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From: doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Language use
Message-ID: <1073@terak.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Mar-86 13:47:32 EST
Article-I.D.: terak.1073
Posted: Mon Mar  3 13:47:32 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Mar-86 05:53:40 EST
References: <6@mit-prep.ARPA>
Organization: Calcomp Display Products Division, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 49

> A useful metric is "what % of bodies
> are programming in a XXX environment, as distinct from a YYY environment".

It'd be nearly impossible to determine exact numbers; some of the
sub-industries are difficult to quantify.

For non-professional programmers, I'd guess BASIC.

For the really huge employers (GM, TRW, government, etc.), probably the
biggest single group is CICS Command Level/COBOL.  [For those
unfamiliar, the base language is COBOL, but the bulk of the program
consists of calls to CICS Command interface routines.]  Add in the other
IBM COBOL programmers, and you've probably got a majority.  And there's
still a lot of FORTRAN in the scientific community.  PL/I was stillborn,
and RPG's limited range of applicability prevented it from becoming
really popular with the big data centers.  Assembler is used only in the
Systems Programming departments.

For the smaller employers, it depends on the kind of programming.  For
ordinary business-type stuff, it's virtually all COBOL and RPG.  The RPG
contingent is slowly dying off; this is primarily because these smaller
businesses can now afford computers that are capable of much more
complex jobs than one can express in RPG.

An almost invisible horde of smaller companies employ programmers to
write programs for embedded microprocessors.  How many companies, how
many programmers, how many programs, it's hard to tell.  Most of this
work is in assembler (when you've only got 2K of program storage, you
don't mess around).  With the advent of larger control stores, some
shops are experimenting with C and FORTH.  From what I've heard, the
C projects have had mixed results, and the FORTH projects have usually
been failures.  A small number of programmers are employed developing
microcode for bit-slice machines.  This is virtually all in assembler.

And a number of smaller employers develop software specifically.  I
include in this both software houses and (for example) Tektronix's
development of the UTek operating system.  Here again, it's hard to
tell how many companies, how many programmers, and how many programs.
C and assembler are the most common languages, with C usually being
used on applications intended for Unix boxes and IBM-PCs.

Then there are the one-man software developers.  It's anyone's guess how
many people consider themselves to be in this category.  Again, C and
assembler predominate, with C again being used on applications targeted
to Unix boxes and IBM-PCs.  Very few of these programmers are able to
support themselves through these efforts, so there's some question as to
how many truly "professional" programmers there are in this group.
-- 
Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {hardy,savax,seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!terak!doug