Here's some "unofficial" confirmation. Over the last 2 years, there have been at most 2 jobs for .net or any Microsoft technology developers in either the Orlando Sentinel or the Florida Today. But, there have been at least 4 jobs for Java listed, even during Christmas break when there usually aren't any help wanted ads for tech fields. It's depressing when you've spent so much time getting proficient in the ms technology and find out that most of the jobs for it are moving overseas. The only ms jobs in the area are the ones that require a security clearance.

seems to me that any good programmer ought to understand and be proficient at working with both java and microsoft technologies.

Admittedly .Net is an early generation or v1 version; however the biggest knock agains migrating to it has been that vb6 worked so well. .Net has been around for a couple of years and yes 2003 did make major improvements over 2002. The 2005 changes are not nearly as dramatic. In all practicality c++ or c# would be better choices because of their similarities to java and scriptors; however .Net will become the standard because of vb6 and because of its integration with xml and all other Web centric uses. Think integration of legacy systems to hand-helds, .Net will be on both ends and in the middle. This is not to say that it is the best choice for 1 but that it has been developed and marketed to service all.

I just started as a developer in a wholly-owned, independent subsidiary of large financial corporation in NYC. We are generally a MS-friendly company (whereas the parent is more interested in Java). However, there is a hesitancy to fully adopt C# or .NET here because it is seen (rightly) as a language at v1.0 whereas Java has a bit more history. I would say when .NET 2.0 comes around, both C# and the .NET Framework itself will be both more used than currently.

Not sure if this is ever considered, but are there more job listings for java people because it takes more java developers to get stuff done? Honestly, really, I'm not a .net fan at all. It's goe some good ideas, but you're hobbled to one platform to be productive with MS tools. Dev tools often make people more productive. I've seen relative newbies make .net do moderately impressive stuff in just a few weeks, while twice as many java people were half as productive. I'm only speaking from my obviously limited perspective (there's only one of me!) but is this ever considered a factor when people talk about the relative number of job postings?

Most of these "available" jobs are in fact advertisements required by INS for someone's H1B.

Before you get too outraged by this "article", please know that this was originally a blog post of mine back in December 2004 just playing around very late one night on Indeed.com; not a heavily researched technical article that I would submit for publication.

It's been blown-up WAY out of proportion, has been Slashdotted, etc. What you see posted here is selected copy & pasted material out of my original blog post. I just approved of it assuming it was going to end-up in the ColdFusion Developers Journal.. I had no idea it was being posted to the Java Developers Journal and the .NET Developers Journal.. If you'd like to read the original, please check these links:

http://devnulled.com/content/2004/12/an-evaluation-of-the-current-us-tec...
http://devnulled.com/content/2005/01/an-evaluation-of-the-current-techno...

Thanks,

- Brandon

Where are the numbers for Macintosh and OSX in the OS list?

Some are trying to make more of this than what its purpose. It clearly states it is an informal survey and has the numbers were not verified. This obviously means there has been no attempt to mislead or portray 1 side against another. It has value in whether java will continue to be a skill set that is in demand or whether .net (or some other) is (or will) push it aside. There are clearly some applications that can be done easier with java than .net however the question is what does the future hold? I would submit that everyone's crystal ball is as cloudy as the next but history has told us that MS leads the way in development and output by sheer amounts of money available to throw at projects. Net (vb.net) will lead the programming efforts of the future. I say this with confidence in that it has already been developed to work with most other languages and with legacy systems as well. Additionally sql server will be the platform of choice and we know which tool works best with that. Neither Sun nor Oracle has been able to maintain their stock like MS and neither has been able to maintain the momentum each had when during their day in the sun. PHP is the best thing since sliced bread however the simplicity of it is also its achilles heel. It can easily be incorporated under another name or made funtional with anything MS puts out. Look for big changes in ASP and ADO as they are the bridge between the datacenters and the Web and MS needs that bridge.
Last, even though these numbers are far from accurate, they are a bit of positive light. What we all need is to have these numbers (whatever set) created on American shores and not in a foreign entity. Similarly, if R&D continues to be exported to foreign countries, $30 an hour (which is selling yourself short even today), would be just a dream.

Many of those 200k postings are trolls, companies with no specific hiring plans having a look at who's out there, and companies posting many different descriptions of a single position. More realistic but harder to count is the number of postings that led to contracts or employment.

As for Linux outnumbering Solaris, the generic UNIX count, which likely is mostly Solaris, is greater than Linux + Solaris, rendering meaningless the counts of the various commercial and open source UNIX systems. What's significant is the counts of all commercial and open source variants of UNIX is close to the count of Windows, within the wide margin of error for this survey.

This statistic is a joke and does not serve any purpose. Publishing something as add-hoc as this job query not only throws confusion but also wastes time of many readers. If one wants to publish something on the public quorum, he/she needs to be more scientific or, at least, more thoughtful.

How can you compare Java jobs to the separate categories of .Net, C#, ASP & VB? It shows that either the author does not know what he is doing or he is trying to intentionally work with the numbers. Same with comparing operating systems. What is included in the UNIX category, probably other OS flavors that are specified as other categories.

For the next time, please try to either stay away from publishing silly information or do your homework before doing so.

Just did a little arithmetic, adding up your numbers. It's over 200,00 jobs. I am a long-time veteran of the computer world and am pretty well qualified to talk about the New York City, nearby New Jersey and Connecticut area. There are less than 2% of your total in this area ! Call the local head-hunters, send a resume and just TRY to get a response for an interview. I am getting 15-20 job openings per week via e-mail. The great majority are short-term consulting. Not a single one in the past month for C#. A couple for Perl and none for Python. Average pay per hour is $30. A large number, more than for Java, C++ and C# combined, are for Website oriented work. PHP has really caught on. Why I don't question your ressearch, I DON"T BELIEVE THE NUMBERS. How many of the 250,000 jobs created, as reported by the US government last week, are taken by people you know ? They aren't here my friend. Un-employment claims here in New York state are up again. So as to not end on a discordant note, there are job openings in India.

Just did a little arithmetic, adding up your numbers. It's over 200,00 jobs. I am a long-time veteran of the computer world and am pretty well qualified to talk about the New York City, nearby New Jersey and Connecticut area. There are less than 2% of your total in this area ! Call the local head-hunters, send a resume and just TRY to get a response for an interview. I am getting 15-20 job openings per week via e-mail. The great majority are short-term consulting. Not a single one in the past month for C#. A couple for Perl and none for Python. Average pay per hour is $30. A large number, more than for Java, C++ and C# combined, are for Website oriented work. PHP has really caught on. Why I don't question your ressearch, I DON"T BELIEVE THE NUMBERS. How many of the 250,000 jobs created, as reported by the US government last week, are taken by people you know ? They aren't here my friend. Un-employment claims here in New York state are up again. So as to not end on a discordant note, there are job openings in India.

You can't really combine the results of the .NET, C#, etc. searches because they're separate searches and are probably returning the same results. Otherwise I could do a search for Java, J2EE, JSP, etc. and combine all those results.

I found it stagering how many .Net jobs there were if you actually combined all the related .Net technologies. I.E., if you group all of .Net, ASP, ASP.Net, C# (also uses the .Net Framework) You have an overwhelming response, add to this that the .Net Framework is virtually brand new in comparison to Java... I use both technologies depending on the scope and platform but honestly I would rather be in the .Net category if I could only choose one, its clean and puts the rrrr in Rapid developement....

Where do these numbers come from? Did I miss it, or has the author not said?

I find it amazing just how few Linux jobs there are compared to Unix jobs. Is that an indication of the relative strength of Unix over Linux or merely the effect of the Open Source movement and the reduced need to higher developers of Linux vs. Unix?

I agree with an anon post. Lump .NET with ASP.NET and you have a big number. Plus, to use .NET, in most cases you are using VB.NET or C#. Interesting catagories.

Since there is no explicit J2EE or JSP mentioned, we have to assume that these categories all fall under "Java". Hence C#, DotNet, ASP.NET and all things DotNet should be added also. And then...

Instead of comparing Java and C# better compare Java and .NET as platforms. Also is there any survey regarding the trends over past years? Is java losing ground to .NET???

I think the comparison between C# and Jave is more useful than that between Java and ASP and/or .NET.

I would imagine .NET jobs relate to a wide variety of overlapping areas. .ASP jobs could be compared to JSP and other web programming skills not JAVA the language as a whole.

Apples and Oranges surely !!!

It's amusing that Fortran, Cobol and RPG still make a top-20 list.

Who was it that said "We don't know what programming language we'll be using 50 years from now, but we know it'll be called Fortran"?

If I include ASP.NET with the .NET numbers, it would seem to push .NET over the top. Creative categorization of the information anyone? :)

I'm curious if anyone knows of any sort of reverse analysis. What I mean is that it seems easy to figure out what sort of jobs are available based on demand, but is there any analysis that shows what sort of IT-skill-sets are available from people in the job market? This sort of info would be nice to have if you were trying to avoid being one of the thousands of lemmings all focusing on the same job market.

Does anyone know of any statistics for UK jobs?