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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

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Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#661

Post by _dain_ »

giobox wrote: post #342
efficax wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the pound has recently crashed, the general rule for comparing UK salaries to US ones is to 1.5x it to dollars. A £150k salary in London is equiv to a ~$200-250k salary in the US. Not bad, I'd say.

While it's of course good by local UK standards, I still think sometimes London needs to recalibrate to pay closer to US norms. Cost of living in London is often just as bad as major US coastal cities. At my work, they recently introduced a London office paying eng roles in similar salary range, and lots of opportunities to move there with help provided for relocation fees. For many the interest evaporates when they…

>While it's of course good by local UK standards

understatement, £150k is outstanding, london or otherwise

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#662

Post by germandiago »

ativzzz wrote: post #184
zabzonk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all those companies you mention seem to me to have a 50/50 chance of going down the tubes. not because of their use of ruby, of course. still, i don't see any company started today to base their software on ruby. probably just me being wrong.

as a rails dev, if I were to start a new project today I would still pick rails. It makes building web apps a breeze. The technology is mature, stable, active and still staying modern in terms of integration with modern JS you start running into problems as you scale, but the reality is you will run into scaling problems regardless of what technology you use, and the ability to move quickly and iterate is much more i…

This is the reason why I will pick Django for my next web: iteration time > scaling problems especially at the beginning. Same for Rails.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#663

Post by _dain_ »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #512
forgotusername6 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

160k puts you in the top 1% of UK earners. With bonus that job is comfortably in that bracket. UK salaries are no where near US levels. Edit: my point is that a top 1% salary seems about right relatively for a tech lead position.

But sheiks and oligarchs are buying all the real estate, so the cost of living is pretty similar.

if you live in the fucking shard, maybe. london is expensive but let's not exaggerate: a £150k earner is not worried about the cost of living.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#664

Post by dtx1 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #488
ayberk wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been writing C++ at Google, this exactly. Despite all the tooling, guidelines and "internal magic", C++ is still an abomination. And no it has nothing to do with memory management, I actually do like C. I love how Eric Raymond describes it as "anti-compact", because, well, it really is. C++ as a whole should be deprecated -- and no new projects should use C++ (unless for some very odd and specific…

>C++ as a whole should be deprecated -- and no new projects should use C++ (unless for some very odd and specific reason). And what can be used instead of C++? C? If C was better, then C++ wouldn't have been invented. Rust? It's much more painful to use than C++. Zig? It's immature and has very low usage. Nim? Has very low user base. Julia? It isn't solving the same problems.

> Rust? It's much more painful to use than C++

Write a sufficiently complex memory safe program in C++. I dare you. It's been proven again and again that humans can't do it. And calling Rust more painful than C++ is just absurd.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#665

Post by StreamBright »

intelVISA wrote: post #570
rychco wrote: post #209

I’ll offer a perspective unrelated to pay: It’s a pain to start learning C++, and even after you do, older devs will roast the hell out of your code because your book/tutorials of choice forgot to mention a crucial (in their opinion) feature that you absolutely should/shouldn’t use! Not to mention you’ve only programmed on Mac/Linux so far & windows is totally different, has a different compiler, different ways to in…

As a C++ enjoyer I would 100% have learned Rust if it was around when I started... just for Cargo alone. Problem is now I've already done my time in the Makefile trenches there's little incentive in me re-learning another systems lang and having to compete with lots of smarter people, with more Rust exp, for jobs whilst giving up all my arcane knowledge of CMake and friends. Rust being popular atm is great for C++ if…

The incentive is to do it for the greater good. For a safer, better future.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#666

Post by jjgreen »

renewiltord wrote: post #490
gavinray wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah -- I thought it meant something along the lines of "for example" or "one instance being"?

Usually people use the lower case with dots, i.e. `i.e.`. Also one usually uses `e.g.` in those situations with `i.e` reserved for "that is". To illustrate: "We had to come up with some way to cut our burn rate, e.g. lay off (i.e. fire) some of our workforce; cut facilities (i.e. get out of our leases),..." As an aside, I wish there were "minor aside" conversations that wouldn't pollute the main thread so I could res…

In AE it's also usual to have a comma following them, so

"We had to come up with some way to cut our burn rate, e.g., lay off (i.e., fire) some of our workforce; cut facilities (i.e., get out of our leases),..."

The reasoning being that these expressions are "parenthetic and should be punctuated accordingly" The Elements of Style

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#667

Post by tdiff »

Many people here compare c++ jobs to, say, js jobs mentioning that the latter are easier and at the same time pay more. I wonder if all them really dont care what they do as long as the wage is large enough.

I tend to think that in many cases one would deal with something more interesting/involving while working on a cpp project than on a python web app.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#669

Post by nicoburns »

thorin wrote: post #94
nicoburns wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> experienced C++ hiring is still considerably easier Perhaps, but you can take experienced devs with a background in other languages and expect them to write solid Rust code. You probably only need to hire 1 or 2 people who already know Rust.

I don't know any people who program in Rust. I've been programming 25 years professionally. On my LinkedIn and through friends I probably know 50 people who do c++ programming in some capacity, including myself, to a poor level.

As someone who only knows C++ to a poor level, you’re exactly the sort of person I wouldn’t want to hire for a C++ job, but I would consider hiring for a Rust job. The bar is way higher for C++ because it’s so easy for even experienced developers to introduce mistakes.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#670

Post by ninefathom »

To quote Yogi Berra, "it's déjà vu all over again."

Those of us of a certain vintage remember this precise issue with Fortran a couple decades ago, and those out there of a certain further vintage probably remember it with COBOL. So on and so forth back through PL/I, Algol, and so on to the dawn of time.

While there have certainly been consequences of the dearth of COBOL and Fortran devs, ultimately the world has thus far survived. We'll survive the obsolescence of C++ (if indeed that's what this is).

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