd 'invented' (rediscovered, cough cough) unit tests and test driven development.
        To bad they throw it on the staticc typed language crowed now as if we never had heared about compilers.

        (For those who wonder: I only write integration tests and 'system tests' on the level of use cases, scenarios or stories. For real software, that means deployed applications, not 'libraries', ordinary 'unit tests' are in 90% of all cases complete pointless and a waste of time - in a compil

        • For real software, that means deployed applications, not 'libraries', ordinary 'unit tests' are in 90% of all cases complete pointless and a waste of time - in a compiled, strong typed language, that is

          Chances are that this is an observation of status quo, not of potential. Tests catch problems with logic and types, with the latter in a sense being a subset of the former. Type systems only catch problems with types. Type systems extended to handle problems with logic become non-decidable and therefore aren't used in general practice. By the way, I assume you meant strong static typing rather than merely strong typing. And I'd also remark that decent compilers of dynamically typed languages still catch man

        • That is why the dynamic language ccrowd 'invented' (rediscovered, cough cough) unit tests and test driven development.

          Oh, no. You can thank the Extreme Programming Gurus (now known as "Agile") for this.

          The system that I work on now is an API, so unit testing it is necessary. For external APIs, you absolutely need to know if any user-visible behaviour has changed.

          For internal APIs, the main job of unit testing is to make refactoring sufficiently expensive that it will never happen.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      That's why companies want JavaScript. They have huge piles of the stuff, mountains of spaghetti code, a mishmash of frameworks and Stack Overflow copypasta.

  • 37 percent of employers wanting React skills but only about 19 percent of developers having them

    37% of employers may need developers with React skills, but they don't need 100% of their developers to have React skills. Statistics like this are nonsense. I really doubt that 37% of all unfilled developer positions need React skills. I doubt 19% of all unfilled developer positions need React skills. The whole article is full of garbage like this.

    • by prefec2 ( 875483 )

      Also if you can program in JS you are most likely capable to use the React framework in a day.

  • Javascript runs (usually) on the browser, while Python is server side. Not really the same purpose.
    • There's no reason Python can't be used in the client webbrowser (but, I agree, I'm not aware of anyone using it in production). I think Rice university uses Skulpt for some of their online programming courses: http://www.skulpt.org/ [skulpt.org]
  • by randallman ( 605329 ) on Saturday January 27, 2018 @12:15PM (#56015053)

    Most important finding in the survey. ... Gets popcorn ... Where is everyone? ...

    Guess I'm getting old.

    • by dwpro ( 520418 )
      Don't worry, the results haven't rendered in the Emacs browser yet, they'll get here.
  • Sometimes, it's strictly about the tech. One language is superior to another for the job being done

    Other times, it's about the team. If the entire team is expert at a language, there needs to be a really, really good reason to change

    Other times, it's about the tools, or the libraries

    Unfortunately, some times it's driven by clueless management, who have no idea how to program but still have strong opinions

    Individual programmer preference is only important for personal education or hobby projects

  • problem-solving skills are the most-sought by employers, more than language proficiency, debugging, and system design.

    Yeah. Try getting your resume past HR if you've had 15 years of problem-solving experience in a dozen different languages but not the one their shop uses.
  • I've written Python (2.7) and Jython in the past for scripting out IBM WebSphere administration stuff for WebSphere Admins who were to lazy to learn how to script their stuff. Been writing my JBoss/Wildfly stuff in Python 3.4 now - I would NEVER use JavaScript on the server side - much less on the Client side. It's all a giant steaming pile of shit! Consider the whole language was written in what 10 days? Even Netscape who wanted that language couldn't implement it right in their browser. I've used Perl to

  • That's what I give about what developers want.

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday January 28, 2018 @12:00AM (#56018323) Homepage

    OK, I know C# isn't the most popular language on slashdot. But it is really popular with businesses. The fact that it's not even on the list makes me question the survey's methodology. Other surveys certainly include C#, such as http://www.codingdojo.com/blog... [codingdojo.com].

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

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