At that time, most heavy-duty calculation took place either in government administration or in astronomical observations. In both of these sites, a great deal o

At that time, most heavy-duty calculation took place either in government administration or in astronomical observations. In both of these sites, a great deal of calculation had to be done by hand. Already in the 18th century at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, forms had been developed that divided the task of a complex calculation into small enough steps — so that, at least at the lower end, the Observatory could employ very cheap schoolboy labor in order to complete them economically. Over the course of the 19th century, schoolboys were increasingly replaced by women as the cheapest and most reliable form of labor. We can read interesting correspondences from astronomers at Oxford and Harvard recruiting the first generation of women college graduates to perform calculations for half the wages of men. By the late 19th century, the Bureau of Calculation at the Paris Observatory was entirely feminized. This is a trend that I've noticed in the ~30 years I've been doing this. As computer programming gets more advanced, with greater separation of concerns and finer granularity of tasks, it's becoming more marginalized. My feeling is that programming will no longer be viewed as a lucrative career within the next 10 years, and that it will be largely replaced with algorithms generated by machine learning within 20 years. I included the quote about calculation being largely done by women before it was automated because we're seeing this happening today in developing countries. They'll catch up to the developed world between 10 and 20 years from now, just in time to also be automated by AI. I find this all tragic to some degree, because my fondest dream of making computer science available to everyone will also eventually lead to its undoing. This is simply not the future that I anticipated growing up. We're going to end up in a world of ultimate competition and wealth inequality instead of automating the means of production so that everyone can enjoy the prosperity of their basic needs being met with something like UBI. So far the evidence for that is overwhelming, and I'm only seeing the smallest pockets of resistance. So I don't have high hopes for the future anymore.