Popularity isn't all it's cracked-up to be

[Jackolantern]

Although this is development-related, I figured I would put it here since it is more about people's development-related career paths.

I just wanted to comment on something I hear all the time in young developers. It is usually along the lines of "I am not going to learn X language or platform in school because it isn't used much anymore and Y language or platform is so popular". This lead to the surge of Java and .NET programmers in the early 2000's that still exist today. Most businesses seem to want those developers, so why would you want to specialize in anything else?

The answer is that applications don't just go away. Typically, once a fairly large application has been written, you are stuck with it, because rewriting it would be massively more expensive than maintaining it and adding to it. Programmers largely flock to the new, shiny language, tool or platform and avoid the older technology because...well...it is old.

In the mid-to-late 70's and early 80's, C and C++ were taking the world by storm and every developer and his mother wanted in on it. What everyone seemed to forget were the (literally) hundreds of thousands of applications out in the wild written in the Fotran language. Banks and other accounting outfits had become quite dependent on Fortran for its mathematical prowess at the time, and suddenly they found they could no longer find skilled developers. As can often be the case, the international economy jumped on this, and in particular, India. India now has more Fortran programmers than the rest of the world combined, and they make pretty good money by maintaining and extending those programs. Did I forget to mention that there are still, in today's world, more Fortran programs being run than any other language? That is a lot of applications.

Of course, today every developer should be skilled in multiple languages. There is nothing wrong with knowing Java, C#, Javascript, and even specializing in them. But if you also become intimately knowledgeable with an older or less popular language, you may just find you are getting better, higher paying jobs with the less popular language, actually. It is easy to stick out in your field in those languages, and it is more likely that you may even have a couple of most-popular extensions or libraries with your name on them. Try to stick out in the world of Java. It is quite hard to stick out when you are one of a million soldiers.

So don't dismiss languages, tools or platforms because they are old. If you want to do this as a career, it just make make you quite a mint. The most highly-paid developer I know is a guy named Dan. And he is truly a wizard...with ALGOL.

[hallsofvallhalla]

great post. I agree. The highest paid developer I know works with Python and that is about all he knows! He knows no .net. I still see jobs all the time looking for COBOL programmers.

[Callan S.]

Frankly programming - particularly older languages, does remind me of wizardry. To evoke strange, alienesque words and have surprising effects appear...and indeed knowing 'the old words' does make you powerful, this post shows! ok, a touch off topic. But!

[hallsofvallhalla]

haha wow yeah that does work well. You have to go to school to learn the ways of magic and with your visual studio wand and the book of magic written by wrox you can create some crazy spells!

[Xaleph]

Delphi anyone? I know, it`s not really that old, but yeah.. the best-paid developer I know still does it all in Delphi, maintaining software for an insurance company. Those guys.. well.. Magic indeed. Enough said.

However, as young developers, I think it`s our "duty" to phase out old technology and replace it with new. It`s the cycle of life. Evolution. The fact that most CS majors learn older languages is mostly to show how it was done "back in the days", that`s why I had courses with ^$%&%^$ assembler. That was a freakin drag, I can tell you that. I`m happy with C, or better C++. Some also consider that old, but they`re the mother of languages for now.

But yeah, I respect the older folks doing the older languages, there`s a lot to learn from them, languagewise but also technic wise. We just have to implement it differently.

[Jackolantern]

I agree for the most part, but the thing is, it isn't often the developer's responsibility, or even in their ability, to phase out older languages. Granted, if you are given the choice to create a new application, you probably shouldn't be using Simula 67 to create it LOL. But the thing is, it is very rarely up to the developer what language they want to use. In many cases, the client already has that in mind, and if not, you may find a lot of bureaucracy from the top about what language to use. A company I used to work for was using PHP to create web applications, but then had to change to .NET. Did the development team find it fit their needs better? No. The CEO simply liked the features Microsoft's marketing talked about. And no, he wasn't a developer. So from that day on all development changed to ASP.NET, for really no reason at all. And if you didn't like that, T.S.

But a huge amount of professional development work is the maintenance and extension of existing applications, some of which are quite old. In those cases you absolutely have no say over what language you will be using. And this is where the work can come in hot and heavy if you know some obscure, older languages. Sure, you shouldn't probably be making any new applications with it, but you won't have to. There is a whole world of applications out there people are not ready to scrap yet. Nor should they have to

[Xaleph]

Well, software companies don`t just "switch" from 1 language to another, most employ teams for different kinds of solutions. If you had a boss who wanted to switch from PHP to .NET he probably had his reasons. Valid or not, they`re his choice to make, he`s the boss and all. The thing I learned over time is that languages don`t mean all that much, most languages can do pretty much anyting any other language can do. It comes down to personal taste and some tradeoffs you are willing/have to make.

On a side note, it has more to do with people nowadays then technology. I currently have a boss who doesn`t know anything about technology. His IT team did. Well, that`s not completely true, the boss had this idea to go do some things online, but the IT team had a background in software engineering, not in web development, so they chose PHP. They could`ve chosen Java, .NET, Python, Ruby or whatever. All of the languages would`ve worked. But they chose PHP.

So, back to the original topic, sure, older languages are something you can learn from, but for rookies and new people doing a CS major, allways learn the new languages, the newest methods, the newest and fastest algorythms. And if you ask why, I`d ask, why not? Older languages served their purpose, we learned from them, we still learn from them, even if it is positive, we know how to not do it next time

[Jackolantern]

So, back to the original topic, sure, older languages are something you can learn from, but for rookies and new people doing a CS major, allways learn the new languages, the newest methods, the newest and fastest algorythms. And if you ask why, I`d ask, why not? Older languages served their purpose, we learned from them, we still learn from them, even if it is positive, we know how to not do it next time

You will probably have to do your CS major in one of the popular languages anyway. Most don't have classes in older languages because schools follow trends, and they could probably not find a teacher if they wanted to. But the mentality that those languages are dead and gone and we should move on was basically the point of my original posting Learn Java. Learn C#. Learn PHP, Javascript, Python, and any of the other popular languages. They will probably put food on your table for the first few years of your career, and maybe far beyond. But we shouldn't turn our backs on older languages, either. Like I said, there are hundreds of thousands (probably even millions) of old programs out there that people still want work done on. And if you have the skills in that language and few other people do (because they listened to their professors and only learned Java and C++), you can make 5x more for your time. There will be much less work in that one language, but when you are the only one in a 1000 mile radius who can save someone's business from a faulty BCPL program, that is what we call a monopoly and you can name your price. And it is not like you should only learn that old language, which is why I suggested to go ahead and learn the new languages and follow trends as well.

There are more programs in use today in "old" languages than in modern ones. And they won't be going away any time soon! Of course you should be responsible as well, and if someone asks you to fabricate a totally new application in one of those languages, you should tell them that is a bad idea. That is unless you are evil and want to make yourself a lifetime client