'Old' tech like Java and .Net is hot in cold economy

If you're part of the "cool kid" developer crowd, you're undoubtedly writing your new application with Ruby on Rails, and spend a lot of time talking about Git, Squeak, or Memcached.

But if you want a job, apparently you should get back to ancient technologies like Java and .Net, according to new data from IT employment company Dice.com, cited in Baseline magazine. In addition to those programming heavyweights, other enterprise bellwethers like Oracle, SharePoint, and SAP also make the cut.

On Java, Tom Silver, senior vice president at Dice.com, sees value in formal training, per Baseline's account:

Online developers with proficiency in Java, particularly with J2EE, can still find good prospects within the market. Experience is valued, but Silver suggests that Sun's Certified Java programmer (SCJP) offers a leg up on the competition.

Certification? That's about as Old World as you can find. And yet it seems to work.

Apparently, new-age Web technologies will get you a date, but old-school technologies are the best bet if you want a job.

And with TechServe Alliance finding 16,000 IT jobs lost in June 2009, and new Janco Associates data (via Baseline) reporting an overall IT salary decline of 0.19 percent, but a 0.22 percent increase in enterprise IT salaries, it may be time to double down on those "boring" old enterprise technologies.

Employment is pretty sexy, even if Java and .Net are not.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[stepyourgameup]

I gave up trying to find a programming job soon after I graduated from college. I should have gone to medical school.

[halfNakedPappy]

You can become a citizen of another country and apply for an H1B visa

[odubtaig]

Yes, then at least you'll know the rejection won't have anything to do with your abilities.

[linkux]

"Apparently, new-age Web technologies will get you a date, but old-school technologies are the best bet if you want a job."

I can just see a bunch of Ruby coders rushing to add "I know Ruby on Rails" to their MatchMaker profile ;)

[mikekrause]

If the newer technologies were actually built on the lessons of the old, I'd be happy to pursue them. Unfortunately, most of the new stuff seems to be built by html/javascript hackers that don't know the first thing about design patterns like MVC.

[saltylaker]

Despite being "old tech" what has made JAVA and .NET still viable is that they have never stopped innovating. Not being new does not mean that they have not made innovative updates and improvements.

[pcfish]

Calling JAVA and .Net old, while Ruby is cool. The editor apparently does not understand anything about these technologies.

[pentest]

Yeah, the author is clueless, I guess he doesn't know that Ruby started in 1993 and is older than .NET and not much younger than Java.

[asjbiotek]

I started programming in Java in 1997 or so and have never really learned another programming platform since then. On the server side I use Java EE, on mobile development I use either Java ME or Google Android. I also do some blu-ray BD-J development, and have dabbled in Java CARD (smartcard) programming.

It is THE coolest platform around because you can pretty much do anything with it, not just server side development.

[pentest]

What langauge other than PHP is server side only? Not that PHP is completely server side, but really has little use outside of it.

[drakarian]

The author of this article seems to be confusing 'Old' with 'Enterprise Level'. Most medium to large corporations that i've done business with are using .net or java...I've yet to come across a business that even considered using Ruby or Python for business critical work.

[shusseina2]

How many of those enterprise business apps are web-based apps? There's your answer.

It's silly to argue about Java/C# vs Rails, etc. For starters, Java and C# have been in the enterprise longer. Rails is targeted at web apps, it was specifically created to overcome certain issues in designing web apps. Thankfully IT continues to move forward, so it should be expected that something better than Java will come along to replace it, but like Cobol and C before it, one should expect Java to hang around for quite sometime.

[ver_1982]

.Net Rocks, Java Rules. Ruby... hmmm.

[odubtaig]

Got to be said, the job boards are full of Java and C# (sometimes in the same job requirements) right now. There may be peripheral requirements (like Javascript and PHP on top of JSP) but if you don't know Java or C# you're stuffed.

Lucky for me I know Java so I'm relatively safe. Let's see how long I can stand Java.

[pentest]

SCJP is a joke, almost to the level of MSCE. You should see the types of questions you get from the alleged certified Java "programmers" that learned straight from Java for Dummies. Anyone who requires one of the Sun certs is someone without a clue and shouldn't be hiring or have anything to do with development. These types of certifications exist only to please and trick the brain-dead businessman.

Develop with .net and you have just put on a straight jacket and climbed into a very rigid and small box.

Java is hardly ancient, it continually advances and its JVM is as cutting edge as you can get. It will eventually be the FORTRAN and COBOL of the future with tons of legacy code to manage, but plenty of significant new projects are still being created in Java.

That said, personally I have been moving away from Python and Java and using Ruby more and more, but it seems that C will forever be my core language. Ruby is such an expressive and beautiful language that is so fun to use, even for drudgery like system scripts. Once Ruby 2 comes out any performance complaints(and performance is a very misunderstood concept, it is relative) will end, although the performance complaints of Java are almost a decade old and no longer valid, but yet is still around among very ignorant circles. The Java language is flawed and clunky, but way better then the C# nonsense or the bloat of C++. What makes Java so powerful is its large enterprise libraries and the JVM, not the language.

[shusseina2]

I am starting to doubt the value of training courses and certifications. Not once has an interviewer ever mentioned the certification or training I have listed on my resume. That said, I recently passed a SQL Server exam and learnt a lot while studying for the exam - I don't think certification is as bad as people make them out to be.

[MikeG8r]

Certifications won't make you a better developer, but it will verify that you have a high level knowledge of the language. With all the flat out lying on resumes, it's hard to know who is being real. With certifications, employers can at least verify with the certification authority that the candidate has indeed passed the exam.

The tests are not easy. Veteran developers still need to review before taking the exam. Unless you know the language specification inside and out, you will probably learn a lot of things. I don't understand the backlash on certifications. You have nothing to lose, and a lot to gain. I think it's probably because some people think they already know everything and they don't want anything to shatter that belief, which certification training will definitely do.

[pentest]

The problem is that certifications don't prove you can effectively program in that language. It says absolutely nothing about whether or not you can program in it.

If someone knows, say C or Haskell, they could study enough to understand Java well enough to pass any Sun certification, but without learning how to develop in it. Language syntax and rules, and developing in that language are two different concepts, both are important, but certs ignore the latter.

[wanorris]

> Develop with .net and you have just put on a straight jacket and climbed into a very rigid and small box.

> The Java language is flawed and clunky, but way better then the C# nonsense

Umm, what?

I'm deeply suspicious that you know very little about C# or .Net other than what you've heard secondhand. If you like Java, cool. If you like Ruby, cool. But just because you like your platforms of choice doesn't mean everyone else's suck.

Like Java, most C# development is enterprise, which generally means deployment through the web or through desktop apps. Through the web, C# gives you the modest disadvantage that (practically speaking, anyway) your server platform is dictated to you. Since end users don't care about server farms and most enterprises can handle Windows Server deployments easily, this usually isn't a big deal. Through desktop apps, you get native development on an OS with 90+% enterprise deployment share.

C# gives you a boatload of features that trendier languages have -- first class functions, lambdas, higher order functions, monadic code (LINQ), mixins (extension methods) and lots more. It also gives you the same OO/VM/static typed foundations that Java does.

And if you get tired of C#, you can extend your legacy code with F# (a dialect of ML), IronPython, VB (one of the most widely used languages in the history of programming), and IronRuby (still a work in progress). Or, you know, Java, using the open-source IKVM. It's very easy to switch to a state-of-the-art language while still retaining the ability to deploy just like any other .Net app, which means that all the moving parts have already been validated on an enterprise level, and your sysadmins don't have to do anything extra.

Mono runs on all platforms, and Moonlight is working to bring Silverlight to all platforms.

I'm not sure just what kind of straightjacket you think is being imposed, but the platform is excellent (and improving with every release), and the job prospects are solid as well.

[sanjayb]

The 'old tech' like Java and .NET are still quite innovative. New features are being developed for these platforms everyday. However, I think what has happened and especially in the enterprise market is that the application of these technologies has become stale and boring. You are constantly creating or maintaining the same type of applications day after day. The state of enterprise development isn't innovative. Companies want to play it safe and not fully utilize the features of Java or .NET.