[jaeusm]

Yes the air force IS pretty small compared to the industry itself. Why do you think they hire boeing, lockheed, raytheon, nothrop, if the AF was sooooooooo big.

They hire outside contractors because it is cheaper than hiring engineers full time. Some stats on company sizes:
The AF has 153,879 civilian employees as of 2001 (source: http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personne...1/may_2001.pdf) and 337,780 active duty individuals (source: AFPC - Air Force Personnel Center.
Boeing: 154,081 (source: Boeing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Lockheed Martin: 135,000 (source: Lockheed martin) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Northrup Grumman: 122,000+ (source: Northrup Grumman) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Raytheon: 73,000 (source: Raytheon) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I'm still getting 181 jobs from searching the keyword "java" at Accenture. As for Northrup Grumman, my numbers are correct. I specified the job function as "Information Systems". Granted, it was the only search I did. As for Intel, I searched only jobs in the United States. I searched "java" first which was 34, and then C++ second, which returned 27. I see my mistake, as I didn't click the "new search" button between the searches. I apologize for that. However, aside from Intel, I'm still able to retrieve the same numbers I posted earlier.

See how you said, "Prove to me that ALL "big companies"...". Jebus... are you okay?? Lets emphasize the word "ALL". READ my posts again. You even quoted my main point and you still cannot comprehend what my main point is.

Don't marginalize this into trivial semantics.

Everyone who is working at these large companies are probably 90% C++ software engineers who have been hired. I've seen it from personal experience, like I have already mentioned.

This is conjecture. Truthfully, I don't believe that at all. However, since there is no external data to support either position, I won't argue it with you.

I'm willing to change my perspective, which seems like the thing you're after. What is your take on this? There has to be a reason why you are arguing this.

I'm arguing this because you are making bold assertions in a matter-of-fact manner, that I don't believe are true. I do not think the majority of "big companies work mainly with C++". Some of them do, for sure. I just don't believe that the majority work mainly with C++.

However, I couldn't care less about what languages "big companies" use. Personally, I think a better gauge is to look at overall job availability. Using Dice.com, and searching the keyword "java" returned 16,809 jobs, while "c++" returned 8,324. In the end, all languages come and go. The most important thing is knowing how to write code and develop software, as I posted earlier.

As an aside, I haven't used Java in over a year. I code in C# and Python in my current job, both of which I prefer over Java.