It is a little late, but it is time for the summer edition of the job trends for traditional programming languages. The languages in this update have not changed for a while as we are only looking at Java, C++, C#, Objective C, Perl and Visual Basic. Over the next few months, I will be looking at various languages to determine how this list and other job trends posts should change. Also, please review some of the other job trends posts to see if your favorite language is already in one of these posts.
First, we look at the job trends from Indeed.com:
Most of the job trends have declined in the past few months. Objective-C continues to show solid growth. C# had a significant drop but still leads its C++ cousin. Over the long term trends, Java and C# have very positive growth, while the other languages are tending to stagnate. There is huge growth in mobile development, especially with Objective-C leading the way in iOS development. C++ and Perl show slight declines, but still not too significant. Visual Basic continues its stable trend, showing an increase over the past 2 years but still a decline from 2005.
Now, let’s look at SimplyHired’s short term trends:
SimplyHired’s trends are show much more decline in recent months than Indeed. Interestingly, Objective-C is not showing much of a positive trend, but it is a much better trend than the other languages in the list. Java is showing a surprising decline over the past few months, but still retains a large lead over the other languages. C++ and C# show almost identical trends over the past year, with a decline in recent months. Visual Basic and Perl show similar declines to the other languages.
Finally, here is a review of the relative scaling from Indeed. This provides an interesting trend graph based on job growth:
Unsurprisingly, Objective-C has the most growth, but the growth has slowed since our last update. C# growth is solid, hovering around 100% for the past 3 years. Visual Basic and C++ continue to decline. Perl and Java are still showing signs of life, but the growth is not very significant.
What does all this mean? First, it is clear the iOS development is hot as is all mobile development. However, mobile development does not seem to be affecting Java or the growth of mobile is offsetting the decline of Java in the enterprise space. Why does Java (and some of the others) show relative growth, but not strong growth in the trend graphs? Basically, we are seeing that while some of the languages are still showing increasing job postings (the relative growth chart), the percentage of postings is less than before. So, other languages not in this list may be increasing in demand quicker than these traditional languages.
Reference: Traditional Programming Language Job Trends – August 2012 from our JCG partner Rob Diana at the Regular Geek blog.
