Is anyone here a software developer/ computer programmer?

[invisiblecircus]

Sorry for the rather random question but I have a vague recollection of some posters mentioning that they work or have worked in this field and a brief discussion about various languages. I can't seem to find the thread now though.

 

Anyway, my reason for posting is that I'm trying to find out information about the work climate in the UK in this field as we are hoping/ planning to move and the situation seems to be very different in the UK than it is here in Italy. For example, some languages such as Python and (strangely) C++ seem to command a much higher salary than they do here where the outdated classic ASP is more common.

 

If anyone is able to advise me I would be very grateful. Maybe PM is better so as not to bore other posters  although I don't mind posting publically.

[Jan McNulty]

I was a Cobol programmer but then moved into more management roles including looking after databases.

 

It seems to me that Oracle and associated software are in common usage in government departments that have upgraded. 

[trog]

I've been an RPG, COBOL, BASIC and Assembler programmer over the years. These days I do sysadmin on Windows and Linux boxes, and a bit of web development in Perl, PHP and HTML. Rubbish salary but the work is easy - I work in a six form college.

 

Ploughing the legacy furrow has seen me nearly always in work for the last 35 years,

 

[Colman]

Well, I wouldn't call ASP  a classic … there's probably still jobs in it though. Although if Brexit goes bad those jobs might move elsewhere since they'll likely be in big corporates with high technical inertia, maintaining stuff they can't be bothered bringing into the 20th C. :-)

 

What level are you looking for, in what area?

[invisiblecircus]

1 hour ago, Colman said:

Well, I wouldn't call ASP  a classic 

 

What do you mean?

 

1 hour ago, Colman said:

if Brexit goes bad those jobs might move elsewhere since they'll likely be in big corporates with high technical inertia, maintaining stuff they can't be bothered bringing into the 20th C. :-)

 

You mean when it goes bad?  There are many such companies here in Milan, hence my husband has been using predominantly ASP for a number of years, although he has completed projects in other languages such as C# and Java too. He hasn't changed job because he is on a relatively high salary (for here at least) and his job is secure, but now we are looking to move to the UK he is obviously disadvantaged. There are not many jobs around based on ASP and those he has found have offered very low salaries.

 

He has got some experience in working in other languages, but he's currently a senior programmer and if he were to get another job here using C# or Java he would have to start from the beginning again as a junior. He has been lead to believe that that's not necessarily the case in the UK, but that's only after talking to a couple of people so we're not sure if that's really the case.

[Quintus]

Python and varieties of C++, C# command a higher salary because they are in common use in capital markets, the higher paying sector (though lots of coding is now offshored)  - many of the extensible legacy trade processing packages are in C++ and quantitative algorithms commonly written in C. In those cases you need the financial / mathematical knowledge as well as the language in order to command the salary..

[Colman]

Also, there's the hazard pay for working in C++ and C#. :-)