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.

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

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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

I got the response real quick. Question at 11 pm and answer next morning!