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I really feel like current salaries are too much to bear for honchos of the industry and that there's been a recent push to make it seem like "programming is ea

I really feel like current salaries are too much to bear for honchos of the industry and that there's been a recent push to make it seem like "programming is easy" and "everybody can take up code". I agree that the learning process has been made much easier than it ever was before (MOOC, screencasts, collaborative learning, cornucopia of open source code available everywhere), but that's only the first step in the learning process. That part (the one that leads to being able to produce code) has actually always been rather "easy". It's the next steps that are usually hard. Learning data structures, design, architecture, how to collaborate with coworkers, how to fix, debug and review code, mastering the associated tools (shell, git, regex, making a given editor your home and harnessing its power, etc). From what I've observed with more junior developers that are usually coming through self-learning or accelerated programs, it's not the "code" that is hard, it's those following phases because in the end, they're what really matters. Though, don't get me wrong, it's absolutely nice that we're pushing programming literacy and making it more accessible for everyone, I just feel like we should not be selling false hope.

stdbrouw 10y ago
> Learning data structures, design, architecture, how to collaborate with coworkers, how to fix, debug and review code, mastering the associated tools (shell, git, regex, making a given editor your home and harnessing its power, etc). I learned all of those things way after shipping my first usable and useful code. These things don't make the programming learning curve steeper, they just make it longer.
- lumpypua 10y ago
  I agree, you can do awesome things without too much coding knowledge—but a big part of the current push to teach people how to code is to give them access to the coding job market. If I'm going to hire you as a "software engineer" at an engineering salary, I expect you to know all those things. Of my friends learning to code for masters degrees now, the ones with a natural coding mindset and studying it hard are taking about 2 years to hit a production engineering level. Most seem to be on a 3-4 year trajectory. That's pretty reasonable for a complex skillset.
  - stdbrouw 10y ago
    > I agree, you can do awesome things without too much coding knowledge—but a big part of the current push to teach people how to code is to give them access to the coding job market. Makes sense, I guess I was thinking more of the potential in teaching kids how to code so they can use that knowledge as biologists, economists, teachers, geologists and so on. Standards there are lower because you're competing with people who don't or barely know how to code, but there's still a lot of untapped potential in all of those different fields for automation and all the other good stuff that programming can bring.
Swizec 10y ago
There's a difference between being literate and a professional novelist. That doesn't mean being literate isn't valuable.
- VeejayRampay 10y ago
  I agree with you on that. Though if we were selling "Everyone can be a professional novelist" when we're actually teaching people how to read and write, would you agree to some form of deception?
- Terr_ 10y ago
  Car-analogies are old hat by now, but I like to think of it as having enough mechanical aptitude to change your own oil.
Joeri 10y ago
> I really feel like current salaries are too much to bear for honchos of the industry and that there's been a recent push to make it seem like "programming is easy" and "everybody can take up code". Salaries are too high from the perspective of many executives because they have the programmers doing low-value work. Instead of carefully considering what merits building they just have them build everything and then see what sticks and what doesn't. If programmers were paid like executives, they would only be asked to write code that made a clear difference towards a company's bottom line. Much thought would go into the decision-making and preparation process before code was written to make sure that both problem and solution were appropriate and well understood. You would have whole fields of lower-wage analysts whose job it was to prepare the work of the programmer. There would be much less code written, but the code that was written would be much more valuable.
- jakobegger 10y ago
  If you want to be paid like an executive, you need to behave like an executive. Programmers that just do what they are told will never be treated like an executive. Instead of doing duplicate pointless work, tell your superiors what they really want and do that. If you just implement whatever someone else tells you to do, you are a coding monkey, not a programmer. Stop dreaming of 'low wage analysts' that do the dirty work for you, and just do it. Programmers need to take more responsibilities rather than less; after all, who can understand the project better than the programmer who creates it?
- cdcarter 10y ago
  You have described a hypothetical where programmers are even more costly AND there are "whole fields of lower-wage analysts". This seems like a LOT more cost for the general contractor who is growing and needs a little bit of customized data entry.

stdbrouw 10y ago

> Learning data structures, design, architecture, how to collaborate with coworkers, how to fix, debug and review code, mastering the associated tools (shell, git, regex, making a given editor your home and harnessing its power, etc). I learned all of those things way after shipping my first usable and useful code. These things don't make the programming learning curve steeper, they just make it longer.

lumpypua 10y ago
I agree, you can do awesome things without too much coding knowledge—but a big part of the current push to teach people how to code is to give them access to the coding job market. If I'm going to hire you as a "software engineer" at an engineering salary, I expect you to know all those things. Of my friends learning to code for masters degrees now, the ones with a natural coding mindset and studying it hard are taking about 2 years to hit a production engineering level. Most seem to be on a 3-4 year trajectory. That's pretty reasonable for a complex skillset.
- stdbrouw 10y ago
  > I agree, you can do awesome things without too much coding knowledge—but a big part of the current push to teach people how to code is to give them access to the coding job market. Makes sense, I guess I was thinking more of the potential in teaching kids how to code so they can use that knowledge as biologists, economists, teachers, geologists and so on. Standards there are lower because you're competing with people who don't or barely know how to code, but there's still a lot of untapped potential in all of those different fields for automation and all the other good stuff that programming can bring.

Swizec 10y ago

There's a difference between being literate and a professional novelist. That doesn't mean being literate isn't valuable.

VeejayRampay 10y ago
I agree with you on that. Though if we were selling "Everyone can be a professional novelist" when we're actually teaching people how to read and write, would you agree to some form of deception?
Terr_ 10y ago
Car-analogies are old hat by now, but I like to think of it as having enough mechanical aptitude to change your own oil.

Joeri 10y ago

> I really feel like current salaries are too much to bear for honchos of the industry and that there's been a recent push to make it seem like "programming is easy" and "everybody can take up code". Salaries are too high from the perspective of many executives because they have the programmers doing low-value work. Instead of carefully considering what merits building they just have them build everything and then see what sticks and what doesn't. If programmers were paid like executives, they would only be asked to write code that made a clear difference towards a company's bottom line. Much thought would go into the decision-making and preparation process before code was written to make sure that both problem and solution were appropriate and well understood. You would have whole fields of lower-wage analysts whose job it was to prepare the work of the programmer. There would be much less code written, but the code that was written would be much more valuable.

jakobegger 10y ago
If you want to be paid like an executive, you need to behave like an executive. Programmers that just do what they are told will never be treated like an executive. Instead of doing duplicate pointless work, tell your superiors what they really want and do that. If you just implement whatever someone else tells you to do, you are a coding monkey, not a programmer. Stop dreaming of 'low wage analysts' that do the dirty work for you, and just do it. Programmers need to take more responsibilities rather than less; after all, who can understand the project better than the programmer who creates it?
cdcarter 10y ago
You have described a hypothetical where programmers are even more costly AND there are "whole fields of lower-wage analysts". This seems like a LOT more cost for the general contractor who is growing and needs a little bit of customized data entry.