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Q: Statistics on the availability of Fortran programmers ( Answered 4 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Statistics on the availability of Fortran programmers
Category: Computers > Programming
Asked by: ducksrus-ga
List Price: $50.00
Posted: 04 Jan 2003 22:03 PST
Expires: 03 Feb 2003 22:03 PST
Question ID: 137651
We have several millions of lines of code written in
Fortran 77 and we are worried about getting Fortran programmers to
support this code over the next 5 years. I need the following:

(i) data on current availability of Fortran programmers in the US (and
the corresponding numbers for COBOL, C++ and Java for comparison)

(ii) Whether these availability numbers depend a lot on state (say TN
versus CA versus TX) - not critical information.

(iii) estimates of the availability of programmmers for these
languages
5 years down the road (year 2008).

I know (iii) can be pretty vague, but any estimates of any kind will
be
useful since it will be input to an intensive legacy migration plan.

Thanks.
Answer  
Subject: Re: Statistics on the availability of Fortran programmers
Answered By: ragingacademic-ga on 05 Jan 2003 04:35 PST
Rated:4 out of 5 stars
 
Dear ducksrus,

Thanks for your question.  First, let me request that if any of the
following is unclear or if you require any further research – please
don’t hesitate to ask me for a clarification.

First, here is some information on programmers as a whole.  This is
extracted from “Information Technology Industry Council – Databook”
(Jan 1998):

# of Programmers in US (all disciplines) –
1980 – 351,000
1990 – 594,000
1995 – 553,000
2006 – 690,000 (estimate)

Dain Rauscher Wessels addresses the growth in the developer community
by language in a report on Rational Software Corporation (recently
acquired by IBM) dated August 4, 2000 –

https://www.rbccmresearch.com/drw1.0.4/pdf/0,,6402,00.pdf

See graph on p. 8, and note that Fortran does not even show up in the
list; it is likely bunched together with the “others.”

IDC provides the exact data you are seeking, but it can be quite
costly.  I believe their most recent relevant report is “2001 IDC
Professional Developer Model” and it is available here –

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jhtml?sectionId=tableofcontent&containerId=24765&pageType=SECTION

A less expensive but more recent (yet less comprehensive) report is
“Language Usage Patterns Among Professional Developers” – this report
is available at –

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jhtml?containerId=27767

A little bit of IDC’s research is covered in the following article
from Tech Strategies –

http://www.advisor.com/doc/06134

The best FREE source for data along the lines you are seeking is
jobstats, operating out of Australia.  The following provides a great
comparison of demand for various programming languages (the great
thing about the jobstats reports is that everything is
up-to-the-minute! You can go to the site and generate fresh reports,
or view the ones I have linked to below) –

http://jobstats.jobnet.com.au/jobtools/jsjobstats.displaycategory?in_catid=1&in_type=100

If you look at the following graph, you will see that the demand for
Fortran jobs is a fraction of the supply –

http://jobstats.jobnet.com.au/jobtools/jsjobstats.displaycategory?in_catid=1&in_type=300

In other words, there seem to be a lot less Fortran programmers out
there than there are jobs for them – and the number of Fortran
programmers is not about to increase.

Statistics from SeniorTech could be helpful, although they are by no
means representative; SeniorTech only includes individuals 35 years
and older; current distribution of candidates by language is as
follows:

Languages
ASSEMBLER - 145
BASIC - 237
C - 206
C++ - 153
COBOL - 455
COBOL2 - 357
ENDEVOR - 94
FORTRAN - 82
JAVA - 101
JCL - 401
PASCAL - 56
PL/1 - 36
RPG - 57
TURBO PASCAL - 25
UNIX SHELL - 171
VISUAL BASIC - 281
VISUAL C - 82
DELPHI - 23

The source is at –

http://www.srstaff.com/count.htm

I hope this response adequately addresses your request.  Please let me
know if you are in need of additional information concerning this
query.

Thanks,
ragingacademic-ga


References:

Information Technology Industry Council - Databook: Occupational
Employment Part 1 of 2; p. 22+, January 1 1998


Additional Links:

Good discussion on Fortran vs. other languages –
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:v7j1R2eynvcC:dbforums.com/t546199.html+fortran+cobol+c+java+%22number+of+programmers%22+programmers+forecast+-resume&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Information about the computer programming profession from the US
Department of Labor
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos110.htm

Great article on the various programming languages
http://www.two-sdg.demon.co.uk/curbralan/papers/SpeakingInTongues.pdf

A lot of interesting stats about computers and programming
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/bam/www/numbers.html#ComputerPeople


Search Strategy:

us "department of labor" computer developer statistics fortran
fortran cobol c java "number of developers"
fortran cobol c java "number of developers" programmers forecast
–resume
fortran cobol c java programmers forecast

Clarification of Answer by ragingacademic-ga on 11 Jan 2003 20:10 PST
ducksrus -

Thanks for your comments and rating!
Glad I could be of service.

ragingacademic
ducksrus-ga rated this answer:4 out of 5 stars
I got the response real quick. Question at 11 pm and answer next morning!

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