Re: Ada Job Market, Was: Re: SIGada Conference

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

My gut reaction based on prior searches of Monster, et alia, would make 
5% sound optimistic. It would also likely be *very* location sensitive 
since Ada has traditionally been employed largely with defense 
contractors and they're not spread across the U.S. evenly like peanut 
butter.

But assume for a moment that this is true. C++ gets 50% and Ada gets 5%. 
Students exiting college are going to be looking for jobs. What skill 
set will they likely want to have in order to face that market? When 
companies start development of software related tools, will they be 
looking to satisfy the 5% market or the 50% market?

This has the potential to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, so one should 
not look at it as doom and gloom, but rather as a warning. Unless Ada 
starts getting bigger numbers, all the incentives are to go with 
something else. People will go with a niche language if they think it is 
on the way *UP*, but not if it appears to be on the way *DOWN*. Hence, 
Ada needs to do something to excite the potential user community and 
create the impression of going somewhere *new* so it starts a "get on 
board" trend.

MDC

Simon Clubley wrote:
> 
> 
> If you have a copy of Dr Dobb's Journal for October 2003, have a look at
> page 52.
> 
> The author has done an analysis of job offers for the period July 2002 to
> June 2003 that specified programming language requirements.
> 
> I won't post the table (because I'm not sure what the copyright issues are,
> and anyway it's a detailed table), but the author's table claims[1] that Ada
> is running around the 5% mark (+/- 1%) for much of that period.
> 
> It was interesting to note however that it increased a couple of percent
> in May/June 2003.
> 
> For comparison C++ is running at around the 50% (+/- several %) mark, and
> Pascal is running at around 0.2%.
> 
> Simon.
> 
> [1] I use "claims" because I am finding it hard to believe that 5% of all
> programming jobs specify Ada, however nice that would be. My viewpoint here
> may be tainted by the fact that I am in the UK, and closer to 0% appears to
> be a more accurate figure here. [Fortunately, my interest in Ada is more of
> a personal interest...]
> 


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Marin David Condic
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