Agreed. I was warning about making a long-term commitment of time and resources to an ephemeral "need". Figuring out how to satisfy the short term is an important issue. And today geophysicists seem to have jobs again. As someone who was in the university education game, I found there was constant effort to put in place "degree programs" that satisfied the short term. It takes 4-5 years just to start a degree program, and another 4-5 to get the first students out. This is now costing all of us a lot of tax $$$ to teach ephemeral skills, and because of the funding model, many of the students will never be very good at any of the things they are supposed to learn. Bad for them, and bad for us all. I have had some experience with paired programming (extreme programming, other names), and had a paper about to be submitted with Tim Lethbridge when such stuff was published by others -- good ideas are rarely generated at one point only. My guess is that organizations wanting to increase skills in XXXX, of which Java is just one example, could do worse than hire folk who have demonstrated they can solve some programming/IT problems and have them work alongside experienced folk for a bit. Much quicker and more focussed than waiting for them to graduate. Moreover, along the way the organization can develop their own style or standards. JN On 12/16/2011 01:40 PM, Jean-François Bilodeau wrote: > On 16/12/2011 12:50 PM, John C Nash wrote: >> Job ads reflect present perceived "needs". When I started university, there were hundreds >> of ads for geophysicists. I did chemistry and physics and computational stuff (there was >> no Computer Science yet). When I graduated, there were ads for computer skills, but >> geophysicists were first in the line to serve at the then-relatively-new McDonalds. >> >> [...] > If I may add my $0.02CAD, I agree with using the best tool for the job, > but as an industry consultant, I still get an enormous demand for Java. > Furthermore, I noticed that the second most-referenced skill happened to > be Android development, which also happens to be (mostly) Java. > > Thus, like it or hate it, Java is still very fashionable while C++ (and > C) isn't going away anytime soon--I mean, I favourite OS is build mostly > on those two languages ;) > > J-F > > ps: As for avoiding to work at McDonalds, I think it comes down to > marketing you skills more than your diploma. > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux mailing list > Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca > http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux