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>It just occurred to me that this is because programming is, so far as social pecking order, perceived as blue-collar. Because 99.9% of the population have no
by cosmodisk 6y ago
>It just occurred to me that this is because programming is, so far as social pecking order, perceived as blue-collar.
Because 99.9% of the population have no clue what the job entails. For an average person,the best they could expect to see is the WordPress admin panel with a few lines in html.And for an average Joe, that's what the programming is. Who on earth goes to social gatherings and cracks a joke about how they write code for some controllers that are used in nuclear plants and some shot gone wrong? I never,ever talk or bring up anything technical unless they love that kind of stuff. People don't understand what you talking about and either think you are weird,or they feel so embarrassed by the fact that they have no clue, that they can't wait to get out. For the ones running/owning the companies, especially the large ones,the developers are merely an expensive nuisance that is needed run the business.
- karatestomp 6y agoI think a lot of that's true of doctors and lawyers, too, but those are the epitome of professional-class jobs. Maybe the difference is that we produce something that, independently, produces value after we're done. The value's in what the thing we produce keeps doing, not the work per se. Lawyer's gotta lawyer every case. Doctor's gotta treat each illness. Lawyer-AI or Doctor Bot doesn't need the developer anymore (OK maintenance or whatever, but you know what I mean). Closest a lawyer probably comes to that is writing contract templates. I can't think of anything a doctor might do along those lines, really. In short, we build capital directly, rather than providing a service.