Java skills earn more beans

Java is facing a skills crisis - and the development platform's creator says he cannot predict when the shortage will end.

"The supply of Java programmers is definitely on the increase," co-inventor James Gosling told Network News last week. "But the demand is just awesome."

Research by UK recruiter Best found that the number of internet advertisements for Java staff has risen by 300 per cent in the last six months, with 80 per cent of advertisers looking for permanent staff. Best expects the rapid increase to continue.

Programmers with two or more years' experience are earning an average of £39,200, with pay rises being driven by the finance and software sectors.

Illustrating this fact, 40 per cent of vacancies are in London, and a further 22 per cent are in the rest of south-east England.

On the bright side, Gosling said the number of programmers is increasing because colleges now teach Java.

"Almost every university graduate will know Java," he said. "It's the first course they teach, not so much because it's simple, but more that it's forgiving. When something goes wrong in C, it's very mysterious."

But Gosling added that the majority of new Java programmers are self-retrainees from similar languages, such as C or C++.

He said the future priority for Java is steady improvement: "Our mantra is reliability and performance. We try to make the evolution community-controlled."