Resumen
The late 1990s were characterized not by massive unemployment among programmers worldwide but by considerable shortages of such skilled personnel. This was caused in part by the demands of addressing myriad Y2K problems, particularly those relating to long term legacy software. As these problems passed, the so-called "skills shortage" showed no sign of abating. Indeed, the demand for programmers, systems analysts and software engineers is regularly reported by some companies to be in the thousands and in large multinationals in the tens of thousands. So, for now it seems reports of the decline of the programmer are premature. It is possible the term "skills shortage" is a misnomer, for there are probably many skills shortages. Discounting the so-called "IT skills " shortages in large sections of the work force in most developed countries, there are currently undoubted shortage areas such as networking technology and platform-independent programming languages such as Java. It is difficult to believe the supply of graduates currently produced by the universities will keep pace with demand for graduates in these areas.