A question to IT KBers - what are prospects of finding an IT job in Auckland?

[Street Gerbil]

After being stuck in a very narrow ecological niche for 10 years, and
becoming highly specialized in a very specific area of business
knowledge only a few companies in the world might be interested in,
I found myself at risk of becoming a corporate dinosaur (you know, like
experience with COBOL and C/C++ etc).
Do you guys believe that it is possible to find an employer willing to mentor me and let me grow into 21st century (Java/J2EE, .NET, and suchlike) or do you know of anyone seeking a person with experience in supporting large scale projects at all stages of SDLC? Please feel free to speculate or PM. There will be beer, I promise.

[jrandom]

C/C++ etc

You're wrong to think that C++ is somehow 'out of date', given that the vast majority of the world's systems software is still being written in it. It just depends what kind of industry you want to work in.

21st century (Java/J2EE, .NET, and suchlike)

So I take it you're an experienced programmer, but have no experience with the language products of the last decade?

Just spend a couple of weeks dumping some relevant books into your brain and then rock up to interviews. You might have to take a salary hit if you're moving to a job using products you haven't done real projects in before, but it shouldn't be too bad.

Heck, it's not as though there's no work out there for C++ programmers. I needed a new day job at the beginning of this year, had no interest in moving to any of that J2wossname webby bullshit, and it took me just on a month to find a decent permanent contract.

The programming tools you mention there have fairly specialised applications. They're not 'taking over' general-purpose software development; they just apply to certain types of product, so don't panic if you find yourself not ever using them.

[dhunt]

You're wrong to think that C++ is somehow 'out of date', given that the vast majority of the world's systems software is still being written in it. It just depends what kind of industry you want to work in.

Yeah I'll agree with jrandom on this. We use C pretty much exclusively in our products here. All embedded stuff.

I had to learn C# recently to make a basic GUI app to interface to our embedded product and like mostly languages once you learn one language it is easy to learn the basics of another language.

It depends really on what sort of job you are after. I'm sure you'll have no problem finding jobs doing C/C++ programming if that's what you want to do. But if you want to do something slightly different it's not hard to pickup a new language. Personally I prefer C to C#/java although I do enjoy doing the odd perl script .

[scracha]

C....dinasaurs. Whit? You won't find Java or much C++ in embedded apps.
C# and .net framework.....why bother...in a few years it'll be about as useful as knowing MFC & ATL.

You'll pickup Java pretty quickly if you're familiar with C++. Uni's use it now so that $hit lecturers don't get confused with things like pointers and memory allocation.

[enigma51]

Uni's use it now so that $hit lecturers don't get confused with things like pointers and memory allocation.

And make it harder for people to find desent coders!

[dhunt]

C# and .net framework.....why bother...in a few years it'll be about as useful as knowing MFC & ATL.

Yes and no. C# seems to be gaining momentum with the open source crowd via the mono project. So being able to run the same app on Windoze,Linux and Mac OS in theory will definitely help it a long.

[aroberts]

I agree with most of the above. If you know C++ you will pick up Java. Just get a book, do some playing around at home and then be honest with a new employer.

The fact that you know development (i.e. the SDLC) and have taught yourself Java will be a drawcard for some employers.

[scracha]

Coding is a fucked industry anyway. Half my mates are managing software teams in Bangalore and Eastern Europe. The other half are on the dole.

Ho home...happy hacking all.

[xwhatsit]

Yes and no. C# seems to be gaining momentum with the open source crowd via the mono project. So being able to run the same app on Windoze,Linux and Mac OS in theory will definitely help it a long.

Errrr.... Java?

The point's moot anyway, all of these JIT-style things end up in the real world running about as slow as interpreted Python anyway. You can show me all the benchmarks you like, but in my small still-at-uni brain, nothing can touch ASM/C/C++ yet for anything serious.

[imdying]

C# and .net framework.....why bother...in a few years it'll be about as useful as knowing MFC & ATL.

There's whole heap of MFC stuff still out there en masse... one of the largest courier companies in NZ has recently installed a new system with a lot of MFC components. .NET is firmly embedded into the corporate world on many levels, it won't disappear overnight... Look at COBOL, we're still supporting that crap.

The point's moot anyway, all of these JIT-style things end up in the real world running about as slow as interpreted Python anyway. You can show me all the benchmarks you like, but in my small still-at-uni brain, nothing can touch ASM/C/C++ yet for anything serious.

Hahahahahah, so much to learn....

[jrandom]

The point's moot anyway, all of these JIT-style things end up in the real world running about as slow as interpreted Python anyway.

In the 'real world', it's cheap as chips to double the processing power of a server, and hellishly expensive to double the development time of a project.

You do the math.

[xwhatsit]

In the 'real world', it's cheap as chips to double the processing power of a server, and hellishly expensive to double the development time of a project.

You do the math.

And that's why I'm still the small-brained student and you're the one with the real-world experience

Might explain the performance of the msc.exe compiler -- to save money, they wrote it in Ruby

Street Gerbil should wait for the Y10K bug to surface, then pull out that COBOL experience again...

[scracha]

And that's why I'm still the small-brained student and you're the one with the real-world experience

Yeah mate, I spent fuggin weeks knocking up interfaces in Visual C++. Then the management decided to let the visual basic guys do the front end. Fark, it was knocked up in about 1/6 of the time. I guess using the most appropriate tool for the job comes with experience. Knock the code up and if it's too slow then just optimise a few of the subroutines or make some assembley language calls. The old 80/20 rule apples

I must get around to learning VB.

[vifferman]

And make it harder for people to find desent coders!

A prerequisite for decent coders should be an ability to spell, (or at least to misspell consistently, I guess).
Reminds me of the first software company I worked for - there was one set of programs we had problems with (when editing or searching for them), as the first word of each program name was "RECIEVE".

[avgas]

In the 'real world', it's cheap as chips to double the processing power of a server, and hellishly expensive to double the development time of a project.

You do the math.

I understand that, but what i dont understand is why the hell does Microsoft like "discontinuing" API's !?????
Its fucking awesome when you get 2/3rds the way through a project only to find the API you have been basing on is now non-existent in windows.