I'm Obviously in the Wrong Part of the U.S.

I'm Obviously in the Wrong Part of the U.S.

Michael Covington at the University of Georgia complains:

Despite the rising unemployment rate, there is a serious shortage of computer programmers who can develop user-friendly, ready-to-run Windows software in languages such as C#. I know — I've been trying to help people hire them, for free-lance work at $100 per hour, and there are no takers.

(None who say they'd do it for a higher price, either. If you know good independent-contractor C# programmers in either northeast Georgia or southeast Virginia, please send them my way.)

When I say there's a shortage of programmers, I don't mean web developers — everybody wants to be a web developer, and there are too many. Nor do I mean database programmers, nor people who "program" only by configuring a business software package.

I mean people who are good at figuring out how to compute things (that is, people with a feel for algorithms and data structures) who also know how to build commercial-quality software in a major programming language. That means developing for Windows, not just UNIX or specialized environments such as Swing or TCL/TK.

What do you need to be a good computer programmer? A degree in computer science helps, but it's not enough. Successful programmers are largely self-taught, and the people who are waiting to be spoon-fed everything in the classroom are always lagging behind. Indeed, advanced training is not as important as thoroughness with the basics. You don't need calculus, but you need to be the kind of person who clearly understands every detail of 8th-grade arithmetic.