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I think its more likely that programming is in its 'artisanal age' moving toward its 'industrial revolution' quite quickly. Right now it takes skilled craftspe

I think its more likely that programming is in its 'artisanal age' moving toward its 'industrial revolution' quite quickly. Right now it takes skilled craftspeople to design and build good working code - just as a few hundred years ago it took a master woodworker to create a fine chair or bench or bed. There was a million ways to make a join, a million materials to use (woods, glues, metals, etc), and it took a lot of skill to purposefully decide which tools and materials would best fit the job at hand. This is where software engineering is today. Look at wood working today: There are still extraordinarily skilled craftsmen doing work that is miles ahead of what any machine could produce. Real pieces of artwork, in addition to functional pieces of furniture. But the vast majority of woodworking is done by automation (be that machines or laborers) That is likely the future of software engineering. Because what most people/businesses need out of software is exactly what they need of furniture - they need it to be 'good enough' and to not have to spend a lot of resources fussing over it. With SaaS and thousands of pre-packaged solutions, entire industries are beginning to flip over How long ago was it that to have a website a company would need a webmaster and some developers? How long ago was it that to run email, FTP, website, etc you would need to purchase hardware, and employees to manage that hardware and software? Hell even personal websites - you no longer need to know a word of any programming language in order to spin up your very own website, you can even get 'good enough' layouts from the provided templates. Lets not forget that building websites was (and is) a very real and very lucrative field. It was overtaken by millions of amatuer kids who learned a little html and css and sold websites for a fraction of the cost of hiring professionals. And it worked because businesses want something 'good enough' I;ve said this before but the same thing has/is happened to many other respected fields: Photography travel agent Technical support (call centers, geek squad, etc) I don't really see how software is any different from any other trade. You solve enough major problems until you get to a point where 'good enough' is easily accomplished by automation or laymen. Seems to me that this change is already occurring.

jasonkester 11y ago
I don't know about this. All the "scary things that are going to happen to programmers" happened 20 years ago, and we're still here. Remember all those CASE tools that replaced the need to write programs? You just describe the problem and out comes the software. Business People can do it. (But you still need to describe the problem in the exact level of detail as the program your tool outputs, and now you have to do it using that funky tool). Remember when all our jobs got offshored to India to be done for $10/hour? They seem to have come back, along with all the $10/hour guys over there who could actually do the work (and who are all now getting paid market wages over here). Over the years, that happened to all the "offshore" there is, and today you really don't want to have your product built by the remaining offshore guys who can't command more than $50/hour. Costs of running a software business did in fact go down from $1M/year in server and licensing to $5/month for a Digital Ocean slice, but the actual work of writing software still requires programming computers. And that is still hard, and hard to find people who can do. So we're still here. My money is on us still being here ten years from now.
lordnacho 11y ago
Not sure I agree. The key difference is you need a carpenter to make chairs, but you need an engineer to make a chair factory. You need a software developer to make software, but you need a software developer to make a software factory. This also means there's a pyramid is place. The software devs have built a website builder? Okay, so the kids take over that part. But your website builder startup is now more successful. He needs to add some features, some big data, some better tools, advertisement. So he needs... more software developers. Outside the website builder, other things are getting easier too. So people are building things on top of those things. Everyone's got a phone with GPS and internet now, and computing power is cheap, as is storage, so there's an Uber, there's an AirBnb, there's all sorts of things that are built on top of previously difficult things. It's software developers all the way down.

jasonkester 11y ago

I don't know about this. All the "scary things that are going to happen to programmers" happened 20 years ago, and we're still here. Remember all those CASE tools that replaced the need to write programs? You just describe the problem and out comes the software. Business People can do it. (But you still need to describe the problem in the exact level of detail as the program your tool outputs, and now you have to do it using that funky tool). Remember when all our jobs got offshored to India to be done for $10/hour? They seem to have come back, along with all the $10/hour guys over there who could actually do the work (and who are all now getting paid market wages over here). Over the years, that happened to all the "offshore" there is, and today you really don't want to have your product built by the remaining offshore guys who can't command more than $50/hour. Costs of running a software business did in fact go down from $1M/year in server and licensing to $5/month for a Digital Ocean slice, but the actual work of writing software still requires programming computers. And that is still hard, and hard to find people who can do. So we're still here. My money is on us still being here ten years from now.

lordnacho 11y ago

Not sure I agree. The key difference is you need a carpenter to make chairs, but you need an engineer to make a chair factory. You need a software developer to make software, but you need a software developer to make a software factory. This also means there's a pyramid is place. The software devs have built a website builder? Okay, so the kids take over that part. But your website builder startup is now more successful. He needs to add some features, some big data, some better tools, advertisement. So he needs... more software developers. Outside the website builder, other things are getting easier too. So people are building things on top of those things. Everyone's got a phone with GPS and internet now, and computing power is cheap, as is storage, so there's an Uber, there's an AirBnb, there's all sorts of things that are built on top of previously difficult things. It's software developers all the way down.