4 ms·

It will be sad when the vast majority of developers are automated away, it's going to hit them so hard because most of us don't believe it will happen due to hu

It will be sad when the vast majority of developers are automated away, it's going to hit them so hard because most of us don't believe it will happen due to hubris. Most think it will take some general AI to happen when we don't need that.

leetcrew 8y ago
I would imagine a pretty good chunk of the work is close to being automated. I imagine (perhaps in ignorance, I am not a web or systems dev) that computers are close to being able to engineer stuff like site reliability (at least for small to medium scale businesses) without human input. problems with well defined "good" or even optimal solutions are low hanging fruit for machines. that said, we're a long way away from feeding a copy of the latest c++ standard into a machine and getting a working compiler out of the other end. no matter how well written, it is still quite a feat to turn a human-language specification into executable code. even harder is to turn a loosely defined set of requirements (often gathered from people who don't really know what they want in the first place) into a solid spec in the first place. perhaps this is the hubris you are speaking of, but I think most developers who are more than brainless code monkeys are quite a ways away from losing their jobs.
not-quiet-riot 8y ago
are automated away Well, you’ve certainly got some hand-wavy magic that you’re conjuring with that remark. See, there’s this pervasive “no true scotsman” undertone lurking beneath the subculture of what defines the concept of the software developer in the first place. To wit: a person that sits at a desk, and performs data entry is no developer. And yet, developers perform data entry of a sort. Syntax, interpreters, compilers, oh... NOW it’s a developer. And yet the developer typically does not grasp the fundamentals of the machine code put onto the wires of the device operated, and mostly could not enter that code directly and manually if they tried. So, yeah. The very word “developer” is a dubious distinction. Software engineer is ever more laughable. When I see the word engineer juxtaposed with web technologies and TCP/IP traffic, a small part of me guffaws and chortles at the Napoleon complex in play. Your thrust is that they will be replaced by automation. But I counter that idea, in that it was make-work dreamt up by economists and social scientists from the start. In a service oriented economy, where are the laborers to go? That’s right. Authors of software were a joke from the beginning. It was never a real job, but really the welfare of the future. It started with arcade games in bars and night clubs. People mashing buttons wired to cabinets with blinking television screens for twenty five cents a minute. More than a phone call, and all that effort up in smoke. A true money pit. And no bottom to the price tag or the level of effort. Triple A games boasting the budget of a feature length animated Disney movie, selling as downloadable content for a hundred dollars or more, and then selling ads to sponsor celebrity e-sports athletes. Right... You can take the smug perch you choose to rest your haunches on, but the truth is, there are at least two or three deeper layers of arrogance and antipathy you’re missing out on.
lazyjones 8y ago
That'll be our punishment for wasting so many resources on discussing tabs vs. spaces, the merits of Java vs. C++, OOP and everything else that revolves around personal preferences about syntax and new FoTM languages.

leetcrew 8y ago

I would imagine a pretty good chunk of the work is close to being automated. I imagine (perhaps in ignorance, I am not a web or systems dev) that computers are close to being able to engineer stuff like site reliability (at least for small to medium scale businesses) without human input. problems with well defined "good" or even optimal solutions are low hanging fruit for machines. that said, we're a long way away from feeding a copy of the latest c++ standard into a machine and getting a working compiler out of the other end. no matter how well written, it is still quite a feat to turn a human-language specification into executable code. even harder is to turn a loosely defined set of requirements (often gathered from people who don't really know what they want in the first place) into a solid spec in the first place. perhaps this is the hubris you are speaking of, but I think most developers who are more than brainless code monkeys are quite a ways away from losing their jobs.

not-quiet-riot 8y ago

are automated away Well, you’ve certainly got some hand-wavy magic that you’re conjuring with that remark. See, there’s this pervasive “no true scotsman” undertone lurking beneath the subculture of what defines the concept of the software developer in the first place. To wit: a person that sits at a desk, and performs data entry is no developer. And yet, developers perform data entry of a sort. Syntax, interpreters, compilers, oh... NOW it’s a developer. And yet the developer typically does not grasp the fundamentals of the machine code put onto the wires of the device operated, and mostly could not enter that code directly and manually if they tried. So, yeah. The very word “developer” is a dubious distinction. Software engineer is ever more laughable. When I see the word engineer juxtaposed with web technologies and TCP/IP traffic, a small part of me guffaws and chortles at the Napoleon complex in play. Your thrust is that they will be replaced by automation. But I counter that idea, in that it was make-work dreamt up by economists and social scientists from the start. In a service oriented economy, where are the laborers to go? That’s right. Authors of software were a joke from the beginning. It was never a real job, but really the welfare of the future. It started with arcade games in bars and night clubs. People mashing buttons wired to cabinets with blinking television screens for twenty five cents a minute. More than a phone call, and all that effort up in smoke. A true money pit. And no bottom to the price tag or the level of effort. Triple A games boasting the budget of a feature length animated Disney movie, selling as downloadable content for a hundred dollars or more, and then selling ads to sponsor celebrity e-sports athletes. Right... You can take the smug perch you choose to rest your haunches on, but the truth is, there are at least two or three deeper layers of arrogance and antipathy you’re missing out on.

lazyjones 8y ago

That'll be our punishment for wasting so many resources on discussing tabs vs. spaces, the merits of Java vs. C++, OOP and everything else that revolves around personal preferences about syntax and new FoTM languages.