PROGRAMMING

Programming



Programming

(a)

The most in demand position over the past 30 days is Computer Programmers. Employers and Recruiting Agencies have posted more than 220,000 new jobs for Computer Programmers, a 26% increase from the same time period in 2010. Within the Computer Programmer field, the top three positions with new online job ads were: Computer Systems Analysts, Web Developers and Computer Software Engineers. Over the past 30 days, there have been approximately 40,000 new ads for Computer Systems Analysts, 32,000 new ads for Web Developers and 29,000 for Computer Software Engineers. Other postings for Computer Specialists include Computer Support Specialists (22,000 jobs) and Network and Computer Systems Administrators (21,000 jobs).

California, with more than 30,000 ads, leads the US in job postings. San Francisco, the highest metropolitan area in California, has over 3,800 jobs. Texas and New York, the second and third highest hiring states, have posted over 14,000 jobs each. Due to the competition for this talent pool in San Francisco, recruiters will have a more difficult time filling these positions. However, recruiters in the New York metropolitan area should find it relatively easier to fill Computer Specialist positions, as measured by the Hiring Scale™. There are currently 1,300 individual companies recruiting for Computer Specialists in the San Francisco metro area.

While the economy has made expansion difficult for many industries, Seattle-based technology companies have experienced expansion difficulty for a different reason: Namely, the pool of qualified candidates isn't keeping up with demand. A quick search on NWjobs.com's technology section routinely yields hundreds of software-engineering jobs in the area, with employers ranging from Amazon to Zynga. One company, F5, is looking to fill more than 40 full-time programming-related positions. “It isn't an easy talent to fill,” says Ryan Kearny, vice president of product development. He says that for F5, a computer-science degree isn't enough. Kearny says the technology company, which specializes in application-delivery networking, looks for confident team players. Perhaps even more important, he says, “We weigh whether the candidate seems genuinely passionate about programming. Maybe they've created their own technical projects or simply read tech books that aren't part of a school curriculum.” According to the Washington State Employment Security Department, programmers are among the top five in-demand professionals in King County, and demand is expected to remain high in coming years.

(b)

Software engineers suffer from not knowing what their code should look like. The problem is that people use very different, and often antithetical, criteria to judge the 'beauty' of code. Clearly there is a need for a measure of code quality which is more objective than aesthetic. Truly maintainable code is flexible and can be taken in many directions. Code is not more maintainable just because it has more features - invoking functionality which is currently dormant is not maintenance, its use. Maintenance is when you add new functionality or change existing functionality. This is often done long after the code was originally written and in a completely unforeseeable manner. Planning for the unexpected is a paradoxical concept - ...