Re: maintaining skills

Jim:

I agree, 100%.  When I first wired a board in a special tech program in 
Pittsburgh high schools in1961, I knew that that couldn't be all that there was 
to it.

Along came COBOL and RPG and their demise has been predicted many times over 
the past 40+ years.  We still have job postings for these 'archaic' languages.  
And...we are still working with them.

Some people fail to see that the fads will pass and the gold standards will 
remain valid.  If they only knew the number of lines of code that exist out 
there, there aren't enough Americans and foreigners combined to replace all 
that code.  By the time they would be making headway, the fad they were 
utilizing will have passed.  

The costs?  Even Bill Gates couldn't finance that one.

Good advice.

Thanks.

Ron.

-------------- Original message from "Jim Franz" <jfranz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>: 
-------------- 


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> 
> I sent this to the tiobe.com survey.... 
> I would not bank my career on this survey of languages. 
> I did my own quick survey at dice.com (technology job postings). 
> There are 268 RPG openings, far more than pascal(25) or idl (25) which both 
> made the list. 
> I did send tiobe.com a slight rant as to why i think google searches is not 
> a scientifically valid study. 
> jim franz 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom Liotta" 
> To: 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 7:57 PM 
> Subject: Re: maintaining skills 
> 
> 
> > *** Please pay close attention when replying to a message on this list! 
> > *** If you want the reply to go to the list, use REPLY-TO-ALL 
> > *** Recruiters may advertise only permanent employment positions in this 
> list. 
> > 
> > 
> > Learning new languages has been a part of my career from the beginning. 
> Interpreting graphs and tables such as this and others has not been. The 
> indicated table was from "December 2004". Here's the top three from March 
> 2005: 
> > 
> > 1 C 19.465% +0.54% A 
> > 2 Java 18.871% -4.30% A 
> > 3 C++ 11.632% -2.87% A 
> > 
> > Let's see... C was at 19.696% in December; it's at 19.465% in March and 
> shows a change of +0.54% in March. Meanwhile, Java was at 16.332% in 
> December; it's at 18.871% in March and shows a -4.30% change in March. (See 
> < http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/index.htm >.) 
> > 
> > Interesting to interpolate January and February. 
> > 
> > Also interesting, the page above lists the next 30 languages in 
> 'popularity'. RPG actually seems to be not bad. 
> > 
> > Lost in some of this is that C, Java, C++ and quite a few other languages 
> on the list are important iSeries languages. I suspect that a part of any 
> decrease in RPG is accounted for by increases in other languages on iSeries. 
> Existing RPG code already... ummm... exists. Not always a lot of need to 
> write it again, especially if done right in the first place. 
> > 
> > Tom Liotta 
> > 
> > 
> > ron_adams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: 
> > 
> > >http://www.developer.com/lang/other/article.php/3448451 
> > > 
> > >Note: this is as of December 2004. 
> > > 
> > >Position Programming Language Ratings Change Status 
> > >1 C 19.696% +1.22% A 
> > >2 Java 16.332% -8.68% A 
> > >3 C++ 11.914% -5.51% A 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Tom Liotta 
> > The PowerTech Group, Inc. 
> > 19426 68th Avenue South 
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