5 ms·

Are Programmers Headed Toward Another Bursting Bubble?

18 points by tebba-lebba 9y ago

bob_theslob646 9y ago
>The creation of websites is being automated by WordPress (and others) today. I think whoever wrote this has never heard of JS ... good luck automating interactive websites.
- designcode 9y ago
  What's JS ?
  - taheca 9y ago
    Javascript
- fenwick67 9y ago
  Are you trying to imply that Wordpress can't be used for dynamic content? Because that's what it's literally for.
mikestew 9y ago
I want to quote a quote from the opening of the article: "'Do you think IT and some lower-level programming jobs are going to go the way of the dodo? Seems a bit like a massive job bubble that’s gonna burst. It’s my opinion that one of the only things keeping tech and lower-level computer science-related jobs “prestigious” and well-paid is ridiculous industry jargon and public ignorance about computers, which are both going to go away in the next 10 years. […]'" Had this been from a time capsule article, such as the "Microsoft (1985)" NYT article posted recently, I would have believed it had you told me the quote was from thirty years ago. Because that's how long I've been hearing this same thing. So something something Betteridge. I'll admit to only skimming the article, because skimming it didn't tell me that I'm going to hear something new. It's the same "blah, blah, blah, automation" with a picture of pin setters in a bowling alley. Well, sure, their jobs went away because it begged for automation. But here's where the analogy falls apart: we're not the pin setters, we make the pin setting machines. Is the gist of the article that once pin setting machines were invented, with a quick swipe of the hands and a hearty "well done!" we never need revisit the setting of bowling pins? A visit to a modern bowling will tell you that's not the case. We still need pin setters, they just work in code and not with their hands. Thirty years ago it was all 4GLs and CASE tools. Yeah, the fact that you have go look those acronyms up ought to tell you something. They just didn't work out like some thought, and that thought was "you tell the tool what you want, and it'll write the code for you!". Yeah, not in this century it won't. I, like many, have lived through a bursting bubble. And you know who suffered? Those that didn't know their craft. So the HTML jockeys, who got the job because they could spell HTML and close their tags most of the time, lost their jobs. But those weren't craftsmen, anymore than my dog knowing the English language because his butt drops to the floor when I say "sit". Automation, automation, automation. You know what else aids a task via automation? CNC machines. Now any idiot can make automotive parts without knowing a thing about lathes! No, there's far more to it than that, just like there's far more to making a web site that getting the browser to display things the way you want. Automation makes jobs easier and less time consuming, but it does not relieve the user of knowing what they're doing. And that's the key piece I think missed by articles such as this, and I think that piece is so key that to ignore it means one is unable to write a quality, thoughtful article on the subject.
- lostnsantacarla 9y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I suffered through a years worth of embedded C rewrites in simulink as well, certainly no silver bullet to be found there, to the chagrin of management
expertentipp 9y ago
> The creation of websites is being automated by WordPress (and others) today. Isn't WordPress dead or at least dying by now? Its main use case - blog engine for desktop browsers - is much less relevant than was years ago.
- reefoctopus 9y ago
  Wordpress is used by more than 1/4 of all websites. Is that dead?
tkyjonathan 9y ago
System Administrators, largely gone.. Only around in old/large companies. DBAs, largely gone as well.. Its not that those skills are not needed at all, its just that 80% of them have been automated by the likes of AWS. Now those remaining 20% that have no one with the expertise to fix them. AWS will also start leeching away developer jobs with the Lambda marketplace. Why build your own backend code that consumes from an API when you can buy a lambda that pushes directly to your own DynamoDB or in a table to your RDS? However, business users always knew SQL. SQL was designed for non-technical people. Thats why 2-3 years back, even google brought back SQL to its big data platforms. Even at my last job, some finance guys had no problem using it. Also, 'integration engineers' should have been 'data engineers' and while that is hot right now, people need to remember that its a solved problem as there have been ETL tools that do that for you for about 20 years (see informatica).
karmakaze 9y ago
> I suspect that the number of jobs for “programmers” in general will only continue to grow. This reminds me of when telephones were becoming so popular that, "At this rate everyone would have to be a switchboard operator!" Then the dial phone was invented. As such, we will want and have more, end-user-programmable abilities. Think of the advance VisiCalc was, or IFTTT, and many more to come I'm sure. From the other side is research in non-standard programming environments which is very exciting (but I'm not holding my breath). Also, applying AI recipes to different business areas doesn't actually require a lot of classical programming knowledge, it's much more data-oriented plumbing work.

18 points by tebba-lebba 9y ago

>The creation of websites is being automated by WordPress (and others) today. I think whoever wrote this has never heard of JS ... good luck automating interactive websites.

designcode 9y ago
What's JS ?
- taheca 9y ago
  Javascript
fenwick67 9y ago
Are you trying to imply that Wordpress can't be used for dynamic content? Because that's what it's literally for.

mikestew 9y ago

I want to quote a quote from the opening of the article: "'Do you think IT and some lower-level programming jobs are going to go the way of the dodo? Seems a bit like a massive job bubble that’s gonna burst. It’s my opinion that one of the only things keeping tech and lower-level computer science-related jobs “prestigious” and well-paid is ridiculous industry jargon and public ignorance about computers, which are both going to go away in the next 10 years. […]'" Had this been from a time capsule article, such as the "Microsoft (1985)" NYT article posted recently, I would have believed it had you told me the quote was from thirty years ago. Because that's how long I've been hearing this same thing. So something something Betteridge. I'll admit to only skimming the article, because skimming it didn't tell me that I'm going to hear something new. It's the same "blah, blah, blah, automation" with a picture of pin setters in a bowling alley. Well, sure, their jobs went away because it begged for automation. But here's where the analogy falls apart: we're not the pin setters, we make the pin setting machines. Is the gist of the article that once pin setting machines were invented, with a quick swipe of the hands and a hearty "well done!" we never need revisit the setting of bowling pins? A visit to a modern bowling will tell you that's not the case. We still need pin setters, they just work in code and not with their hands. Thirty years ago it was all 4GLs and CASE tools. Yeah, the fact that you have go look those acronyms up ought to tell you something. They just didn't work out like some thought, and that thought was "you tell the tool what you want, and it'll write the code for you!". Yeah, not in this century it won't. I, like many, have lived through a bursting bubble. And you know who suffered? Those that didn't know their craft. So the HTML jockeys, who got the job because they could spell HTML and close their tags most of the time, lost their jobs. But those weren't craftsmen, anymore than my dog knowing the English language because his butt drops to the floor when I say "sit". Automation, automation, automation. You know what else aids a task via automation? CNC machines. Now any idiot can make automotive parts without knowing a thing about lathes! No, there's far more to it than that, just like there's far more to making a web site that getting the browser to display things the way you want. Automation makes jobs easier and less time consuming, but it does not relieve the user of knowing what they're doing. And that's the key piece I think missed by articles such as this, and I think that piece is so key that to ignore it means one is unable to write a quality, thoughtful article on the subject.

lostnsantacarla 9y ago
Couldn't agree more. I suffered through a years worth of embedded C rewrites in simulink as well, certainly no silver bullet to be found there, to the chagrin of management

expertentipp 9y ago

> The creation of websites is being automated by WordPress (and others) today. Isn't WordPress dead or at least dying by now? Its main use case - blog engine for desktop browsers - is much less relevant than was years ago.

reefoctopus 9y ago
Wordpress is used by more than 1/4 of all websites. Is that dead?

tkyjonathan 9y ago

System Administrators, largely gone.. Only around in old/large companies. DBAs, largely gone as well.. Its not that those skills are not needed at all, its just that 80% of them have been automated by the likes of AWS. Now those remaining 20% that have no one with the expertise to fix them. AWS will also start leeching away developer jobs with the Lambda marketplace. Why build your own backend code that consumes from an API when you can buy a lambda that pushes directly to your own DynamoDB or in a table to your RDS? However, business users always knew SQL. SQL was designed for non-technical people. Thats why 2-3 years back, even google brought back SQL to its big data platforms. Even at my last job, some finance guys had no problem using it. Also, 'integration engineers' should have been 'data engineers' and while that is hot right now, people need to remember that its a solved problem as there have been ETL tools that do that for you for about 20 years (see informatica).

karmakaze 9y ago

> I suspect that the number of jobs for “programmers” in general will only continue to grow. This reminds me of when telephones were becoming so popular that, "At this rate everyone would have to be a switchboard operator!" Then the dial phone was invented. As such, we will want and have more, end-user-programmable abilities. Think of the advance VisiCalc was, or IFTTT, and many more to come I'm sure. From the other side is research in non-standard programming environments which is very exciting (but I'm not holding my breath). Also, applying AI recipes to different business areas doesn't actually require a lot of classical programming knowledge, it's much more data-oriented plumbing work.