Agreed. I was warning about making a long-term commitment of time and resources 
to an
ephemeral "need".

Figuring out how to satisfy the short term is an important issue. And today 
geophysicists
seem to have jobs again. As someone who was in the university education game, I 
found
there was constant effort to put in place "degree programs" that satisfied the 
short term.
It takes 4-5 years just to start a degree program, and another 4-5 to get the 
first
students out. This is now costing all of us a lot of tax $$$ to teach ephemeral 
skills,
and because of the funding model, many of the students will never be very good 
at any of
the things they are supposed to learn. Bad for them, and bad for us all.

I have had some experience with paired programming (extreme programming, other 
names), and
had a paper about to be submitted with Tim Lethbridge when such stuff was 
published by
others -- good ideas are rarely generated at one point only. My guess is that
organizations wanting to increase skills in XXXX, of which Java is just one 
example, could
do worse than hire folk who have demonstrated they can solve some 
programming/IT problems
and have them work alongside experienced folk for a bit. Much quicker and more 
focussed
than waiting for them to graduate. Moreover, along the way the organization can 
develop
their own style or standards.

JN


On 12/16/2011 01:40 PM, Jean-François Bilodeau wrote:
> On 16/12/2011 12:50 PM, John C Nash wrote:
>> Job ads reflect present perceived "needs". When I started university, there 
>> were hundreds
>> of ads for geophysicists. I did chemistry and physics and computational 
>> stuff (there was
>> no Computer Science yet). When I graduated, there were ads for computer 
>> skills, but
>> geophysicists were first in the line to serve at the then-relatively-new 
>> McDonalds.
>>
>> [...]
> If I may add my $0.02CAD, I agree with using the best tool for the job, 
> but as an industry consultant, I still get an enormous demand for Java. 
> Furthermore, I noticed that the second most-referenced skill happened to 
> be Android development, which also happens to be (mostly) Java.
> 
> Thus, like it or hate it, Java is still very fashionable while C++ (and 
> C) isn't going away anytime soon--I mean, I favourite OS is build mostly 
> on those two languages ;)
> 
> J-F
> 
> ps: As for avoiding to work at McDonalds, I think it comes down to 
> marketing you skills more than your diploma.
> 
> 
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