5 ms·

Automation is the next outsourcing. I'm one of the people making it happen. People forget that it doesn't need to be 100% automated. If I can automate 25% of t

Automation is the next outsourcing. I'm one of the people making it happen. People forget that it doesn't need to be 100% automated. If I can automate 25% of the work of a staff-level engineer, that's amazing. If I can do 50% of a junior engineer, superb. Right now software engineering is still in baby steps as far as tools are concerned, but the next decade will see some remarkable stuff happen once we have a more solid foundation and start applying the previous few decades' progress in machine learning and statistics.

brandonmenc 5y ago
> People forget that it doesn't need to be 100% automated. If I can automate 25% of the work of a staff-level engineer, that's amazing. If I can do 50% of a junior engineer, superb. This has been the trend since ENIAC. And yet, the demand for programming is higher than ever. It could be another century before those lines intersect. Maybe longer. We keep automating ourselves up into higher levels, only to discover that there is a ton more work to be done up there. Which, imo, is a very good thing.
groby_b 5y ago
You know, I truly hope that's true. At the same point, that has been the mantra for a while. Back in the 80's, when I was but a wee lass, as it came time to choose a college path, my uncle warned me not to get into software engineering because his buddies at IBM told me that it'd be all automated away in the next decade. 4GLs happened, but the work didn't really become less. (And 5GL spectacularly face-planted) In the 90s, we got widespread adoption of the Internet and search engines, and the prognosis was we'd just be able to look up everything. In the aughts, it was javascript & frameworks that were going to eat everybody's lunch. In the 2010s, did we ever build fancy linear regressions^W^W^W machine learning solutions. We always talk about how that somehow would reduce the work, but instead we continue to build barely maintainable mountains of complexity at the outer edge of what we can handle. I wish you success. I'm not holding my breath it'll significantly reduce software engineering work. It'll shift what we do, no doubt. I'd be surprised if this is the decade where we make a significant dent. We'll just heap on more complexity.
- brazzy 5y ago
  > Back in the 80's, when I was but a wee lass, as it came time to choose a college path, my uncle warned me not to get into software engineering because his buddies at IBM told me that it'd be all automated away in the next decade. > 4GLs happened, but the work didn't really become less. (And 5GL spectacularly face-planted) Hah. The pipe dream is older than that. They said that in 5 year's time there would be no demand for professional programmers. You see, there's this new programming languge that's so easy to use that anyone can write the software they need themselves. That was in 1960. The language was COBOL.
adrianN 5y ago
There is still _so much_ untapped demand for programming that I'm not terribly worried about partial automation. Just look how many manual processes exist is governments or large corporations that would be more efficient and less error prone if a computer assisted, but the necessary programming is still too expensive to switch over. Sure, programmer wages might decrease in the future to more reasonable levels, but I don't see mass unemployment looming.
- torgian 5y ago
  I hope not. Today’s reasonable ( 100k a year? 150k? ) is tomorrow’s poverty.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Surely you're either joking or implying that 90% of the people live in poverty.
    - torgian 5y ago
      From what I’ve seen, I’d say around 50-60% of the world population lives in poverty or close to it. But take the States. In the 1980s, having a 120,000 usd annual salary would be insane. You could buy a nice place in Santa Barbara for that money. Due to inflation, that same salary buys much much less in today’s money. Give it another 20 years, 120k per year will buy even less than that. But now consider that most people in the 80s would make 20-40k per year. That was enough to have a good life on the high end. A decent car, a house in a good area with a mortgage. Can you do that now? No. Not unless you live in the sticks, and good luck finding a job there! So to suggest that engineer salaries should be “more reasonable” is basically saying you want people to be poor in twenty years. Because that’s exactly what will happen. Oh and your future 40k per year job will be even harder to make ends meet, if nigh impossible, because most jobs will not be in cheap areas to live. Hell, even the cheaper areas to live are more expensive now.

brandonmenc 5y ago

> People forget that it doesn't need to be 100% automated. If I can automate 25% of the work of a staff-level engineer, that's amazing. If I can do 50% of a junior engineer, superb. This has been the trend since ENIAC. And yet, the demand for programming is higher than ever. It could be another century before those lines intersect. Maybe longer. We keep automating ourselves up into higher levels, only to discover that there is a ton more work to be done up there. Which, imo, is a very good thing.

groby_b 5y ago

You know, I truly hope that's true. At the same point, that has been the mantra for a while. Back in the 80's, when I was but a wee lass, as it came time to choose a college path, my uncle warned me not to get into software engineering because his buddies at IBM told me that it'd be all automated away in the next decade. 4GLs happened, but the work didn't really become less. (And 5GL spectacularly face-planted) In the 90s, we got widespread adoption of the Internet and search engines, and the prognosis was we'd just be able to look up everything. In the aughts, it was javascript & frameworks that were going to eat everybody's lunch. In the 2010s, did we ever build fancy linear regressions^W^W^W machine learning solutions. We always talk about how that somehow would reduce the work, but instead we continue to build barely maintainable mountains of complexity at the outer edge of what we can handle. I wish you success. I'm not holding my breath it'll significantly reduce software engineering work. It'll shift what we do, no doubt. I'd be surprised if this is the decade where we make a significant dent. We'll just heap on more complexity.

brazzy 5y ago
> Back in the 80's, when I was but a wee lass, as it came time to choose a college path, my uncle warned me not to get into software engineering because his buddies at IBM told me that it'd be all automated away in the next decade. > 4GLs happened, but the work didn't really become less. (And 5GL spectacularly face-planted) Hah. The pipe dream is older than that. They said that in 5 year's time there would be no demand for professional programmers. You see, there's this new programming languge that's so easy to use that anyone can write the software they need themselves. That was in 1960. The language was COBOL.

adrianN 5y ago

There is still _so much_ untapped demand for programming that I'm not terribly worried about partial automation. Just look how many manual processes exist is governments or large corporations that would be more efficient and less error prone if a computer assisted, but the necessary programming is still too expensive to switch over. Sure, programmer wages might decrease in the future to more reasonable levels, but I don't see mass unemployment looming.

torgian 5y ago
I hope not. Today’s reasonable ( 100k a year? 150k? ) is tomorrow’s poverty.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Surely you're either joking or implying that 90% of the people live in poverty.
  - torgian 5y ago
    From what I’ve seen, I’d say around 50-60% of the world population lives in poverty or close to it. But take the States. In the 1980s, having a 120,000 usd annual salary would be insane. You could buy a nice place in Santa Barbara for that money. Due to inflation, that same salary buys much much less in today’s money. Give it another 20 years, 120k per year will buy even less than that. But now consider that most people in the 80s would make 20-40k per year. That was enough to have a good life on the high end. A decent car, a house in a good area with a mortgage. Can you do that now? No. Not unless you live in the sticks, and good luck finding a job there! So to suggest that engineer salaries should be “more reasonable” is basically saying you want people to be poor in twenty years. Because that’s exactly what will happen. Oh and your future 40k per year job will be even harder to make ends meet, if nigh impossible, because most jobs will not be in cheap areas to live. Hell, even the cheaper areas to live are more expensive now.