January 27, 2001, 11:58 AM — Fact: The demand for Java programmers is hotter than ever. And that fact leads to two major questions. First, is it safe to stake your career on Java? And second, how serious are potential employers' Java development efforts, and does keeping your C++ skills up to date make sense?
Supply-side economics
Java's ascendancy over C++ in the job market is a done deal. Java mentions in January's help wanted ads slightly exceeded those of C++ for the first time, according to Bloor Research, a British firm that counted 40,000 online advertisements. Java accounted for 37 percent of all ads, doubling in the past year, while C++ growth was flat. Visual Basic and C also held steady at 25 percent each.
What's more, Java demand outpaces the supply of available programmers. Zona Research says there aren't enough Java programmers to fill all the jobs. Gartner Group estimates that less than half the demand for efficient Java developers will be met through 2004.
Reality check
Driving all the Java interest, not surprisingly, is nearly every company's push to Web-enable its business, whether it be with a corporate Intranet, a retail e-commerce site, or business-to-business links to suppliers.
Until a few years ago, Java was used for much less serious programs that ran on end users' systems, and C++ still ruled enterprise development. But that began to change with the introduction in December 1997 of Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), object-oriented components that run on servers. It was at that time that EJB was basically institutionalized as a platform. Late last year, Sun released Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), a description for an enterprise platform. Today heavyweights such as Informix, Oracle, and Sybase are working on J2EE versions that corporations should be able to develop on, says Bill Roth, a Sun product manager.
Independent studies confirm that corporations aren't just kicking tires but are using Java in some of their most important development work. According to Soundview Technology Group which surveyed more than 1,000 IT executives about their 1999 development plans, last year was dominated by Java (at around 85 percent) and Enterprise Java Beans (around 70 percent), far outpacing Visual Basic and C++. And a December study by Cutter Consortium found 51 percent of e-business projects employing Java. "Java has surpassed C++, which 37 percent of respondents are using," writes Cutter consultant Chris Pickering. He adds: "Java has entered the computing mainstream, so there should be no more fears about its longevity."
Why is Java skyrocketing in popularity? Technically, it has a lot going for it. "There are some good technical reasons that Java's taking off in the enterprise," says David Troug, senior analyst at Forrester Research. Troug and other analysts cite Java's platform independence and ease of programming as main reasons that people now prefer it to C++ and other languages. And thanks to EJB and J2EE, Java is getting the performance and scalability it lacked previously. Java's suitability for key corporate applications is still a topic of debate, but there's no doubt that major developers like BEA, IBM, Oracle, business-to-business vendor Ariba, and telecom heavies GTE and Qwest Communications are using it for much of their mission-critical development.
C++ (and VB to some extent) continues to be the favored language for software that's tied to a specific platform. Shrink-wrapped Windows software, such as games and office applications, and certain operating systems and their interfaces to applications, are still written in C++. But commercial C++ applications, especially, may come under attack as application service providers (ASPs) offer more Web-based alternatives written in Java, also the preferred language for squeezing apps onto alternative platforms such as Web phones and network computers.
Java training
Aspiring Java developers who are still in college are sitting pretty: Java has pulled even with C++ as a teaching language in universities. Gartner says Java and C++ are each taught in 87 percent of schools surveyed, after an 8 percent drop in C++ in the past two years. Java has been climbing steadily.
