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20+ years ago, a sizable chunk of the software workforce was dedicated to converting legacy systems from 2 digit year codes into 4 digits. The notion that all

20+ years ago, a sizable chunk of the software workforce was dedicated to converting legacy systems from 2 digit year codes into 4 digits. The notion that all the interesting work was done in yesteryear is just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. At any time in history most software work was glue code. Because the low-hanging fruit is always going to be taking existing systems and applying small tweaks to extend their functionality to a slightly different domain. Truly innovative software has always been done by the tip of the spear. Building something new and valuable is risky and difficult. 95% of the time the end product is worthless. And that's assuming that everyone on the team is highly competent. You either have to be willing to take a lot of personal risk, or have a good enough reputation that someone's willing to pay you to take crazy risks. In other words, work that never has and never will be done by the median engineer. But this is pretty much true of any job in the knowledge economy. The average lawyer is just writing templated boilerplate contracts, not arguing Constitutional law before the Supreme Court. The average accountant is just filing personal and small business taxes, not uncovering high-level corporate fraud. The average doctor does the same simple procedure all day long, not working on a cure for cancer. The average academic does by-the-number meaningless research to get his publication count up, not research deep breakthroughs in his field.

cptskippy 6y ago
20 years ago I was writing one of the first online endorsement engines for producers (independent insurance agents) to allow them to make endorsements on insurance policies over the internet rather than having to speak to an underwriter on the phone. We built a single web front end that was to be used by both the underwriters and the producers. I remember showing off the role based permissions structure we had in place to allow an admin to control what sort of endorsements users could make. I quipped something like "this is so granular that we could even allow insureds to make endorsements to the policy." The response I got from the head underwriter was "we will never allow insureds to make endorsements on policies". When was the last time you had to speak to an agent or underwriter on the phone to make changes to your insurance policy? 20 years ago was a very exciting time as many businesses were going online for the very first time. We were getting away from writing websites in C with CGI and using higher level languages like Perl, PHP, and ASP.
- xkcd-sucks 6y ago
  > When was the last time you had to speak to an agent or underwriter on the phone to make changes to your insurance policy? today, and every time. Would like to switch to geico / someone else with web interface but the rates aren't as good and the customer service isn't as guaranteed
holtkam2 6y ago
This is the best reply on this whole thread.

cptskippy 6y ago

20 years ago I was writing one of the first online endorsement engines for producers (independent insurance agents) to allow them to make endorsements on insurance policies over the internet rather than having to speak to an underwriter on the phone. We built a single web front end that was to be used by both the underwriters and the producers. I remember showing off the role based permissions structure we had in place to allow an admin to control what sort of endorsements users could make. I quipped something like "this is so granular that we could even allow insureds to make endorsements to the policy." The response I got from the head underwriter was "we will never allow insureds to make endorsements on policies". When was the last time you had to speak to an agent or underwriter on the phone to make changes to your insurance policy? 20 years ago was a very exciting time as many businesses were going online for the very first time. We were getting away from writing websites in C with CGI and using higher level languages like Perl, PHP, and ASP.

xkcd-sucks 6y ago
> When was the last time you had to speak to an agent or underwriter on the phone to make changes to your insurance policy? today, and every time. Would like to switch to geico / someone else with web interface but the rates aren't as good and the customer service isn't as guaranteed

holtkam2 6y ago

This is the best reply on this whole thread.