4 ms·

I'd say what regulates it is that the quality bar is so high, that the low level is just not exciting. We've become accustomed to the high quality, and now expe

I'd say what regulates it is that the quality bar is so high, that the low level is just not exciting. We've become accustomed to the high quality, and now expect the extreme performance and wild stunts the pros manage to pull off. The same happened with other artistic endeavors. Few people these days really want to see an amateur sing or play an instrument. We have so much high quality music that doing it "okay" doesn't really cut it anymore. Before an okay player/singer might have added to a party. Today, most of the audience will be just waiting for it to end and for somebody to put on some decent, commercial music.

bonoboTP 6y ago
Isn't this happening in programming too? Just like anyone can play Ed Sheeran on their wedding and pay one guy to handle the equipment, companies can buy (or download for free) lots of plumbing tools and frameworks made by the few star companies. It's not like the n+1th website needs professional programmers. For tons of (otherwise offline) businesses tweaking a WordPress site is more than enough. And just like you can watch Ronaldo on TV from half way around the world instead of watching your town's crappy teams, you can also use Google and Microsoft software and services instead of hiring someone from your town. Even very custom software needs fewer and fewer people due to existing tooling. So the bar is going higher and higher in programming too.
- dale_glass 6y ago
  I don't think it's quite the same. I'm saying sports, arts and music got to such heights, that an ordinary person can consume nothing but the best 0.1%. This in turn means the demand for the rest has plummeted, and being the guy who can play guitar "okay" doesn't really excite anybody anymore. There's a market at the very high end, and nobody wants to pay a cent for anything below that. Programming is going the opposite way, if anything. There's lots and lots of programming grunt work that just needs to be done by somebody and doesn't take any particular skill. There's rather less need for wizards able to squeeze every possible bit of functionality into 64K, because at this point resources are cheap. At this point a programmer can get by with being moderately competent and doing little other than gluing frameworks together. Things like music are the opposite. Mere competence is nowhere near enough.
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    Programming itself is relatively low on the ladder. Generic CRUD, and clue code doesn't require very specialised skills. On other hand for that work to be useful proper software engineering and architecture is needed. And these hopefully take input from computer science.
- rubatuga 6y ago
  But to effectively use the plumbing tools, the companies need programmers! And in the near future, there will not be any "automation" of your complex business needs. Every business is different, and every business has different programming needs. At a certain level of scale and complexity, i.e. no longer a mom and pop shop, you need to hire programmers.

bonoboTP 6y ago

Isn't this happening in programming too? Just like anyone can play Ed Sheeran on their wedding and pay one guy to handle the equipment, companies can buy (or download for free) lots of plumbing tools and frameworks made by the few star companies. It's not like the n+1th website needs professional programmers. For tons of (otherwise offline) businesses tweaking a WordPress site is more than enough. And just like you can watch Ronaldo on TV from half way around the world instead of watching your town's crappy teams, you can also use Google and Microsoft software and services instead of hiring someone from your town. Even very custom software needs fewer and fewer people due to existing tooling. So the bar is going higher and higher in programming too.

dale_glass 6y ago
I don't think it's quite the same. I'm saying sports, arts and music got to such heights, that an ordinary person can consume nothing but the best 0.1%. This in turn means the demand for the rest has plummeted, and being the guy who can play guitar "okay" doesn't really excite anybody anymore. There's a market at the very high end, and nobody wants to pay a cent for anything below that. Programming is going the opposite way, if anything. There's lots and lots of programming grunt work that just needs to be done by somebody and doesn't take any particular skill. There's rather less need for wizards able to squeeze every possible bit of functionality into 64K, because at this point resources are cheap. At this point a programmer can get by with being moderately competent and doing little other than gluing frameworks together. Things like music are the opposite. Mere competence is nowhere near enough.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  Programming itself is relatively low on the ladder. Generic CRUD, and clue code doesn't require very specialised skills. On other hand for that work to be useful proper software engineering and architecture is needed. And these hopefully take input from computer science.
rubatuga 6y ago
But to effectively use the plumbing tools, the companies need programmers! And in the near future, there will not be any "automation" of your complex business needs. Every business is different, and every business has different programming needs. At a certain level of scale and complexity, i.e. no longer a mom and pop shop, you need to hire programmers.