4 ms·

The problem is that while it is economical to hire a team of developers to automate a simple process executed by a lot of people, there is a huge amount of comp

by cm2187 6y ago

The problem is that while it is economical to hire a team of developers to automate a simple process executed by a lot of people, there is a huge amount of complex processes executed by a small number of people in companies. And you are never going to be able to justify a team of 3 developers or more to automate and maintain the code of the job of just one guy. Machine learning won't be the answer either. Machine learning is just another kind of software, you still need to set it up and maintain it. And you need data to train it, which for these complex processes often there is none. The solution really is for non developers to write code to automate their tasks themselves. Here simple code with simple platform to run that code is the only solution. But we are taking the opposite direction. Newer generations are becoming increasingly remote from how computers work (teenagers seem to be struggling even with a file system), platforms are increasingly becoming locked down (both consumer and corporate environment). And I dispute the claim that software is getting easier. I am mostly evolving in a .net environment, and I think the platform is becoming increasingly messy and complicated, we are moving away from simple things. Same with technologies, every time I go back into the azure portal website, I feel I am lost in the hundred of products with evasive names. What we need is the power of the almost "draggy and droppy" features of VBA, something end users can play with. It is shocking how much office processes rely on such an antiquated and neglected technology.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> Machine learning won't be the answer either. Machine learning is just onother kind of software, you still need to set it up and maintain it. And you need data to train it, which for these complex processes often there is none. Machine learning will learn to set up, maintain, and train itself. /s I understand the desire to have non-developers write code for themselves, but the problem is that the quality and reliability of that code can be utterly terrible and they don't have the expertise for the edge cases, so there would still need to be at least an intermediate developer overseeing these 20 part-time very junior people simply because some of those processes would eventually go haywire and do something dangerous or destroy some data.
- cm2187 6y ago
  That may be the case but 1) how much of that is them using tools that are still too complex, 2) is bad code better or worse than no code at all?
- ivanhoe 6y ago
  ML can't learn to understand the business needs of a company, that's something that even external human developers are always struggling with, and it can affect usefulness of application much more than occasional bugs. On the other hand non-developer employees might not be able to produce optimized code and they'll make rookie mistakes, but they know how their company works, they understand the business needs and processes. IMHO the win-win approach would be to have apps designed by employees with drag&dropping UI and wizards for setting the logic rules, and then to let ML analyze it and generate the high quality code based on that.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  > I understand the desire to have non-developers write code for themselves, but the problem is that the quality and reliability of that code can be utterly terrible and they don't have the expertise for the edge cases, People should write code for themselves, and not all code needs to be good quality or have all edge cases covered. there's nothing wrong with someone making a tool for their job and handling the edge cases as they occur.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    You just about perfectly described 75-95% of Excel sheets that run an enormous amount of business processes around the world.
    - slfnflctd 6y ago
      Microsoft Access could be a better tool for a lot of those spreadsheets, I might wager! It would teach user interface design, simple relational database concepts, data types (!) and more. I really wish MS hadn't turned this product into a dead end, seems like a lost opportunity to give aspiring devs a path to learning more capable systems.
watchsteve2 6y ago
I feel like Retool and external.io are trying to do exactly this.
carlmr 6y ago
>Newer generations are becoming increasingly remote from how computers work (teenagers seem to be struggling even with a file system), platforms are increasingly becoming locked down (both consumer and corporate environment). Of course teenagers struggle with a file system. Your iPad/iPhone/Android App shields the user from any and all meaningful interaction with the OS. Many families don't even have a PC at home anymore. So there's no chance for them to gain this experience.
- ponker 6y ago
  My first five years of computer education came just from trying to get various video games to boot.
  - jtms 6y ago
    Same - trying to free enough extended ram to run various games in DOS on a hand me down 286 was my first experience in troubleshooting and configuring an OS
- yurishimo 6y ago
  This is what's kinda crazy to me. I'll be 26 in a few months, and I was by no means raised doing the technical PC tasks that many of my older peers did. The first computer I remember using was an old Windows 95 desktop my mom got for doing her homework in college (teen mom). I have a brother who is 15 and he doesn't know how to use a computer more than using youtube and facebook. And I constantly hear things from my parents about viruses and sketchy stuff ending up on the family laptop. Granted, not all of that is him or my other siblings, but it seems a lot of kids are missing a sort of digital literacy that many in my age group grew up with. I somehow know what a sketchy download button looks like. He has no idea. "It said download so I clicked it" is often a response I hear. What's more frustrating though is that my brother is not a great student. He was adopted and is getting to the age where he's starting to act out and I totally understand why. He's disillusioned with his own education and can't be bothered to care. For someone in his situation, digital literacy could give him access to a good job and a healthy adult life by learning to program, and I could help and mentor him along the way, but I know already it's going to be hard to convince him to take it seriously. I've hinted at it but I've only gotten sideways glances that scream "yeah right, I can't do that." I'm not saying every kid needs to learn to be programmers, but we've abstracted so much technical learning away from them that it seems they're less prepared for a digital world, despite growing up surrounded by technology. Even the kids who are into tech stuff are being pushed into commoditized silos. Eg. Minecraft, etc.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
The solution really is for non developers to write code to automate their tasks themselves. Most of my consulting customers can't even express the problem they are trying to solve. They struggle to decompose the requirement to its constituent parts. The few that can do that could easily become programmers. I've used a few "draggy and droppy" tools and they can make a programmer more productive in certain domains but they can't turn a non-programmer into a programmer.
- subhobroto 6y ago
  > Most of my consulting customers can't even express the problem they are trying to solve I keep on repeating this here on HN and everytime I mention it I get downvoted to hell. Programming is not intuitive. Iteration is not intuitive. Object design is not intuitive. If someone gave a random guy a bunch of 2x4 and 2x6 studs and asked them to make a wall, they won't even know where to begin. Software is way more complicated than building a frame and bolting drywall on.
silvestrov 6y ago
> The problem is that while it is economical to hire a team of developers to automate a simple process executed by a lot of people, there is a huge amount of complex processes executed by a small number of people in companies What I experience is that the small companies gets merged into a bigger company as they are no longer competitive with companies which have automated processes.

by cm2187 6y ago

MattGaiser 6y ago

> Machine learning won't be the answer either. Machine learning is just onother kind of software, you still need to set it up and maintain it. And you need data to train it, which for these complex processes often there is none. Machine learning will learn to set up, maintain, and train itself. /s I understand the desire to have non-developers write code for themselves, but the problem is that the quality and reliability of that code can be utterly terrible and they don't have the expertise for the edge cases, so there would still need to be at least an intermediate developer overseeing these 20 part-time very junior people simply because some of those processes would eventually go haywire and do something dangerous or destroy some data.

cm2187 6y ago
That may be the case but 1) how much of that is them using tools that are still too complex, 2) is bad code better or worse than no code at all?
ivanhoe 6y ago
ML can't learn to understand the business needs of a company, that's something that even external human developers are always struggling with, and it can affect usefulness of application much more than occasional bugs. On the other hand non-developer employees might not be able to produce optimized code and they'll make rookie mistakes, but they know how their company works, they understand the business needs and processes. IMHO the win-win approach would be to have apps designed by employees with drag&dropping UI and wizards for setting the logic rules, and then to let ML analyze it and generate the high quality code based on that.
schwartzworld 6y ago
> I understand the desire to have non-developers write code for themselves, but the problem is that the quality and reliability of that code can be utterly terrible and they don't have the expertise for the edge cases, People should write code for themselves, and not all code needs to be good quality or have all edge cases covered. there's nothing wrong with someone making a tool for their job and handling the edge cases as they occur.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  You just about perfectly described 75-95% of Excel sheets that run an enormous amount of business processes around the world.
  - slfnflctd 6y ago
    Microsoft Access could be a better tool for a lot of those spreadsheets, I might wager! It would teach user interface design, simple relational database concepts, data types (!) and more. I really wish MS hadn't turned this product into a dead end, seems like a lost opportunity to give aspiring devs a path to learning more capable systems.

watchsteve2 6y ago

I feel like Retool and external.io are trying to do exactly this.

carlmr 6y ago

>Newer generations are becoming increasingly remote from how computers work (teenagers seem to be struggling even with a file system), platforms are increasingly becoming locked down (both consumer and corporate environment). Of course teenagers struggle with a file system. Your iPad/iPhone/Android App shields the user from any and all meaningful interaction with the OS. Many families don't even have a PC at home anymore. So there's no chance for them to gain this experience.

ponker 6y ago
My first five years of computer education came just from trying to get various video games to boot.
- jtms 6y ago
  Same - trying to free enough extended ram to run various games in DOS on a hand me down 286 was my first experience in troubleshooting and configuring an OS
yurishimo 6y ago
This is what's kinda crazy to me. I'll be 26 in a few months, and I was by no means raised doing the technical PC tasks that many of my older peers did. The first computer I remember using was an old Windows 95 desktop my mom got for doing her homework in college (teen mom). I have a brother who is 15 and he doesn't know how to use a computer more than using youtube and facebook. And I constantly hear things from my parents about viruses and sketchy stuff ending up on the family laptop. Granted, not all of that is him or my other siblings, but it seems a lot of kids are missing a sort of digital literacy that many in my age group grew up with. I somehow know what a sketchy download button looks like. He has no idea. "It said download so I clicked it" is often a response I hear. What's more frustrating though is that my brother is not a great student. He was adopted and is getting to the age where he's starting to act out and I totally understand why. He's disillusioned with his own education and can't be bothered to care. For someone in his situation, digital literacy could give him access to a good job and a healthy adult life by learning to program, and I could help and mentor him along the way, but I know already it's going to be hard to convince him to take it seriously. I've hinted at it but I've only gotten sideways glances that scream "yeah right, I can't do that." I'm not saying every kid needs to learn to be programmers, but we've abstracted so much technical learning away from them that it seems they're less prepared for a digital world, despite growing up surrounded by technology. Even the kids who are into tech stuff are being pushed into commoditized silos. Eg. Minecraft, etc.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

The solution really is for non developers to write code to automate their tasks themselves. Most of my consulting customers can't even express the problem they are trying to solve. They struggle to decompose the requirement to its constituent parts. The few that can do that could easily become programmers. I've used a few "draggy and droppy" tools and they can make a programmer more productive in certain domains but they can't turn a non-programmer into a programmer.

subhobroto 6y ago
> Most of my consulting customers can't even express the problem they are trying to solve I keep on repeating this here on HN and everytime I mention it I get downvoted to hell. Programming is not intuitive. Iteration is not intuitive. Object design is not intuitive. If someone gave a random guy a bunch of 2x4 and 2x6 studs and asked them to make a wall, they won't even know where to begin. Software is way more complicated than building a frame and bolting drywall on.

silvestrov 6y ago

> The problem is that while it is economical to hire a team of developers to automate a simple process executed by a lot of people, there is a huge amount of complex processes executed by a small number of people in companies What I experience is that the small companies gets merged into a bigger company as they are no longer competitive with companies which have automated processes.