Options By Ibm: Fill & Download for Free

Typically not the languages themselves, the languages are a specification, not a product, generally speaking.Products like compilers and interpreters, yes, lots of paid options.Pretty much anything made by IBM is going to cost you.If you want a C, RPG, or COBOL compiler from IBM, it’s going to cost you probably quite a lot of money.

Young software engineers tend to change jobs in order to chase a higher salary.This works — up to your level of competence — and for a few years (5–6 at most, usually).After that, you really can’t work into a senior software engineer role at a company without dedicating a few years to one company, and you aren’t going to work into a technical lead role, unless you spend two years as a senior engineer.I was hired in as a senior software engineer at Apple.I am told it was a “close thing”, because, ignoring the three startups in the middle, I had “only” spent 4 1/2 years in my position prior to that — IBM.I had been working at a startup that was acquired by IBM.So at the senior level, a track record of less than 4 years is generally considered a bad investment in an engineer, because they are probably going to leave, to try and raise their salary.So you can play the job shuffle game.But at some point, you are going to hit a career glass ceiling.And once you are at that ceiling, you can shuffle more, but the pay is going to be variable, and might go down here or there instead of up.You can maybe play that off as “I traded salary for equity” once; twice if the equity turns out to be worth something, because you worked at a company with options, and you stuck around long enough to hit the two year vesting cliff, and so got half your shares.Most modern companies use RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) instead of ISOs (Incentive Stock Options), so good luck doing that anywhere but a startup, and good luck finding a startup with a two year shelf life that triggers an exit to make the equity turn from pixie dust into real money.At some point, you have to stop kidding yourself.And start “adulting” instead.And when you get to that point, the way forward isn’t a job change, it’s gaining more responsibility.And they aren’t going to hand that over to someone who has been there six months, if they don’t have a longer track record than a year somewhere else.

Well, Java isn’t always chosen, but it’s chosen a lot of the time.The reasons are actually pretty clear if you break it down.It’s supported. Big companies like support contracts from other big companies. If you want support for your language/runtime/framework of choice, that restricts your choices a lot.It’s cross platform. As in it’s actually cross platform. Big companies often run on platforms most of us are unfamiliar with, like IBM mainframes, according to this article:Executive Viewpoint 2017: Compuware – Mainstreaming the Mainframe | Virtual-Strategy Magazine, 9 out of 10 major insurers, 92 out of the big 100 banks, 23 out of the top 25 retailers, and 71% of all Fortune 500 companies use IBM mainframes. The IBM mainframe (z/OS) is a platform which most of us will never use directly, but it’s completely dominant in many areas, and Java runs on it, supported by IBM. You can’t just say to a Fortune 500 CIO “I reckon I can get Ruby to build on this, shall we rewrite core infrastructure on Rails!?”. Nope, nope, nope. If you think Python is cross platform, grab yourself a free account on an IBM AS/400 and try compiling your favourite module and see how far you get.It’s a statically typed, good, and stable language. It doesn’t get changed to the point of broken compatibility like Swift every 6 months, and it runs on a battle hardened VM which has been proven in the field over and over.So think about it this way, you’re a big CIO type, you need a language/runtime which is:Supported.Stable (as in does not change much).Good (static types, decent runtime).Proven (You’re not the first Fortune 500 to bet on Java, if you choose Go, you probably are).Runs on million dollar hardware, not just your mate’s Linux box.There is actually very, very little else out there. C# is a fantastic language, but only on Windows, it’s not really a serious, supported option outside of Windows, except maybe for games with Unity.Python, Node.js, Ruby, are just not good enough. No static types, no multi-threading. no real support outside of Windows, Mac and Linux.If you put yourself in the position of a CIO in a Fortune 500, you need your major project to run on maybe z/OS, maybe Solaris, maybe HP-UX, maybe AIX, maybe i/OS, maybe even OpenVMS or Tandem NonStop. Options?Even if you’re on Windows or GNU/Linux, options are expanded a little to maybe C#.It’s not always Java, but there are very good reasons why it’s Java a lot of the time.