5 ms·

I think we were too optimistic. These days were never here and are still yet to come. More and more non-CS people are learning to program every day. 10 years

by k__ 7y ago

I think we were too optimistic. These days were never here and are still yet to come. More and more non-CS people are learning to program every day. 10 years ago, I made good money with development of websites, that is solved and can be done by most non-technical people. I have to do other things that are still harder or that were too hard for a simple CS-grad in the past, but became simpler over the years.

sombremesa 7y ago
For every one person learning to program, ten people are "learning to program". I would say that we're going to have a huge problem where most applicants aren't qualified for a given job, but I don't have to - we're already there. Still, BOTH numbers are trending up, so I guess at least that part is nice.
- k__ 7y ago
  If we can make software development less of a specific job and more of a companion skill of most jobs, maybe people will start and develop systems for their fellow non-technical co-workers.
  - jrochkind1 7y ago
    We're going the opposite direction though, for good reasons. Have you ever experienced the result of business processes dependent on "hobbyist" systems developed by in-house dabblers? It's not good, and always needs to be cleaned up later. But it was actually a popular thing in the earlier days of computing, and still happens sometimes. One of the most likely places for it to currently happen is actually crazily complex Excel "macros" -- basically software apps written in Excel. So on the other hand to my original point, actually maybe those aren't always disastrous (yet?), there are a surprising number of them around powering all sorts of businesses, and their internals would seem horrifying to a software engineer, but they are working...
scroot 7y ago
> More and more non-CS people are learning to program every day. We (the computing people) make this much harder for them than it needs to be. Instead of giving them malleable computing systems like Oberon, or Hypercard, Smalltalk, or related, we give them glistening time sharing systems and tell them that "programming" is, really, entering text into a teletype emulator and watching it do things. People are not stupid, but insofar as computing has been dominated by industry and limited by open source, we have given them stupefying options. We have better examples from the past and should know better.
- k__ 7y ago
  I don't think this is true. If the systems, you are talking about, were so great, they would be used by the masses. There are much more non-technical people out there.
  - xkriva11 7y ago
    Can you be more specific if you have tried at least one of them?
    - k__ 7y ago
      I used Smalltalk and Flash, but what does this change? I mean, the problem here isn't that I have no idea if these systems are better than the stuff we use currently or worse than that. The problem here is that they simply aren't used by many people.
      - xkriva11 7y ago
        Lack of popularity of these systems has often different reasons than the technical aspects but your comment sounded like the judgment of someone who dismisses some technology as second-rate just because it is not popular.

by k__ 7y ago

sombremesa 7y ago

For every one person learning to program, ten people are "learning to program". I would say that we're going to have a huge problem where most applicants aren't qualified for a given job, but I don't have to - we're already there. Still, BOTH numbers are trending up, so I guess at least that part is nice.

k__ 7y ago
If we can make software development less of a specific job and more of a companion skill of most jobs, maybe people will start and develop systems for their fellow non-technical co-workers.
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  We're going the opposite direction though, for good reasons. Have you ever experienced the result of business processes dependent on "hobbyist" systems developed by in-house dabblers? It's not good, and always needs to be cleaned up later. But it was actually a popular thing in the earlier days of computing, and still happens sometimes. One of the most likely places for it to currently happen is actually crazily complex Excel "macros" -- basically software apps written in Excel. So on the other hand to my original point, actually maybe those aren't always disastrous (yet?), there are a surprising number of them around powering all sorts of businesses, and their internals would seem horrifying to a software engineer, but they are working...

scroot 7y ago

> More and more non-CS people are learning to program every day. We (the computing people) make this much harder for them than it needs to be. Instead of giving them malleable computing systems like Oberon, or Hypercard, Smalltalk, or related, we give them glistening time sharing systems and tell them that "programming" is, really, entering text into a teletype emulator and watching it do things. People are not stupid, but insofar as computing has been dominated by industry and limited by open source, we have given them stupefying options. We have better examples from the past and should know better.

k__ 7y ago
I don't think this is true. If the systems, you are talking about, were so great, they would be used by the masses. There are much more non-technical people out there.
- xkriva11 7y ago
  Can you be more specific if you have tried at least one of them?
  - k__ 7y ago
    I used Smalltalk and Flash, but what does this change? I mean, the problem here isn't that I have no idea if these systems are better than the stuff we use currently or worse than that. The problem here is that they simply aren't used by many people.
    - xkriva11 7y ago
      Lack of popularity of these systems has often different reasons than the technical aspects but your comment sounded like the judgment of someone who dismisses some technology as second-rate just because it is not popular.