3 ms·

I have a theory of "software literacy" where software is a new form of literacy - and everyone should become literate. All you are saying here is that business

I have a theory of "software literacy" where software is a new form of literacy - and everyone should become literate. All you are saying here is that businesses will be populated by people who can ... read and write. I think there will come a time when businesses stop outsourcing their reading and writing to external dev shops, but that's not the idea you are thinking about. IMO your idea is "a dev shop will write lots of paragraphs in such a way they can be fitted together by an illiterate person using config" I think putting it that way highlights the problems Edit: another way to look at it is that managers "design" a company with policies and hiring etc. When a company is "software mediated" then the management is now one step removed from reality of the design of the company - the code is the design and the coders are the new managers Before software you were hiring people to follow your written policies and your occasional orders as policy did not meet reality. Now with software mediated companies, you are hiring people to write the actual policies - and as you do not / cannot be specific enough except in code the actual design is done for the managers - in short management moves to be either the coders or the managers are investors. Either way the "management" work becomes that of coders. And management this means writing code. Don't write code? not a manager. you can be an investor, a visionary, an accountant and budget holder. All fine. but not actually an executive

achow 5y ago
I was actually talking about former - stop outsourcing 'reading and writing' to dev shops. Rules and policies are quite intricately thought through and they get refined as and when 'bugs' or 'holes' are detected (to the detriment of work culture - yet another condition for buying paperclips). It is often software implementation which does not take care of all ifs and buts, as nobody has patience to write a detailed specs. Most often software tools addresses only frequent cases; when it comes to outliers and exceptions one defaults to 'manual methods' (emails, meetings, face to face talks, etc). Software implementations can be way behind when trying to keep pace with system intricacies that human minds can conjure up.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  But the "intricacies human minds conjure up" can themselves be coded - I mean they are rules that at least two humans have agreed on (at least enough to transact) The fact that most IT systems are behind is just saying most companies are not software mediated enough, yet. And all the robot automation and so on happening across all companies is a recognition that there needs to be deeper mediation - the implications may not be well thought through but the more a companies processes and decisions are made explicit in software the more change will be forced As an example just think of volkswagen - someone had to explicitly code up "lie on the exhaust emissions test". if that is not raising / surfacing all explicit rules and assumptions i don't know what is !
silvestrov 5y ago
I don't think you can get most people to be literate in programming. "programming" is to "business logic" like "spelling" is to "writing novels". You don't get to be a Dostoevsky by being very good at spelling. Being able to tell good stories is much more important than spelling. You don't get everyone to be a good author by providing them with a tape recorder so they don't have to spell. Programmers are very good at thinking in logic. Programmming languages are just a detail in this. Programming is the ability to formulate what the rules should be exactly. Most (business) people are not able to be that precise no matter the tools you provide them.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I find this a very negative view. It sounds very similar to views expressed throughout history saying why the majority of people could not be taught to read write or add up (variously women, girls, poor people, blacks, slaves, Barbarians etc etc. Turns out all we needed was schools and paper
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    And today, all we need for universal programming is Microsoft Excel. The grandparent has it backwards, if I understand correctly. "Business logic" is to "programming" as "My first spelling book" is to Dostoevsky. You can write the analog of a memo easily in Excel, or with great effort you could write a sixty page paper, but programmers these days work in teams to produce things that are the writing equivalent of a coherent blend of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the tax records of 18th-century England, and an epic story 100 times the size of The Lord Of The Rings. And we need bigger systems than that.
    - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
      I am just checking I understand you. That "everyone" (let's say everyone in a white collar job) can use Excel today is true. And yes it is possible to "program" in excel. But that's in the "small". And I think you are saying that we don't have the programming ecosystem to support large scale development. I think I agree. But we have to raise the floor of programming literacy a lot beyond "white collar excel". But having said all that, I am dubious that we lack the principles of coding to be able to enable massive software projects - I think we lack the organisational (incentives / understanding / will) to do so. We can imagine a mid sized company that is OSS based, avoids proprietary lock in of its data.

achow 5y ago

I was actually talking about former - stop outsourcing 'reading and writing' to dev shops. Rules and policies are quite intricately thought through and they get refined as and when 'bugs' or 'holes' are detected (to the detriment of work culture - yet another condition for buying paperclips). It is often software implementation which does not take care of all ifs and buts, as nobody has patience to write a detailed specs. Most often software tools addresses only frequent cases; when it comes to outliers and exceptions one defaults to 'manual methods' (emails, meetings, face to face talks, etc). Software implementations can be way behind when trying to keep pace with system intricacies that human minds can conjure up.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
But the "intricacies human minds conjure up" can themselves be coded - I mean they are rules that at least two humans have agreed on (at least enough to transact) The fact that most IT systems are behind is just saying most companies are not software mediated enough, yet. And all the robot automation and so on happening across all companies is a recognition that there needs to be deeper mediation - the implications may not be well thought through but the more a companies processes and decisions are made explicit in software the more change will be forced As an example just think of volkswagen - someone had to explicitly code up "lie on the exhaust emissions test". if that is not raising / surfacing all explicit rules and assumptions i don't know what is !

silvestrov 5y ago

I don't think you can get most people to be literate in programming. "programming" is to "business logic" like "spelling" is to "writing novels". You don't get to be a Dostoevsky by being very good at spelling. Being able to tell good stories is much more important than spelling. You don't get everyone to be a good author by providing them with a tape recorder so they don't have to spell. Programmers are very good at thinking in logic. Programmming languages are just a detail in this. Programming is the ability to formulate what the rules should be exactly. Most (business) people are not able to be that precise no matter the tools you provide them.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I find this a very negative view. It sounds very similar to views expressed throughout history saying why the majority of people could not be taught to read write or add up (variously women, girls, poor people, blacks, slaves, Barbarians etc etc. Turns out all we needed was schools and paper
- tuatoru 5y ago
  And today, all we need for universal programming is Microsoft Excel. The grandparent has it backwards, if I understand correctly. "Business logic" is to "programming" as "My first spelling book" is to Dostoevsky. You can write the analog of a memo easily in Excel, or with great effort you could write a sixty page paper, but programmers these days work in teams to produce things that are the writing equivalent of a coherent blend of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the tax records of 18th-century England, and an epic story 100 times the size of The Lord Of The Rings. And we need bigger systems than that.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    I am just checking I understand you. That "everyone" (let's say everyone in a white collar job) can use Excel today is true. And yes it is possible to "program" in excel. But that's in the "small". And I think you are saying that we don't have the programming ecosystem to support large scale development. I think I agree. But we have to raise the floor of programming literacy a lot beyond "white collar excel". But having said all that, I am dubious that we lack the principles of coding to be able to enable massive software projects - I think we lack the organisational (incentives / understanding / will) to do so. We can imagine a mid sized company that is OSS based, avoids proprietary lock in of its data.