Non-Programmers Need Not Apply

Jeff over at Coding Horror says out of 200 job applications, only 199 will be able to program.

Joel states that if you get 200 people who apply for a job, 199 of them are the same people that have applied for every other job, but never get hired because they don't have the skills:

That means, in this horribly simplified universe, that the entire world could consist of 1,000,000 programmers, of whom the worst 199 keep applying for every job and never getting them, but the best 999,801 always get jobs as soon as they apply for one. So every time a job is listed the 199 losers apply, as usual, and one guy from the pool of 999,801 applies, and he gets the job, of course, because he's the best, and now, in this contrived example, every employer thinks they're getting the top 0.5% when they're actually getting the top 99.9801%.

A lot of it has to do with how the job offer is made. If you posted it on Craigslist, that may be an accurate reflection of the numbers. Probably the same is true for posting it through Job Service or in the local general newspaper. Would also have a lot to do with the unemployement numbers.

It would be interesting to post a fictional job offer on Craigslist in New York or LA and then offer an automated FizzBuzz Question (see the article) and see what kind of numbers you get. You would need to make sure your job offer was run of the mill. If your job offer was too phenomenal then you would dip into that pool of programmers that have jobs and aren't actively applying for new jobs. That is what Google and Microsoft are trying to do - hire the best of the best away from the rest.

I was actually working one place where they wanted to hire a developer and I helped write the job posting and find some good placements. I think we got about 30 responses to very specific job requirements. About 25 of them wanted the company to sponsor their H1B visa. A couple others wanted to telecommute. That is for a Boise Idaho posting too.

Off hand it seems like I have been offered every single software development job I have applied for where I actually got past the low level resume filters (i.e. the HR department that is looking for keywords). Most likely that was due to the simple fact that I have a provable skill and experience in software development. Of course I have never applied for a software development position with Google or the like. The only two reasons I would consider moving to California is if Google or CodeGear offered me a job - well, depending on the job.

Technorati Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Skills] [Jobs] [Employment]

RAD Visual IDE for PHP (Delphi for PHP) just announced!

CodeGear and Delphi now offers for PHP what .NET does for ASP.NET: RAD Visual IDE with component reuse. Now you can have the productivity of ASP.NET and run it on LAMP.

read more | digg story

Boise Code Camp-12 days to go, 37 sessions!

I just checked the Boise Code Camp web site and we now have 37 confirmed sessions!

www.BoiseCodeCamp.com Plus, we now have lunch and dinner being provided to the attendees for free (thanks to some very generous sponsors). I'm starting to excited about this.

Technorati Tags: [Boise Code Camp] [Code Camp]

Atlas has shipped

OK, so it is really called Microsoft Ajax Toolkit. I still think Atlas is a cooler name. Anyway, it has shipped! Check it out here http://ajax.asp.net/. Even better, now they have videos on the web site to show you how to use the toolkit. For a complete list of videos (on AJAX and other ASP.NET topics), go here: http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/default.aspx?tabid=63 And lastly, if you have been using Atlas already, they are now shipping with more controls. The Tab control come to mind right now (mostly because a client of ours has been asking for just that).

Technorati Tags: [AJAX] [ATLAS] [ASP.NET]

Interbase, CodeGear, and Delphi: Oh my

I just saw a post from a CodeGear blogger stating that Interbase 2007 Developer Ed had been released (free download as well). If you are interested you can grab it here:

http://www.codegear.com/Default.aspx?tabid=142

I haven't been to the CodeGear web site since they first announced, and it didn't have much then. The web site now looks fairly well fleshed out, online store, all of their products, and a familiar motif for long time Delphi developers. Where am I going with this, I'm not sure right now. I guess I'm just glad that things are still moving on, and I don't have to rely on Microsoft for all of compilers. I like having some competition around.

Technorati Tags: [Programming] [Software] [CodeGear]

New Years Developer Resolutions

I thought it might be interesting to put up some New Years Resolutions relating to developing software. Here is what I have been able to come up with.

• Learn a new language (Ruby, Python, Lisp, something)
• Get better with that AJAX thing (this is probably a given)
• Write more unit tests
• Finish the pet projects that I have at home
• Learn DMX and the Data Mining portion of Analysis Services 2005

What does everyone else have on their list?

Technorati Tags: [Programming] [Software]

More on Language Popularity

Last night I was reading Considering Ajax on IBM's DeveloperWorks site. There was a quote near the top of the page:

"When we were young, we were told that 'Everybody else is doing it' was a really stupid reason to do something. Now it's the standard reason for picking a particular software package." -- Barry Gehm

I agree that language popularity should not be the primary reason for picking a particular software package. Nor should how innovative and advanced it is. The primary reasons should be:

1. Suitability to particular software development task.
2. Effectiveness of developers with selected language.

Of course the 2nd point does take into account the popularity and how supported it is. If you cannot find any developers to work in a specific language, then it isn't a good choice no matter now suitable it is, unless the developers can become effective and productive quickly in the language.

Really the 1st point is the most important. Sure, the innovation and advancements in the language are important in this area too, but much less so then the other elements of its suitability.

Technorati Tags: [Programming] [Software] [Languages]

PDC 07 announced

PDC 07 (Professional Developer Conference) has finally been announced, Oct 2-5 in Las Angeles, California. Typically, this is the conference that Microsoft puts on when they have a bunch of new developer stuff to show off (like LINQ).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/PDC/

Looks like they are just in the planning stages so not much there yet. But if you haven't been to PDC before, or would like to see what the last one was like, you can see Channel 9's coverage of PDC 05 here: http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/pdc05.

Now I just have to figure out how to score some free tickets. :)

Technorati Tags: [Programming] [Microsoft] [PDC07]

Language Popularity ASP vs. PHP

Matt and I werediscussing the flexibility of PHP. I commented that I keep hearing everyone saying ASP/ASP.net is the best of the best for web development, but judging by the fruits of the internet I would say PHP is more popular and more powerful. I realize that judging its power based on popularity isn't accurate, but I think having such a large repository of available projects to leverage as well as sites dedicated to the language is a huge strength of a language.

Beyond an estimate based on observation, you can judge a language's popularity in three ways.

1. TIOBE Programming Community Index. Unfortunately it doesn't include ASP/ASP.net since it does not consider it an actual language. It does include PHP, and rates it quite highly at #5 (In other news, Delphi moved up to #9 in December!)
2. Google Fight, which compares the Google results of two search terms. It puts PHP as the winner with 2.7 million results vs. ASP with 1.7 million results.
3. Google Code Search, which is the latest in a long line of code search engines. It has 567,000 PHP code samples and only 400 ASP code samples.

TIOBE does a really good job in tracking language popularity. It would be interesting to see how they would rate ASP/ASP.net in comparison to PHP, but I suspect it would put PHP very high on the list. The final indicator of the value of a language is asking people who know both PHP and ASP/ASP.net. They all favor PHP over ASP/ASP.net.

Technorati Tags: [Programming] [Software] [PHP] [ASP.net] [ASP]

Got API?

Matt just sent me this site: www.GotApi.com. "It's indexed the API's of PHP, Javascript (DOM related only it looks like... of course thats the tough part anyway), HTML, and CSS."

Matt and I were discussing the popularity and power of PHP vs. ASP/ASP.net.

Technorati Tags: [Programming] [Software] [API] [PHP] [Javascript ] [DOM ] [HTML] [CSS]