5 ms·

I think you’ll find that the average programmer of decades ago would have been significantly more competent that the average programmer of today. Why? Because p

I think you’ll find that the average programmer of decades ago would have been significantly more competent that the average programmer of today. Why? Because programming wasn’t nearly as popular back then, so it was mainly people with genuine aptitude or interest in programming who pursued that path. These days, programming is more fashionable and quite a number of mediocre people have jumped on the bandwagon thus pulling down the average.

vvanders 10y ago
Is that a bad thing? I think we should celebrate the diversity of developers and perspectives that they bring. Esoteric things are great but you'll never find that they reach critical mass in a way that's meaningful. I love ham radio but I don't think you'll ever see a day where everyone has a 2m transceiver in their car/house :).
- iliketosleep 10y ago
  Not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes programming more accessible to a more diverse range of people as you mentioned, whom may bring other kinds of benefits to the profession. But there is the drawback of a higher percentage of incompetent people. Can't have everything..
  - danso 10y ago
    You could make the same argument about literacy, how it allows dumber/more sinful people to interpret the Bible in erroneous ways.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Yecch. The bible. Please don't bring the bible into this. We're talking about programming, not hocus pocus.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Is there any reason to measure by percentage? If, before, we had 100k competent programmers and 0 incompetent ones; and now we have 100k competent programmers and 1mm incompetent ones—we still have enough competent programmers to get all the stuff done. Some companies will bother to wade through 10 bad hires to find a good one, and so end up producing a stream of excellent products, just as existed before; other companies (that wouldn't have existed before) will take the leftovers, and produce bad products that everyone ignores in favor of the good ones. It's sort of like the fiction market: adding bad books to a bookstore or library, does not decrease the number of good books available. I guess you could make the argument that if the low-quality products are well-marketed, they might outcompete the high-quality products—so, as a competent developer, the existence of incompetent developers (and thus the existence of companies who can subsist off their talents) might be "stealing revenue" from you/your company?
    - Armisael16 10y ago
      I can't speak directly for the programmer market, but this exact thing happened when steam opened the floodgates with greenlight. i used to browse the catalog to find new games; now there's so much crap in there that it isn't worth the time.
      - derefr 10y ago
        In my mind, that's just an argument for curation. There's no reason you can't let developers have their cake (i.e. have something up on Steam) while consumers eat it too (i.e. have a default view of Steam that hides all the crap games.) I mean, direct-linking to things from a product site is still a thing; and—due to Steam technically being a website—discovery by search-engines indexing the page is still a thing. But also, there's no reason there can't be things like "App Store channels" where you can subscribe to a given app reviewer's "view of the world" (i.e. a store scope containing only the stuff they like, and—with less weight—the stuff the people they follow like, recursively); and then browse those, or a front-page that's the union of those. You could even automatically generate such channels from existing app-review sites/Youtube channels/whatever.
alistproducer2 10y ago
Programming has become one of the only paths towards a middle class life (as we've known middle class in the past). No one I know from college that doesn't work in IT makes enough money to be old-school middle class like I am.
- elevenfist 10y ago
  ...you must not know many people then. There's lots of opportunity for a middle class life in non-it-related professions. Something I found pretty shocking after I left the sv bubble.
  - elros 10y ago
    Such as?
    - epmaybe 10y ago
      I would imagine any engineer or someone who went through trade school. Maybe they don't make enough to be considered middle class?
    - icelancer 10y ago
      Many trade school disciplines.
    - elevenfist 10y ago
      Marketing, sales, numerous supporting jobs in entertainment, skilled trades and engineering, (as many mentioned) white collar food industry jobs, logistics, accounting, statistics, mediation, community builders, I could go on and on. So many diffierent types of jobs, even when you exclude all the shitty ones that make the world a shittier place, like low-information political shills and propagandists, (tiny conservative talk radio shows and online communities do decently, moderate and liberal not so much) junk and junk food marketers.
Steko 10y ago
Competency isn't just aptitude though, today's programmers have massive training advantages. I mean you could make the same argument about (say) football players but NFL champions from the 20's would struggle to keep up with today's top high school programs.

vvanders 10y ago

Is that a bad thing? I think we should celebrate the diversity of developers and perspectives that they bring. Esoteric things are great but you'll never find that they reach critical mass in a way that's meaningful. I love ham radio but I don't think you'll ever see a day where everyone has a 2m transceiver in their car/house :).

iliketosleep 10y ago
Not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes programming more accessible to a more diverse range of people as you mentioned, whom may bring other kinds of benefits to the profession. But there is the drawback of a higher percentage of incompetent people. Can't have everything..
- danso 10y ago
  You could make the same argument about literacy, how it allows dumber/more sinful people to interpret the Bible in erroneous ways.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Yecch. The bible. Please don't bring the bible into this. We're talking about programming, not hocus pocus.
- derefr 10y ago
  Is there any reason to measure by percentage? If, before, we had 100k competent programmers and 0 incompetent ones; and now we have 100k competent programmers and 1mm incompetent ones—we still have enough competent programmers to get all the stuff done. Some companies will bother to wade through 10 bad hires to find a good one, and so end up producing a stream of excellent products, just as existed before; other companies (that wouldn't have existed before) will take the leftovers, and produce bad products that everyone ignores in favor of the good ones. It's sort of like the fiction market: adding bad books to a bookstore or library, does not decrease the number of good books available. I guess you could make the argument that if the low-quality products are well-marketed, they might outcompete the high-quality products—so, as a competent developer, the existence of incompetent developers (and thus the existence of companies who can subsist off their talents) might be "stealing revenue" from you/your company?
  - Armisael16 10y ago
    I can't speak directly for the programmer market, but this exact thing happened when steam opened the floodgates with greenlight. i used to browse the catalog to find new games; now there's so much crap in there that it isn't worth the time.
    - derefr 10y ago
      In my mind, that's just an argument for curation. There's no reason you can't let developers have their cake (i.e. have something up on Steam) while consumers eat it too (i.e. have a default view of Steam that hides all the crap games.) I mean, direct-linking to things from a product site is still a thing; and—due to Steam technically being a website—discovery by search-engines indexing the page is still a thing. But also, there's no reason there can't be things like "App Store channels" where you can subscribe to a given app reviewer's "view of the world" (i.e. a store scope containing only the stuff they like, and—with less weight—the stuff the people they follow like, recursively); and then browse those, or a front-page that's the union of those. You could even automatically generate such channels from existing app-review sites/Youtube channels/whatever.

alistproducer2 10y ago

Programming has become one of the only paths towards a middle class life (as we've known middle class in the past). No one I know from college that doesn't work in IT makes enough money to be old-school middle class like I am.

elevenfist 10y ago
...you must not know many people then. There's lots of opportunity for a middle class life in non-it-related professions. Something I found pretty shocking after I left the sv bubble.
- elros 10y ago
  Such as?
  - epmaybe 10y ago
    I would imagine any engineer or someone who went through trade school. Maybe they don't make enough to be considered middle class?
  - icelancer 10y ago
    Many trade school disciplines.
  - elevenfist 10y ago
    Marketing, sales, numerous supporting jobs in entertainment, skilled trades and engineering, (as many mentioned) white collar food industry jobs, logistics, accounting, statistics, mediation, community builders, I could go on and on. So many diffierent types of jobs, even when you exclude all the shitty ones that make the world a shittier place, like low-information political shills and propagandists, (tiny conservative talk radio shows and online communities do decently, moderate and liberal not so much) junk and junk food marketers.

Steko 10y ago

Competency isn't just aptitude though, today's programmers have massive training advantages. I mean you could make the same argument about (say) football players but NFL champions from the 20's would struggle to keep up with today's top high school programs.