Schol-R-LEA, DavidCooper, Brendan and simeonz, this is my last question here in OS Dev Forums to I discover the demand amongst employers for a particular programming language.
Schol-R-LEA, DavidCooper, Brendan and simeonz, maybe you were the most detailed in the topic "Machine code and assembly are necessary currently?" I posted here in the OS Dev Forums.
Schol-R-LEA, DavidCooper, Brendan and simeonz, please, answer this topic.
I haven't heard of even a single job requiring Limbo, but then again I haven't been looking for any, either. I expect that they exist, but if so, they probably aren't common. I have no idea beyond that, though the fact that it doesn't appear in the TIOBE list at all, when even things like Visual Foxpro, Modula-2, and Mercury all appear in the lower fifty (unranked), tells me that very little activity is going on with it. While the TIOBE rankings are flawed for reasons we've already discussed, the fact that it is complete absent indicates that very few people are discussing the language at all, for job listings or anything else.
I am wondering why you are even asking about this one, as it is from a research project that was never commercialized to any real extent AFAIK. There are other systems programming languages such as Rust and Go that I would have considered far more likely to be of interest from a job-hunting standpoint.
But honestly, this isn't a useful set of questions in the first place. Asking which language to learn in order to get a programming job in is like asking which model of car to learn to drive on for a chauffeur job. While there is a lot of specialization in programming, none of that really matters until you have some experience, as the core skills - most of which are interpersonal communication skills, not coding skills - are the same for pretty much all programming work.
More importantly, most of the really important skills can't really be mastered until after you start working, as they will be specific to the individual job. Whether formal on-the-job training is involved or not, most of the first several weeks of any programming job is spent learning how to work in the company you are working for.
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This is why the 'long list of skills and required degrees/certifications' that HR managers so love is utterly absurd for finding actually capable programmers. They use them as a way to weed out applicant who are under-skilled, but the particular lists they use - which are remarkably similar regardless of the positions - are impossible to fulfill, so the result is that instead of talented programmers, they get con artists who are willing to lie through their teeth about their background.
Most programming job listings are poorly written, and most job interviews are poorly performed by the interviewers. Worse, the project managers are often too busy or too clueless to actually be able to tell which members of their team are competent, so the skilled liars tend to get promoted over the skilled programmers. While not every company works this way, enough do that it has become a serious problems for the entire industry.
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Rev. First Speaker Schol-R-LEA;2 LCF ELF JAM POEE KoR KCO PPWMTF Ordo OS Project
Lisp programmers tend to seem very odd to outsiders, just like anyone else who has had a religious experience they can't quite explain to others.
I am not familiar with and I have never used this language. While the topic is interesting to me (e.g. if someone wants to brief us on the Inferno technical limitations), it is not interesting from the job finding perspective.
Again, check out the itjobswatch.co.uk programming languages list. Limbo is not on it. What's on it - SQL, JavaScript, C#, Java, Python, PHP, C++, Ruby, T-SQL, C, some shell scripting, and then more programming languages. Without pretending to be competent in all those fields, I will go out on a limb and claim that those are used in (using the same comma separated order) web services and business intelligence, web presentation layer, Windows programming, personal computing and embedded applications and fat web clients, system administration and server end programming (and anything under the sun really), server end again, performance sensitive applications, server end yet again, same as SQL for MS SQL server, low-level programming and open source. You should decide what excites you, look at the job market to determine whether the demand and salaries for your chosen field are satisfactory, and start messing with stuff.
You really need to base your decision on which skills are in demand now and which new ones are on the rise. Don't choose anything that isn't in demand at all yet as it may never be, unless you're learning it as an addition to something more conventional. You should probably aim for a mixture of skills in mainstream languages and others that aren't quite mainstream yet but look as if they likely will be in the future, but that's something you need to judge for yourself by looking at changes in the statistics (which you need to compile by studying what's being asked for in job adverts and seeing what's changing over time). Aim to become an expert in using a few mainstream languages and their libraries, but also learn the basics of lots of other popular languages and explore them by writing versions of your most complex programs in each of them so that you can list them on your CV and provide links to them all to prove that you really are that versatile - that way, you will appeal to any employer who is looking for someone to work using an exotic programming language without you having to take any risks in advance by learning what will most likely turn out to be the wrong one. And what you absolutely must not do is specialise in obscure languages and lack the ability to use anything mainstream, because that will make you practically unemployable.
That's not even half the job though, because you also need to be able to show that you have a wide understanding of computer science and know how to choose the right approach for solving the full range of problems that you're likely to encounter - that's much more important than the programming language(s) you use, and it's also the main thing that a degree indicates to a potential employer. If you can show that you have all of that knowledge, then your choice of languages and proven ability to adapt well to new ones should make you look more attractive than most of the people you're competing against. A lot then depends on your skills to handle job interviews where you have to look like someone who can fit well into a team and get things done. It would also help if you can build a reputation for finding and fixing bugs in other people's programs, and show that you have a good understanding of how to make your programs user-friendly, as well as being able to demonstrate that you can make your source code easy for others to understand, and structure your programs well. If you can do all that and learn to hide any personality defects, your professionalism should put you up there as one of the leading candidates for every job you go for.
There is something else to consider though which is of crucial importance, because it also helps to have hobbies that have nothing to do with computers (or anything geeky) so that you can show yourself to be a normal person who gets on well with others in a wide range of situations. You should use social media to demonstrate this, and you need to start working to get that right today rather than waiting till you start hunting for work. Don't post about politics unless your views are mainstream and as neutral as possible. Don't show yourself to be a heavy drinker, but it's okay to show that you know how to have fun. Your social media accounts should be thought of as adverts designed to sell you to an employer, but you must also be careful to make sure that it doesn't look as if that's their purpose, and nothing would put an employer off more than seeing lots of photos of you doing lots of things to raise money for charity if it looks as if you were doing it all to try to get a job.
Schol-R-LEA wrote:
I am wondering why you are even asking about this one, as it is from a research project that was never commercialized to any real extent AFAIK.
I am even asking about this one to I discover the demand amongst employers for as many programming languages as possible for I to learn as many programming languages as possible to I can get another programming job if I get fired.
manhobby wrote:I am even asking about this one to I discover the demand amongst employers for as many programming languages as possible for I to learn as many programming languages as possible to I can get another programming job if I get fired.
Again; you should be looking at job advertisements in your area. Everything else is useless.
For a (very fictional) example; maybe 80% of the people in your area use Java and 20% use COBOL; and maybe the COBOL programmers keep leaving and doing something else (creating vacancies that need to be filled by hiring more COBOL programmers) and maybe the people using Java are happy with their jobs and never leave so those jobs rarely get advertised, so maybe 90% of jobs advertised in your area are for COBOL programmers. In that case; you'd want to learn COBOL because 90% of the jobs advertised in your area are for COBOL programmers; and the number of people using COBOL in your area would be irrelevant, and the number of people using COBOL world-wide would be irrelevant.
Cheers,
Brendan
For all things; perfection is, and will always remain, impossible to achieve in practice. However; by striving for perfection we create things that are as perfect as practically possible. Let the pursuit of perfection be our guide.
manhobby wrote:
I am even asking about this one to I discover the demand amongst employers for as many programming languages as possible for I to learn as many programming languages as possible to I can get another programming job if I get fired.
