Software Development languages in SA, now and the future.

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zeroSANDF

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Hi MyBB forumites.
Development languages in SA. What languages do you think is popular in the employment market? What is in high demand, low supply and what do you think about the future. If you have to get into a language/platform now, what would it be?
Broad and complicated questions I know. Some will point me to job classifieds, but I would like to hear peoples opinion in the job/industry.

For some background, I am looking to continue my development/programming career after a 4 year hiatus and can either supplement my experience or head for a new direction. I have no issue with learning as I enjoy the new and have always experienced IT as a continuous learning curve in any case.
My experience in my 19 years have included mostly ERP and manufacturing systems with NATURAL, C++, VB6, C# on ADABAS, MS SQL and Oracle.

Any opinions and pearls of wisdom will be greatly appreciated. And if this is in the wrong place, please point me to the correct space.
 
I think it depends which area you are in. Gauteng probably Java and .net due to corporate HQ being here. Cape Town more a mixed bag with all the startups there.
 
19 years experience? Fintech would take you in a heartbeat.

As for the future? It depends what you prefer.

Python won't go anywhere. R for data science, Rust or Elixir as primary platform drivers. Javascript (and typescript) followed by webassembly for the frontend.

And then we get to the not too distant future...

Ai and Quantum Computing.
Look at what IBM, Oracle and the other old dogs are up to. It trickles down into mainstream 2 - 5 years later (10 in ZA)

Good luck!
 
cguy said:
I assume that this is a reference to it being interpreted and therefore so slow, that to the casual observer it appears to be frozen, and not going anywhere.
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:p
Click to expand...

No, I just wanted clarification. "Not going anywhere" could mean "it's here to stay" or "it will never actually get going".

Python is very much actively used in industry at the moment, so the statement confused me a bit. I won't pretend it's the best tool for each job ;-) but it's pretty good for a lot of things.
 
newby_investor said:
No, I just wanted clarification. "Not going anywhere" could mean "it's here to stay" or "it will never actually get going".

Python is very much actively used in industry at the moment, so the statement confused me a bit. I won't pretend it's the best tool for each job ;-) but it's pretty good for a lot of things.
Click to expand...

I’m pretty sure that “it’s here to stay” was what was meant. No harm in asking for clarification though.
 
Golang... since having been getting balls deep into that, I've had lots of recruiters phone me :ROFL:
 
Python, is a generalist language, sure you wouldn't use it for high performance computing, but it's a good allround language to know, and is even integrated into desktop applications as their "scripting" language.

So to make it crystal clear. You'll have a reasonably well paying job in a decade if you decide on python as your primary.

I don't get why people get all hot n bothered about specific languages and frameworks. Yeah it's the latest sexy this year, and next year it's something else.

At the end of the day you're slamming commands into a processor, and it executes those commands to the best of its (or your) ability, to get a desired outcome. Is this an easy task? Hell no.
 
John_Phoenix said:
Python, is a generalist language, sure you wouldn't use it for high performance computing, but it's a good allround language to know, and is even integrated into desktop applications as their "scripting" language.

So to make it crystal clear. You'll have a reasonably well paying job in a decade if you decide on python as your primary.

I don't get why people get all hot n bothered about specific languages and frameworks. Yeah it's the latest sexy this year, and next year it's something else.

At the end of the day you're slamming commands into a processor, and it executes those commands to the best of its (or your) ability, to get a desired outcome. Is this an easy task? Hell no.
Click to expand...

It seems that to some people (a few on this forum) that being so extremely fanatical about a certain paradigm is very important, even to the extent where it determines success regarding hiring. Somehow we have this whole spiel about having to do funky tricks with languages (and they a year later they hire someone who cannot figure out what BS they put in the code / they themselves forgot about it). Software development prowess, seems to be a lot like sexual prowess in South Africa... if you can whip that language into submission it seems you're just like Paul Mein man or like Vernon Koekemoer.

Here's the catch though. I don't got no time to fukk around with crap like trying to write random data into a pointer (for what purpose only fukkkk knows), I have a job to do, deadlines to meet, and if it works it works.
 
Getting to know a couple of Web Frameworks
John_Phoenix said:
Python, is a generalist language, sure you wouldn't use it for high performance computing, but it's a good allround language to know, and is even integrated into desktop applications as their "scripting" language.
Click to expand...
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
runtimes_204.png
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/...on_Scipy_and_BLAS_on_LU_Factorization?lang=en

Keras is a high-level neural networks API, written in Python and capable of running on top of TensorFlow, CNTK, or Theano. It was developed with a focus on enabling fast experimentation. Being able to go from idea to result with the least possible delay is key to doing good research.
Click to expand...
https://keras.io/

https://pytorch.org/

The likely high performance computing most software developers are going to be doing is going to be based around the training of neural networks. That is almost exclusively in Python.


The only other type of "fast" language you need is C++ and that is if you want do develop application specific stuff on a GPU.
 
konfab said:
Getting to know a couple of Web Frameworks

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
runtimes_204.png
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/...on_Scipy_and_BLAS_on_LU_Factorization?lang=en


https://keras.io/

https://pytorch.org/

The likely high performance computing most software developers are going to be doing is going to be based around the training of neural networks. That is almost exclusively in Python.


The only other type of "fast" language you need is C++ and that is if you want do develop application specific stuff on a GPU.
Click to expand...
We use ANSI C for that, and increasingly... Golang..
 
konfab said:
Getting to know a couple of Web Frameworks

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
runtimes_204.png
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/...on_Scipy_and_BLAS_on_LU_Factorization?lang=en


https://keras.io/

https://pytorch.org/

The likely high performance computing most software developers are going to be doing is going to be based around the training of neural networks. That is almost exclusively in Python.


The only other type of "fast" language you need is C++ and that is if you want do develop application specific stuff on a GPU.
Click to expand...

There are waaay more reasons for a “fast” language than GPU computing.
 
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