C running strong

[jacob navia]

Programming languages come and go. Still is amazing that in this survey
from
http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,2016936,00.asp
the C language comes second, right after Java.

Java
# What it is: An object-oriented programming language developed by James
Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s.
# Job availabilities: 14,408

C
# What it is: A standardized, general-purpose programming language, it's
one of the most pervasive languages and the basis for several others
(such as C++).
# Job availabilities: 6,164, including all derivatives

C#
# What it is: A general-purpose, compiled, object-oriented programming
language developed by Microsoft as part of its .NET initiative, it
evolved from C and C++
# Job availabilities: 5,111

Perl
# What it is: Perl is an open-source, cross-platform, server-side
interpretive programming language used extensively to process text
through CGI programs.
# Job availabilities: 4,810

JavaScript
# What it is: Not to be confused with Java, JavaScript is a an
object-oriented, scripting programming language that runs in the Web
browser on the client side. It's smaller than Java, with a simplified
set of commands, easier to code and doesn't have to be compiled.
# Job availabilities: 4,406

VB.Net (Visual Basic .Net)
# What it is: An object-oriented language implemented on Microsoft's
..Net framework.
# Job availabilities: 2,090

PHP
# What it is: An open-source, interpretive, server-side, cross-platform,
HTML scripting language, especially well-suited for Web development as
it can be embedded into HTML pages.
# Job availabilities: 1,152*

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
# What it is: Though technically not a programming language, AJAX uses
XHTML or HTML, JavaScript and XML to create interactive Web applications.
# Job availabilities : 1,106

Ruby and Ruby on Rails
# What they are: Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented, open-source
programming language; Ruby on Rails is an open-source Web application
framework written in Ruby that closely follows the MVC
(Model-View-Controller) architecture.
# Job availabilities : 210 and 54, respectively

Python
# What it is: An interpreted, dynamically object-oriented, open-source
programming language that utilizes automatic memory management.
# Job availabilities: 811

* All numbers on job availability were pulled from nationwide queries on
Dice.com, a job site for technology professionals.

 

[Spiros Bousbouras]

Programming languages come and go. Still is amazing that in this survey
from
http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,2016936,00.asp
the C language comes second, right after Java.

<Quoting a large part of an article follows>

I hope this isn't copyright violation. If it is could
the server owners get into trouble ?

* All numbers on job availability were pulled from nationwide queries on
Dice.com, a job site for technology professionals.

I'm glad to see that C does well but I don't know what
Dice.com is or how representative of the market it is
so the numbers that come from it are of limited value
to me.

 

[Simon Biber]

Programming languages come and go. Still is amazing that in this survey
from
http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,2016936,00.asp
the C language comes second, right after Java.

Java
# What it is: An object-oriented programming language developed by James
Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s.
# Job availabilities: 14,408

C
# What it is: A standardized, general-purpose programming language, it's
one of the most pervasive languages and the basis for several others
(such as C++).
# Job availabilities: 6,164, including all derivatives

[snip]

Note the caveat "including all derivatives". I don't see C++ elsewhere
on the list. I bet C++ and C are lumped into this one entry. That's why
it's so high on the list.

And it's still beaten out by Java, which has more than double the number
of job availabilities.

 

[Charlton Wilbur]

SB> And it's still beaten out by Java, which has more than double
SB> the number of job availabilities.

That's because of the way Java is commonly used: while a
knowledgedable Java programmer is easily as productive as a
knowledgeable C programmer, Java also lends itself to having dozens of
code monkeys working on a problem in a way that C does not. Beyond
that, universities and trade schools are turning out thousands of
people who think they know Java, and know it well enough to get past a
cursory technical interview.

So there are twice as many Java job openings being advertised; but
that is because the companies are hoping that one out of two
programmers they hire is actually competent.

I also wouldn't put too much trust in dice.com's numbers; in the area
I live in, I'd say that fewer than half of the *advertised* jobs make
it to dice.com. Comparing that to the number of *actual* jobs is left
as an exercise for the reader.

Charlton

 

[David T. Ashley]

Programming languages come and go. Still is amazing that in this survey
from
http://www.devsource.com/article2/0,1895,2016936,00.asp
the C language comes second, right after Java.

What's that saying, "Unix: the operating system of the future, as it has
been since 1972". The same statement may go for 'C'.

Gosh, I don't see any market for Pascal programmers! ... All that time
wasted in computer science classes.

 

[james of tucson]

Gosh, I don't see any market for Pascal programmers! ... All that time
wasted in computer science classes.

I know of quite a few commercial projects that were developed in Delphi,
so I imagine there is some. Maybe more than Haskell, Smalltalk, Icon,
ML, and Prolog put together, speaking of time wasted in CS classes.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

David T. Ashley said:

What's that saying, "Unix: the operating system of the future, as it has
been since 1972". The same statement may go for 'C'.

Gosh, I don't see any market for Pascal programmers! ... All that time
wasted in computer science classes.

Gosh, I don't see any market for people who can make salt and water out of
half a pint of hydrochloric acid and half a pint of sodium hydroxide. All
that time wasted in chemistry classes.

The tools you use for learning may not be the same as the tools you use for
earning a living, but that doesn't mean the time spent learning was wasted.

Pascal is a superb teaching language. That it is not widely used in industry
does not change this fact.

 

[Ben Bacarisse]

David T. Ashley said:


Gosh, I don't see any market for people who can make salt and water out of
half a pint of hydrochloric acid and half a pint of sodium hydroxide. All
that time wasted in chemistry classes.

The tools you use for learning may not be the same as the tools you use for
earning a living, but that doesn't mean the time spent learning was wasted.

Pascal is a superb teaching language. That it is not widely used in industry
does not change this fact.

Since so many regulars are posting OT about Pascal these days, I beg
leave to join in...

I have used Pascal to teach programming and it is not up to the task.
Lots of little details that could have been finessed in a teaching
language were not (the IO system comes to mind) but the two biggest
problems are:

(1) No module system so you can't provide a package to learn with.
Even a quasi module system like #include "graphics.h" allows students
to start writing interesting program from day one.

(2) The only abstraction you can teach is procedures, and even these
are seriously crippled.

It was an interesting design at the time but I cannot see how it can
be described as good for teaching now and "superb" seems, to me, an
extraordinary description of it.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

Since so many regulars are posting OT about Pascal these days, I
beg leave to join in...

I have used Pascal to teach programming and it is not up to the
task. Lots of little details that could have been finessed in a
teaching language were not (the IO system comes to mind) but the
two biggest problems are:

That's because you don't understand it. The file system is very
flexible, and can handle almost anything if you write a suitable
driver (in something other than Pascal). Don't forget that the
file can be a "FILE OF <RECORD>", and that the f^ will be an
instance of that record. Of course if you use crippled non-Pascal
systems, such as Turbo, you never get to see or use these
abilities.

What Pascal lacks is the ability to express some of those drivers.
This is a good thing, as it tends to keep the fumblisher fingeren
out of der spitzensparken. We have both C and assembly to handle
this.

The other major criticism has been the lack of separate compilation
in ISO7185. ISO10206 (Extended Pascal) handles this more than
adequately and is downward compatible. ISO10206 has been available
since 1986, 1984 for drafts.

 

[Charlton Wilbur]

BB> (1) No module system so you can't provide a package to learn
BB> with. Even a quasi module system like #include "graphics.h"
BB> allows students to start writing interesting program from day
BB> one.

One of the design goals of Pascal was that a Pascal file could be
compiled on its own in one pass. Allowing packages breaks this. This
is because Pascal is *also* useful in teaching compiler construction.

Many of the commercially available Pascals for microcomputers (I
remember in particular Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS and Think Pascal and
MPW for Macintoshes) included an extension to work around this.

Charlton

 

[santosh]

That's because you don't understand it. The file system is very
flexible, and can handle almost anything if you write a suitable
driver (in something other than Pascal).

Does Pascal require a file system or does it use the host system's?

Of course if you use crippled non-Pascal systems, such as Turbo,
you never get to see or use these abilities.

The other major criticism has been the lack of separate compilation
in ISO7185. ISO10206 (Extended Pascal) handles this more than
adequately and is downward compatible. ISO10206 has been available
since 1986, 1984 for drafts.

Is there a fully conforming Pascal compiler for the ISO10206 standard?

 

[Spiros Bousbouras]

I know of quite a few commercial projects that were developed in Delphi,
so I imagine there is some.

Isn't Dephi a separate language derived from Pascal ?

 

[Ben Bacarisse]

That's because you don't understand it.

If you say so.

The file system is very
flexible, and can handle almost anything if you write a suitable
driver (in something other than Pascal).

What an extraordinary idea. I am not alone in this view of Pascal's
IO system, and if you think it is simply my ignorance and/or the fact
that I did not write a suitable driver, I won't try to persuade
otherwise. Brian Kernighan has written an excellent critique of
Pascal which explains, far better than I can, some of the "little
details" I was referring to.

Don't forget that the
file can be a "FILE OF <RECORD>", and that the f^ will be an
instance of that record.

How could I forget such a thing?

Of course if you use crippled non-Pascal
systems, such as Turbo, you never get to see or use these
abilities.

That would be daft.

The other major criticism has been the lack of separate compilation
in ISO7185. ISO10206 (Extended Pascal) handles this more than
adequately and is downward compatible. ISO10206 has been available
since 1986, 1984 for drafts.

There are lots of extensions that address this problem. I can see a
huge OT thread growing if we start to get into what "Pascal" is, but I
take it to mean ISO 7185. You are free to take it to mean Extended
Pascal. I would have posted a different response if Extended Pascal
had been claimed to be a superb teaching language.

 

[CBFalconer]

Isn't Dephi a separate language derived from Pascal ?

It certainly isn't Pascal. It omits far too much of the
essentials. I don't know if the worst of those omissions can still
be fixed with my txtfiles unit for Turbo. See:

<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net/download/>

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

What an extraordinary idea. I am not alone in this view of Pascal's
IO system, and if you think it is simply my ignorance and/or the fact
that I did not write a suitable driver, I won't try to persuade
otherwise. Brian Kernighan has written an excellent critique of
Pascal which explains, far better than I can, some of the "little
details" I was referring to.

While BK is highly respected in general, his critique is from the
point of view of someone trying to replace C, and he didn't really
understand the language either. Better than most, though. IIRC he
also wasn't aware of lazyio.

For interactive use the only major criticism is the fact that read
will abort on faulty input. This was fixed in Pascalp by providing
a set of readx[int, etc] that returned an error indicator. Those
can be built within ISO7185 without difficulty, but cannot be
integrated into the pseudo variadic read function without diddling
the compiler and making it non-compliant.

 

[Richard Bos]

There are lots of extensions that address this problem. I can see a
huge OT thread growing if we start to get into what "Pascal" is, but I
take it to mean ISO 7185. You are free to take it to mean Extended
Pascal. I would have posted a different response if Extended Pascal
had been claimed to be a superb teaching language.

So would I: I would have said that it has many of the same problems C
has for teaching (and few of its advantages for actual use).

Richard