Thread: is C/C++ programming career is promising?

Originally Posted by JFonseka

Programmers are always in need, but the thing is, going into a computer science major depends on where you live to reap the benefits. The IT industry is moving to India, infact a lot of major coding by software giants is done in India due to the large amount of programmers available there and also the lower costs, even the gaming development is starting to shift there.

There are down sides to offshoring.

Distance (time zone), language difficulties (technical language is harder than standard language) and in some cases lack of security due to distance (violation of commercial confidence).

Companies have found the lack of ownership of their code base to be an bigger issue than expected (ie bug fixes or additions very slow).

Not to mention a back-lash from (patriotic) customers.

I do custom C/C++ development designing monitoring systems for heavy industry (rail, mining, farming). I spend a lot of time reverse engineering file formats of onboard data loggers or creating mechanisms for different systems to interact (ie STC NG HBDs -> micro PC -> 9600 BAUD radio -> train driver(speak alarms)/Train control software(visual alarms)/DB server(historic record))

I have work for at least the next two years, then the new GE Evo series locos will be more common (than the DASHs) and I start again....