Is there really a shortage of s/w developers in the US

[Zafir Anjum]

It is true that most companies hire only a small fraction of people who apply,

but does this mean that getting the right candidate is easy.


Have salaries really stayed about the same in the last two-three years?


What is your take on it?

[Martine Habib]

I think a lot of the shortage is caused by the fact that companies look for people who have had experience in the past in the technology that they need, instead of looking for a sharp person who can learn fast.

Because technologies are constantly evolving, it is becoming harder and harder to find people with experience in brand new technologies.

What companies should do instead, is hire people with great interest in learning the technology, and the time that the new hire would spend learning would be still more productive than the time spent waiting to encounter the person who has already done it all, and who might take months to show up, if at all.

[Michael R. Paul]

This is a very touchy subject at work for me right now. It seems that over the last year the Visual Basic programmers can very easily change directions faster than the C/C++ programmers. They can retrofit there UI to use the latest version of their ActiveX components (usually with-in a month). This ability to adapt to the latest and greatest, has in the very least been a BAD THING. It has pushed the project way over its projected delivery date (Even more than a typical project). It seems every one is so preoccupied with getting the cool components into the project. No one has spent any time finalizing the important problems. Even with me *****ing about them. This accelerated technology is a direct result of this. The C/C++ environment seems to be protected from this better than the Visual Basic environment. This is why I try to steer clear of such jobs. I have always stressed my ability to learn new things in every interview I have been on, half the time this is effective. Upper management is an “old school” and it doesn’t change very fast.

[a b]

Since programming salaries and rates have not risen exponentially I have to conclude that there is no shortage. The market and the laws of supply and demand provide an efficient clearing mechanism. Industry complains that there is a shortage. At the rates being offered, companies may not be able buy as many programming resources as they would like. It appears that industry is complaining that the programming labor market is demanding higher rates than industry would like to pay and couching this complaint behind an excuse that there is a shortage. I wonder how easy it would be to fill a CEO position at a Fortune 500 company today at a compensation level less then 20 times what was offered 10 years ago! In most industries, wages increases have been virtually non-existent for years. Only executive pay has risen, in many cases, astronomically. When CEO's often take home over $100 million of shareholder money every year, arguments that rising programming rates represent a "shortage" seem ludicrous. The CEO shortage must be the biggest labor problem of our time. In 1995, CEO pay rose 54% while most wages rose 3% and inflation was 3.3%. Our schools need to train more CEO's. The State Department need to issue more work visas so we can import more CEO's to alleviate the shortage. This may sound absurd, but a similar plea is being offered by industry to import programmers. Having successfully exported wage inflation for a number of US industries by moving plants out of the US to regions with lower labor costs, industry finds it difficult to do the same with programming. Offshore programming shops are doing well and their use is increasing, but business in the US would find it easier if they could circumvent imigration and visa-related restrictions to import more programmers and drive down labor costs. CEO’s and CIO’s are requesting relaxed visa restrictions for programmers. Not a bad idea -- while they’re at it, lets add other skillsets that seem to be in short supply (based on rising wage rates) to the list: programmers, CEO’s, doctors, lawyers, auto mechanics (it is hard to find a good one of those too these days, and when you do, they certainly charge too much)...


A lot of prices are too high these days. Housing certainly costs too much and it has risen much faster than inflation in many areas of the country. The government should relax zoning standards and building codes, allow the use of foreign construction workers and do whatever it takes to bring the price of housing down. Dell stock is priced very high. Many people would like to buy it for less than it is currently selling for. There is a shortage of Dell stock. Thus Dell should issue additional shares below market to accommodate them.


Meanwhile, programming is a highly-skilled endeavor whose value has risen as the business imperatives for the use of computing to reduce costs, enhance business performance, create and maintain competitive advantages, and ultimately increase profitability have risen. If industry cannot buy enough programming resources at the prices offered, they should try doing what every other buyer of any good or service must do in a free market economy, raise their offer.

[Sim Ayers]

In response to hangout@footinmouth.com, I mean hangout@bigfoot.com


As a part time programmer and a full-time carpenter I can see some programmer's have a better understanding of programming than HOUSING PRICES. In the 80's I earned about $125k a year. Now in the 90's with all the legal and illegal foreign construction workers in California, I earn about $80k a year. The construction workers in California are all making a whole lot less money these days, while the CEO's of the development companies are raping the public.


The quality of construction in housing has gone down drastically with the influx of legal and illegal construction workers in California. Will the same thing happen to the quality of programming in the USA with the influx of legal and illegal foreign workers?





Part Time Programmer-FULL TIME CARPENTER

[a b]

In response to Sim Ayers’ post:


The thread I originally responded to was about the supposed shortage of programmers. I mentioned housing as an intentionally ludicrous example of how stupid it would be to import illegal and under-qualified labor in an ill-conceived attempt to reduce construction costs. If Mr. Ayers were to read my posting carefully, he would have realized that he probably agrees with my views on the indiscriminate importation of labor. I too have worked as a construction worker, but in the southeast. I lived in California for many years, but do not now. Thus my perspectives my not be as far out as Mr. Ayers assumed. It turns out that approximately 80% of the U.S. population does NOT live in CA. Furthermore, my post was not about housing any more than it was about medicine or law or the stock market. If Mr. Ayers is anxious to insult for no reason, then he is certainly free to do so, but it seems odd that he should criticize my post when my point seems to be the same as his and it seems that he has done so for one or two possible reasons:


Reason 1). Because he thinks I support the use of illegal alien labor in the housing market


I most certainly do NOT support this. I used housing as an example. My post said housing seemed expensive. I then put forth a purposely ridiculous suggestion that we should have illegal aliens building substandard houses – I believe this is an example of what is known as sarcasm.


Reason 2). Because I was professing to be an expert on the housing market


If any readers actually think I was professing to put forth an expert opinion the intricacies of the housing market, I would be amazed. For a detailed analysis of the California housing market, I defer to experts such as Mr. Ayers though perhaps other readers of this forum may be more interested in programming issues.


Cars, airline tickets, land, insurance etc. all might seem expensive for buyers and cheap for sellers. This is what markets are all about and that was what I was attempting to communicate. The government should no more meddle in the programming labor market than in the construction, medical, legal, or management labor markets. There is no more a shortage of programmers than there is a shortage of accountants or lawyers, or automobiles or food.


This thread is supposed to be about programming and that is the topic of my original post. Mr. Ayers’ observations about the problems that arise with the importation of substandard labor in the housing market do have implications for the programming labor market and his point is well taken.


Forums like this are a good way to stimulate the open exchange of ideas. Unfortunately, the written word prompts some to abandon the normal civility they would exhibit if they were to discuss a topic verbally, in person with a group of their peers. I hope this forum does not degenerate into a series of pointless and empty criticisms and name-calling. I resent the derogatory reply to my post offered by Mr. Ayers. I can understand and empathize with some of the sources of his anger but don’t understand why it should have been directed at me.

[Sim Ayers]

My apologizes to Mr AB for my miss-use of references to his thread post. After reading the thread post again, I did see that using foreign construction workers was make in jest. I guess, I just come unglued at the mention of foreign construction works. It seems that foreign workers is a touchy subject, whether your a carpenter or programmer.

[a b]

In response to Sim Ayers last post:


I appreciate Mr. Ayers last post. I was a bit too sensitive and overly defensive about a simple misunderstanding. Mr. Ayers, thank for your last post and also for your poignant thoughts and observations about the labor situation.


Respectfully,

-ab

[Ben Kokx]

I think that the same applies here in The Netherlands. There is a shortage in programmers... It should read: There is a shortage in *cheap* programmers.

[Anon]

I hate to say this because it might be misunderstood but I'm going to anyways.


My company has laid off a number of U.S. born programmers in the last year or two, or allowed their numbers to diminish through attrition, only to replace them with programmers brought in from India, usually on a "temporary basis". Our head count has either remained the same or slightly increased since this started. We even have a programming shop in India which is where most of our imports come from. The scenario that repeats is that they typically stay for a period of time, leave, and then come back. I'm not sure of the period but the time they stay here seems to be around 90 days while they leave for around 30 days.


When someone complained to one of the managers about this, it was suggested that he would be best served if he kept his complaints to himself (no, it wasn't me). The group I work in now contains only one U.S. citizen (me) and is managed by an another while it contains 7 Indians.


I think this is one reason there has not been as much upward pressure on salaries as the "shortage" might otherwise produce. My company has not advertised in the U.S. for replacements that I am aware of. Indeed, in the past, when we needed programmers, I had repeatedly been approached to contact the CSC dept. of the University I graduated from to get new candidates. Even that does not happen anymore.


Forgive my "anon". I hope you understand why I used it.

[Jonathan M. O. Ekwempu]

I agree with Ben that shortage of skilled programmers is not only in the US. Actually, it is all over the world. Nonetheless, there are programmers who are willing to migrate to new locations because of one reason or the other. Hence i am advocating that countries make it liberal for skilled programmers to obtain work permit (visa) to work in any country of their choice. This will help reduce the pressure caused by shortage of programmers - especially in the US.

[Skil Masterson]

How else can I put it? You totally missed the point. Go back and read his post again. Have you never heard of sarcasm?

[Nilubon]

If there is a shortage of programmers, why did I get e-mail about off-shore C/C++ programming for US$15-$20/hours? So, how do they manage that?

Do we need to worry about this competition?

I am a programmer in the US, and I know we made a lot more than that.

[Jim McCreary]

I have been in this business since the vacumm tube days and have forgotten more old languages than you could imagine. I am currently working in MFC and C++ which I taught myself and am always leaning more.


I think part of the problem with hiring by language experience comes from corporate Human Resources. These people do not understand any of the skills they are looking for, but if someone has asked them for a developer working in Windows NT they would not consider a developer working in a Windows 98 environment. They can't check off the NT box and therefore are not interested.

[Paul]

To Any Concerned,


Has the ACM or the IEEE been actively involved in limiting the number of work visas being issued? This seems very important to both engineers and programmers, given the weak economies of Indonesia, Russia, and Malaysia. Not to mention the skilled yet poorly paid workers from China and India.


Comments?

[empty]

Hey software developers! Look arround you! How many of you are americans!

It's not the problem what our nationality is. We like our job, and that has nothing to do with Places-We-Come-From. The problem is that our employers dont't get it - they need us, as human factor not as a 2-kilos-of-bananas-for-just-$1.99. I am a software deweloper from Eastern Europe. The US, and Western Europe companies come here to hire us for one tenth of your salories and we take it, because we have no choise, and on the other hand it's a good money here. The question is how to make them appreciate what they have??? Not to fight Illegal-Workers.

Excuse me for the empty one.

[Ron]

Have you ever looked at any code created by the so called skilled workers from India, China, etc. Yes, there are a few who have been educated in the U.S. who are excellent programmers. Unfortunately, there are just as many who were educated overseas. I have seen many graduate students who got their undergraduate degree overseas retaking to take almost all the undergraduate courses or risk flunking out.


I have had the unfortunate task of verifying the correctness of a program written by one of these cheap laborers. The code was one of the worst I have ever seen. The programs faults included: inadequate error and validity checking and handling, i.e. it would crash out (bad) or allow bad data to pass through(even worse); no modularity, only one program file that included a 1900+ line main(); lack of any consistent programming style; incessant use of "magic" numbers. I could go on but it still makes me cringe. This just goes to show that you get what you paid for.


If this shows up twice (sorry)

[Chuck Costarella]

I agree. Our industry is plagued by too many buzzwords and not enough content. Anybody in sales knows he/she can learn to talk the talk and the buyers (upper management) are a little removed as well, thus they are impressed with the talk. On the more positive side, our field (specifically I refer to an individual developer's success within it) is less affected by the overall hype than many others I can think of quite easily. How many permutations and combinations are there containing the words: mission-critical, realtime, object-oriented, etc...

[Chuck Costarella]

We have a market driven economy here in the United States (most would now say a world economy). Programmers will and do make whatever the market will bear, just like Shaq does or even Bill Gates. The eternal laws of supply and demand will always determine these prices. If you work here for sub-standard pay, you are responsible for helping to lower the demand by raising the supply. This is fact. This is not my opinion any more than the laws of physics are. Now of course, none of this has addressed the quality of public education in the US v. YourCountryHere____.


I am very optimistic about the future for software engineering in the US. Software and systems using software are getting more and more complex by the day and we are the experts with specialized knowledge that can come from nobody else.

[Old Timer]

Like most everywhere, there is a shortage of "good" programmers. The advent of the "become a programmer in 7 hours" type books, seems to have given license for anyone to claim to be a software engineer.


I have hours of funny (sad?) stories about interviews I've done with claimed MFC/C++ programmers. The amazing thing is that many of them do get jobs!


Given the continuing recruitment efforts of US companies overseas - yes - there is a shortage in the US. However, after 20 years of working in the US and UK, I'd prefer to be here pounding my keyboard in a place with where one can have a life away from the keyboard which doesn't revolve around trips to the mall - here on 60 acres with a thousand miles of beaches 15 minutes away - in Australia.

[Jonathan M. O. Ekwempu]

Ron, I am really surprised at your comments concerning non US programmers. I am not a US citizen, Indian or Chinese but my observations can tell better. Quite frankly, US programmers are very good at designing and programming Software tools and utilities but when it comes to business/application software, they fall short of the business knowledge required. Most US programmers assume quite a lot about their users because of the level of literacy in the US. Hence they do not build in proper validity checking and error reporting into their programs. Furthermore, most US programmers' world begin and end in the US. They do not know that some countries have different time zones, different currencies, no zip code and different date formats. Any good programmer living and working in the third world (like I do) must assume that the user of his program will do some silly thing and be prepared to trap such silly act.

[Ron]

Yes, there are many good programmers outside the US. Unfortunately in my experience the foreign programmers being used by US firms are horrible. This problem is really blatent in the consulting firms that work as outsourcers. While a large company will validate the skills of a prospective employee, they don't validate the skills of the developers in the firms they contract out to. The quality of the representative may be verified, but the actual programmers implementing the system aren't verified. Because the consulting firms are competing based on time and cost, they have a tendency to hire the cheapest laborers. This problem does exist to a slightly lesser extent in smaller companies.


Also most of the problems with US centric views of programming is related to the smaller firms. Multinational firms don't have that luxury. Any code change I make must take into account differences such as those you have stated. You should add one more to your list, different telephone formats. I have seen a new billing program set the format at (NNN) NNN-NNNN, this was caught quickly in testing.


But back to my main point. I was talking about the new influx of programmers that Congress is thinking of allowing due to lobbying of efforts. The main purpose for this is to attract cheap labor. There isn't a labor shortage of programmers. Its very easy to create a shortage when you don't hire anyone. There are many programmers each year graduating from Universities that aren't hired because they don't have the 4+ years real world experience looked for.

[Bhanu Sudarsanan]

In reply to Ron's mail:


I am sorry for joining this discussion late but I just saw this post and I

thought I MUST respond to this.


I am really amazed at Ron's attitude towards education system in India, China etc. Have you ever asked these "skilled workers" about their education

and what courses they have undertaken. Would you have even looked at them as "cheap laborers" had they not been from India but from U.S.A. The kind of mistakes made by these "skilled workers" could have been very easily

made by "educated in U.S" workers.


The education system in India is one of the best in the world and very widely recognized. Just to get into a B.S degree, you need to clear tough entrance exams, apart from having good grades in high school. These exams are conducted at national level and some of them at international level. I can send you the samples of the entrance exams to some of the institutes and universities. You would be really amazed to see how tough and difficult it can be to get into a graduation programme into some of these schools in India. It is quite possible that your employer has just contracted the work to wrong people. Any country - U.S or India or China has it's own share of good and bad programmers.

And that country's education system cannot be blamed for that.


There are may Indians (and maybe chinese) educated in India who are in very high places in top hi-tech companies. To name a few, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Microsystems(Sun's cofounder is from India). Hotmail was cofounded by an Indian. I am sure there are many more.


I am sure these companies have not hired them because they are cheap laborers and definitely, not all of their American colleagues look at them as

"cheap laborers". They have all reached this position by their intelligence, hard work and uh, their Indian education.


I refer you to an article in Fortune magazine(I forget the issue date but

it was somewhere around the time Bill Gates visited India). Bill Gates had

made some very flattering remarks about the education system there and he also mentioned that he likes to hire from institutes and universities

in India. He has even mentioned the names of these institution. A later issue of the magazine listed the top hi-tech companies and their founders who were

immigrants from the Third World(in your words : "cheap laborers").(if you need

more info about these issues, email me privately). Ofcourse, not everything

Bill Gates says need be true. But a successfull company like Microsoft will

not invest in any resource because it is cheap. If they do, they will need

to spend more money in hiring more "Rons" to correct their mistakes.


When I was interviewed for a position in U.S, I showed my prospective employers

a transcript of my degree which details all the courses I have taken. My

employers even commented that it is more detailed than in U.S. And I was involved in recruiting s/w professionals and we interviewed more than 50 "educated in U.S(from U.S, India, China)" and only 8 of them barely passed the mandatory technical test.


To put in your words,

"I have had the unfortunate task of correcting the test taken by one of these

"not so cheap, but educated in U.S" laborers. The answers were one of the worst I have ever seen."


I can fax you some of the test papers along with their educational qualifications, if you need proof.


Though this fact surprised me, it does not make me conclude that the education system is here is terrible. A Computer Science degree alone will not make a good programmer. I think it all depends on the person.


It is very upsetting to see a person in the s/w field who, by the virtue of his

profession is supposed to logical and rational come to such an unrational and biased conclusion. This kind of attitude makes the work place much more harsh for "educated overseas" people like me and I am amazed to see that we still succeed !!!


-Bhanu Sudarsanan

(A good programmer educated in India)

[Tomaz Stih]

To tell you the truth I agree with you partly. But it's wrong to make general conclusions. Because every country in the world has beginner programmers and

experienced programmers.


I live in Eastern Central Europe (Slovenia) and I recognize problems that come from the fact that software engineering as discipline is quite young and there are not enough experienced team leaders around thus this jobs are filled with unexperienced people with degrees from business and organizational sciences (there is a general stereotype in our country that technical stuff is not capable of jobs that demand "leadership" which comes from fact that in Slovenia every year several hundred Economists are produced by the state University but only as much as 40 Engineers in Computing Science)

Also the problem here is that the country is so small that you can't really specialize if you are not lucky thus engineers are forced to work with different tools every few months.


Thus to draw a conclusion I agree that Americans have generally better

programmers but not due better education (in fact I belive that except for

several famous American Universities - MIT, Standford, Berkley - your educational system *really* sucks...) but due to your superior software industry that gives opportunity and environment for people to quickly adopt knowledge.


Tomaz Stih,

ready for a duel in computer programming if you would like one?

[Tomaz Stih]

> I was talking about the new influx of programmers that Congress is thinking of > allowing due to lobbying of efforts. The main purpose for this is to attract > cheap labor. There isn't a labor shortage of programmers.


Just a thought. I am thinking of moving to the US. But I am not really ready to work for anything less that an average US programmer is making and I don't think experienced programmers anywhere in the world are because there is a shortage all around the globe and beside higher salary there is really nothing US has to offer to me.


You are mistaken if you think moving from another part of the world and culture is easy and everybody is just waiting to come to the United States. I am tempted because I could earnt 2 - 2.5 times more than I earn here but if the salaries are any lower I'd rather keep my girlfriend, friends, habbits, recognition of Education and home, thank you very much.


Tomaz Stih

[Mircho]

Well I've never thought being a black market worker (is it how it's said)

I want to be given eqal opportunities as for the people from the Western world.

As you may agree the software development, writing programs - if well prepared to, is a thing that does not differ on the country you were born. As a matter of fact if you check you will notice a little programmer from Bulgaria in the US and they are quite good. (Little just becuse Bulgaria is 9 000 000 people :) ). On the other hand I agree with the opinion we shold stay together and require that we are payed well. You should know that here you can find good programmers that get less than $150 - this is ridiculous because this is not enough for living (even here). (About what a good programmer is, and that this skills are arguable I don't know what criteria we should use - maybe what he has done latly ...). Many US companies (respectable ones) come here, hire personell for lets say 500 and thats it. How can you fight this? Or you say - It's not near me - I don't care!

And by the way - The US acept 120 000 programers this year - this is a government program !!!!

[Mircho]

I see you've got some math burden on your mind.

Get rid of it or it'll get rid of you.

By the way havent you thought in 3D he might be living underearth!

so take the calculator and figure it out what if it is a sphere?


By the way Australia is the place I dreamt about in my childhood!

(it's getting too personal here dont you think)

[Tomaz Stih]

You should consider this a real threat since we in Central and Eastern

Europe with good education earn this much. But this is only the case in

the field of application programming (business apps using SQL ...) where knowledge is easiest to get because you dont need expensive equipment

to write programs.


In my opinion the best way to protect programmers is to open job

market not close it because then skilled programmers will have a

choice - a chance to migrate and companies wont be able to simply move

industry to another place as it is doing now (f.e.in my country

company named Hermes Softlab is writing software for Hewlett Packard

using cheap skilled workers most of which would migrate to

western countries if they could.


Regards,

Tomaz

[Tomaz Stih]

Well "old timer" I've been programming since I was in the fifth grade of

very primary school on ZX81 and later ZX Spectrum at home, PDP-11 on the

institute and some other old stuff.

I've been through 680x0 machines, through CP/M, VAXwCOBOL, and though DOS

programming. Now I am Unix/NT programmer with several MCPs. But still when it comes to interviews sometimes I am having troubles with questions like:

- name 5 notification messages

Dont you people know that these days there's help avaliable for that even

for Unix and that when hireing experienced programmer you should concentrate

on the issues and not the details? The details can be checked in different

ways (for example using maths problems) because expecting from someone who

works on Visual C/C++, VB, GNU tools, unix, windows and knows ODBC, ADO, SQL,

COM... it's pretty stupid to expect that he'll know the details. The details

are only important in the moment you need them during coding.

[phil]

i agree that under VB you can easily change the UI however the real atrosity is that C++ programmers are not being given the same tools... what the hell is VC++... it's garbage ! before everyone freaks out consider this... i used to think like you... i was writing compiled code in DOS... GUI's waste clock cycles right ? as i skipped win 3.11 do to that too narrow a view. why doesn't VC++ have a more RAD front end similar to C++ Builder 3 ? who cares if you can tweak a few cycles creating your own message maps ? Nobody. why ? like i've said on my other posts... envision the future... the technology for 50GHz desktop machines already exists... do you honestly think we'll all be able to program in C++ / MFC while others get the program done very quickly ?... this is becoming reality. i want to write code... not take care of window's housekeeping through sloppy API calls and a framework made of straw. i agree with your frustration but the problem isn't VB... the problem is VC++... while giving you those wizards it is a far cry from what is demanded in this day and age... under Builder 3 (which has it's own set of flaws... no real ActiveX support yet)... you can drop a button onto a dialogbox (form) and double click on it and your at the 'on click' event handle... that's the kind of programming i want to do ! the CPU is there to help ME too ! there will always be a need for the programmer who can do assembly / raw non-framework code for very time critical tasks but as processing power increases nobody cares about building the world from the ground up... that's what VC++ forces you to do... yes it's easier than before MFC but that isn't saying a whole lot... it seems like everyone sits around praising it but demand better ! gui and housekeeping isn't code, it's cr*p. oh and don't fail to consider the end user... you spend forever wrting the best code possible... then you have to change it because they look at it and say 'i want a coolbar gizmo' and color the thing green...


phil :)


if C++ Builder 3 ever gets ActiveX support sorted out there are going to be some very sad VC++ programmers because i don't see how it is possible to keep up with that kind of RAD environment... it's as easy as VB for creating dialogs (forms) and it's compiled C++. a machine can do the housekeeping better than a human... anyway it's boring.

[Phil]

i agree that under VB you can easily change the UI however the real atrosity is that C++ programmers are not being given the same tools... what the hell is VC++... it's garbage ! before everyone freaks out consider this... i used to think like you... i was writing compiled code in DOS... GUI's waste clock cycles right ? as i skipped win 3.11 do to that too narrow a view. why doesn't VC++ have a more RAD front end similar to C++ Builder 3 ? who cares if you can tweak a few cycles creating your own message maps ? Nobody. why ? like i've said on my other posts... envision the future... the technology for 50GHz desktop machines already exists... do you honestly think we'll all be able to program in C++ / MFC while others get the program done very quickly ?... this is becoming reality. i want to write code... not take care of window's housekeeping through sloppy API calls and a framework made of straw. i agree with your frustration but the problem isn't VB... the problem is VC++... while giving you those wizards it is a far cry from what is demanded in this day and age... under Builder 3 (which has it's own set of flaws... no real ActiveX support yet)... you can drop a button onto a dialogbox (form) and double click on it and your at the 'on click' event handle... that's the kind of programming i want to do ! the CPU is there to help ME too ! there will always be a need for the programmer who can do assembly / raw non-framework code for very time critical tasks but as processing power increases nobody cares about building the world from the ground up... that's what VC++ forces you to do... yes it's easier than before MFC but that isn't saying a whole lot... it seems like everyone sits around praising it but demand better ! gui and housekeeping isn't code, it's cr*p. oh and don't fail to consider the end user... you spend forever wrting the best code possible... then you have to change it because they look at it and say 'i want a coolbar gizmo' and color the thing green...


phil :)


if C++ Builder 3 ever gets ActiveX support sorted out there are going to be some very sad VC++ programmers because i don't see how it is possible to keep up with that kind of RAD environment... it's as easy as VB for creating dialogs (forms) and it's compiled C++. a machine can do the housekeeping better than a human... anyway it's boring.

[Once and Future Consultant]

You are suffering from some of the classic problems of development:

- gold plating the interface

- feature creep

- failure to nail down the spec

- failure to adequately determine the client's requirements


Probably some others in there that would show up if you examined things

a bit. Get the book _Rapid Development_. Such things can occur in any

development environment. And they can be *elliminated* in any environment.

VB can be used to make a project with or without these problems.

So can VC.