3 ms·

Serious question: why make something you're good at easier for others? The only effect would be to depress your own salary.

irjoe 5y ago
There's an inherent difficulty in making difficult things easy. I think we're more likely to improve the ergonomics of writing software rather than make it easier for others to translate business logic into code. I like to think that making software easier to write will just free up more capital to be spent on other software problems. I haven't seen many software projects where the client doesn't compromise features due to budget or time.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  You're right, but "compromise features due to budget or time" happens in pretty much any industry. Take construction, everyone would like to have a larger house. And just to stick with construction, think of the salaries of the people involved, and why are they what they are. The person that makes the most in construction is the guy that trades the packaged MBSes because to even know what happens after you sign that mortgage document is not that easy to understand to the average Joe.
moksly 5y ago
Because it’s a short sighted solution not to make it easier and to build consensus. The real threat to programmers isn’t going to come from easier tools it’s going to come from the failures of programmers and the ability for large companies to capitalise on it. I work in a non-tech organisation. We (and this is the strategical we) would like nothing more than to sign the keys of our IT empire over to Microsoft, IBM or whomever and simply use standard software because using custom software has been nothing but a three decade long story of failed, delayed and over budget projects. I’m from a programming background myself, and I never actually believed in standard software because it always sucked worse than the specialised software, but that is changing. Over the past 5 years we’ve replaced more than 25 independent solutions (and enough money that I’ve not had to cut down on staff because of it) by simply using Office365. We used to have a myriad of different project management tools, now they’re all handles by teams and planner which both seamlessly integrate to our ESDH system (public sector documentation and record keeping). We’ve kept our own programmers on staff, and they are busy, because we still handle quite a bit of internal data or services in Python and Powershell and we do a massive amount of RPA (robot process automation), but guess what’s now part of our Azure license. Because Microsoft recently pitched automation anywhere, which happens to be our branch of RPA software because we did it a little different than E&Y types recommend, but it’s like 5% of the license fee to run a municipality with 10.000 employees suite of RPA with Azure Auromation compared to what it would cost to do so in its competition. Which is just crazy. That will be the doom of programmers, and the shitty tools that lead to failed projects might be part of the reason. Maybe the market will move fast enough that it’s not an issue. It wasn’t an issue for web-developers when small businesses started being capable of buying a standard webshop for almost nothing, and as I mentioned we still employ our own developers. But I’d frankly be worried if I was young and not careering into some non-replaceable part of programming and even then, I think you might find that plumbers will earn more money than you in 10 years when the market is also saturated with all the people we are currently herding toward IT degrees because we need a few hundred thousand extra right now.
dasil003 5y ago
Is that really the only effect you can think of? The flip-side of lower salary is more people can do it, including hobbyists, non-profits and others creating useful things in the world that benefit everyone. It's not a zero sum game. Playing this kind of knowledge gatekeeping can work for a time, but it's a double-edge sword. Yeah you might profit for a while, but eventually someone will come and yank the rug out from under you because you have no competitive or innovative muscle left. The way I look at it is this: if someone can automate something they should. As a programmer I've never had a shortage of higher order problems to solve. The skills that make you a good programmer allow you to move up the foodchain as lower-level problems are solved. You should embrace this rather than fight against it. Early in my career I was making websites for $2-5k a pop, now most of that can be done with Shopify or Squarespace for $5/month. Can you imagine if I was still clinging on to that business model today? I'm sure it would be a pretty anxious existence wondering when the clients will dry up, and frankly I'm pretty happy not worrying about SFTPing someones files somewhere and hoping they don't call me when they misplace their password. So am I scared about no-code tools? Hell no, I welcome these developments. If more smart entrepreneurs can get started building cool things and get traction, it's only a matter of time before they outgrow those tools, and come to me asking how we can take it to the next level. Same goes for big data, ML, etc. All of these are tools, we are nowhere near general AI that will obsolete a smart human technical mind.
Conlectus 5y ago
Not to be rude, but: caring about people other than yourself. This reads to me like asking a doctor why they advocate healthy living seeing how that would lower their demand.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  It's more like "doctors making sure there are not too many doctors", which in some countries they actually do (by having a say, via professional organizations/unions, how many student spots are there in medical schools).
jhayward 5y ago
Because it is more profitable to grow the pie than to hoard your slice of it.
analog31 5y ago
Doesn't matter, we'll make it easier for ourselves. The personal computer revolution made it possible for the rest of us to make computers useful for ourselves, on our own terms. If necessary, we'll hack our way just deep enough into software with enough flexibility to support "coding," and we'll code. (For instance, Excel).

irjoe 5y ago

There's an inherent difficulty in making difficult things easy. I think we're more likely to improve the ergonomics of writing software rather than make it easier for others to translate business logic into code. I like to think that making software easier to write will just free up more capital to be spent on other software problems. I haven't seen many software projects where the client doesn't compromise features due to budget or time.

H8crilA 5y ago
You're right, but "compromise features due to budget or time" happens in pretty much any industry. Take construction, everyone would like to have a larger house. And just to stick with construction, think of the salaries of the people involved, and why are they what they are. The person that makes the most in construction is the guy that trades the packaged MBSes because to even know what happens after you sign that mortgage document is not that easy to understand to the average Joe.

moksly 5y ago

Because it’s a short sighted solution not to make it easier and to build consensus. The real threat to programmers isn’t going to come from easier tools it’s going to come from the failures of programmers and the ability for large companies to capitalise on it. I work in a non-tech organisation. We (and this is the strategical we) would like nothing more than to sign the keys of our IT empire over to Microsoft, IBM or whomever and simply use standard software because using custom software has been nothing but a three decade long story of failed, delayed and over budget projects. I’m from a programming background myself, and I never actually believed in standard software because it always sucked worse than the specialised software, but that is changing. Over the past 5 years we’ve replaced more than 25 independent solutions (and enough money that I’ve not had to cut down on staff because of it) by simply using Office365. We used to have a myriad of different project management tools, now they’re all handles by teams and planner which both seamlessly integrate to our ESDH system (public sector documentation and record keeping). We’ve kept our own programmers on staff, and they are busy, because we still handle quite a bit of internal data or services in Python and Powershell and we do a massive amount of RPA (robot process automation), but guess what’s now part of our Azure license. Because Microsoft recently pitched automation anywhere, which happens to be our branch of RPA software because we did it a little different than E&Y types recommend, but it’s like 5% of the license fee to run a municipality with 10.000 employees suite of RPA with Azure Auromation compared to what it would cost to do so in its competition. Which is just crazy. That will be the doom of programmers, and the shitty tools that lead to failed projects might be part of the reason. Maybe the market will move fast enough that it’s not an issue. It wasn’t an issue for web-developers when small businesses started being capable of buying a standard webshop for almost nothing, and as I mentioned we still employ our own developers. But I’d frankly be worried if I was young and not careering into some non-replaceable part of programming and even then, I think you might find that plumbers will earn more money than you in 10 years when the market is also saturated with all the people we are currently herding toward IT degrees because we need a few hundred thousand extra right now.

dasil003 5y ago

Is that really the only effect you can think of? The flip-side of lower salary is more people can do it, including hobbyists, non-profits and others creating useful things in the world that benefit everyone. It's not a zero sum game. Playing this kind of knowledge gatekeeping can work for a time, but it's a double-edge sword. Yeah you might profit for a while, but eventually someone will come and yank the rug out from under you because you have no competitive or innovative muscle left. The way I look at it is this: if someone can automate something they should. As a programmer I've never had a shortage of higher order problems to solve. The skills that make you a good programmer allow you to move up the foodchain as lower-level problems are solved. You should embrace this rather than fight against it. Early in my career I was making websites for $2-5k a pop, now most of that can be done with Shopify or Squarespace for $5/month. Can you imagine if I was still clinging on to that business model today? I'm sure it would be a pretty anxious existence wondering when the clients will dry up, and frankly I'm pretty happy not worrying about SFTPing someones files somewhere and hoping they don't call me when they misplace their password. So am I scared about no-code tools? Hell no, I welcome these developments. If more smart entrepreneurs can get started building cool things and get traction, it's only a matter of time before they outgrow those tools, and come to me asking how we can take it to the next level. Same goes for big data, ML, etc. All of these are tools, we are nowhere near general AI that will obsolete a smart human technical mind.

Conlectus 5y ago

Not to be rude, but: caring about people other than yourself. This reads to me like asking a doctor why they advocate healthy living seeing how that would lower their demand.

H8crilA 5y ago
It's more like "doctors making sure there are not too many doctors", which in some countries they actually do (by having a say, via professional organizations/unions, how many student spots are there in medical schools).

jhayward 5y ago

Because it is more profitable to grow the pie than to hoard your slice of it.

analog31 5y ago

Doesn't matter, we'll make it easier for ourselves. The personal computer revolution made it possible for the rest of us to make computers useful for ourselves, on our own terms. If necessary, we'll hack our way just deep enough into software with enough flexibility to support "coding," and we'll code. (For instance, Excel).