UpFRONT

The references to IMAP in Mark Stacey's article, “Linux as a Work Environment Desktop”, (issue 79, November 2000) should read MAPI rather than IMAP.

In LJ six years ago this month we published “A Conversation with Linus Torvalds” in which Linus reflected on being bitten by a penguin in Canberra, his preference for Irish beer, getting ready for 1.2 and his decision to name the OS Linux rather than Freakix. Linus wrapped up the interview by revealing his plan for “World domination. Fast.”

by Reginald Charney

Last month, there was a slight up-tick in the number of software engineering jobs in demand, particularly here in the Valley. This month proves that it was no fluke. There is still a continuing demand for both IT skills in general and software engineering in particular. However, it does look like it is leveling off. The demand now for software engineers appears to be increasing at the same rate as for all IT positions. (Note: Chart #1 is normalized for the number of jobs in January of this year. That is, the number of openings in January 2000 has been taken as 1.00.)

Language Demand Trends

The demand for all the major computer languages have shown an interesting set of trends since the start of this year. Chart #2 shows the demand for today's most popular computer languages. The demand peaked in the April-May time frame when demand overall for language skills was at its highest. Since then, demand for language skills has decline until last month when things turned around. Demand for the Internet-related languages, XML and Perl have increased while the demand for Java and C/C++ has leveled off. My conclusion is that the desire to connect systems together using shared data definitions and universal scripting languages like Perl is driving this demand. Visual Basic is the anomaly. Demand for it increased, probably because of new prototyping being done.