The watchword of IT today is to make the most of what you've got. Developers are no exception, according to the results of
this year's InfoWorld Programming Survey. We asked people who build enterprise applications to tell us how they did business in today's economy,
and the response was resounding: Stick with the competencies you have and increase your investment in those tools and technologies
that have proven their value to your organization.
To compile our research, we gathered responses from 467 software development professionals, ranging from C-level executives
to IT managers to front-line coders. While our research yielded few jaw-dropping surprises, it does point toward some interesting
trends. In many ways, our results mirrored those of last year's survey, in which Web-based interfaces were king and scripting languages such as Python and Perl gave a strong showing despite industry
hype surrounding the high-end development platforms from Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
In addition to the topics we raised last year, we added some new themes to the mix. Given today's tendency to demand increased
return from existing investments, we wanted to find out to which technologies companies were most committed, and where they
actually planned to increase their expenditures during the next 12 months.
What's more, we wanted to know to what extent the companies we surveyed planned to take advantage of offshore outsourcing
-- and the results may surprise you.
Languages and Scripting
It should come as no surprise that the Java and Windows platforms continue to dominate the developer market this year, as
they have in the past. In keeping with last year's results, fully 64 percent of respondents cite Java as their preferred language
of choice, with Visual Basic coming in second at 56 percent.
Microsoft tops the list of preferred vendors, with 80 percent of those surveyed acknowledging that Redmond supplies some of
their development tools. The next three vendors on the list -- Oracle, IBM, and Sun, in that order -- primarily supply tools
for Java development.
C and C++ made a strong showing once again, proving that compiled languages for systems programming are still core to the
IT operations of many enterprises. As with last year, however, the real story lies in the tremendous popularity of scripting
languages across all categories of development. This year, more respondents favor Perl than C, which suggests that the popularity
of this utilitarian language continues to grow among
Webmasters and systems administrators.
In keeping with our respondents' preference for Web-based interfaces over client-server designs, support for PHP remains strong.
Similarly, more survey participants cite JavaScript than any other scripting language, followed closely by Unix shell scripting.
Overall, 48 percent of respondents say they will increase usage of Web scripting languages over the next year. But the big
winner this time around is the object-oriented scripting language Python, which saw a 6 percent gain in popularity, almost
doubling last year's results.
Much of the continuing popularity of scripting languages can be attributed to flexible syntax, as well as reduction of the
compile-run-debug cycle endemic to traditional compiled languages. In addition, a growing number of significant projects written
in scripting languages can likely be credited with their increased acceptance. The
p-to-p file-sharing client BitTorrent, for example, was written in Python, as were projects from a variety of high-profile companies, including Google, Industrial
Light & Magic, and NASA.
Conservative Platforms
Among more traditional enterprise technologies, one important trend is the ascendancy of Microsoft's .Net platform over "classic"
Windows APIs. This year, 53 percent of respondents cite .Net as their preferred development framework or API, knocking older
Win32 technologies such as COM and DCOM out of the top spot to a level below both J2EE and Unix/Linux. Another 51 percent
say they will increase usage of .Net in the next 12 months.
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