5 ms·

I guess you already know, and you're asking exactly because you know.. But programming does not create value, it creates programs, which may create value.. Pro

by dusted 5y ago

I guess you already know, and you're asking exactly because you know.. But programming does not create value, it creates programs, which may create value.. Programming is a skill sure, but it does not create value, it creates programs. Programs may create value, so, the valuable skill is not really being able to create a program, but being able to find some problem, whose solution creates value. Programming may be required if the problem can be solved by a program, or if a program can solve a problem so much better or faster or cheaper that there is additional value in employing the program.. I'm a programmer, I love programming, but I'm entirely aware that actual programming is not what makes the money. If I had _the_idea_ pop into my head, I'd probably start developing prototypes, that's where my skill would be best applied at that stage.. If they showed promise, I'd likely start full-time development on it, but I'd be looking carefully for the point where I'd be able take on additional programmers and focus more on _the_idea_ and what's around that, I'd definitely hire marketing and leadership too, since those are also not my core competence.. I realize that means that my obvious core competence (programming) is unused, and that's true, my main role would be to try not to screw it up.. Nobody got rich on technical excellence, it's half the time not even a requirement for success.

gtsop 5y ago
> Programming is a skill sure, but it does not create value, it creates programs. Economic value is created when a human being spends man-hours to produce an artifact that other people need and thus are willing to pay for. Programming is a form of working, as is designing, researching, building, plumbing etc. The artifact of programming (ie the program) is the value you create by working. Programs do not by themselves produce value because. if that were the case we would all run "programs " 24/7 on our computers and produce infinite value. Programs help other human beings produce value by putting in the man-hours in a more efficient manner than without the program
- dusted 5y ago
  Only a little bit, the idea is what creates the majority of value, not the actual work put in. The man-hours spent are irrelevant. If someone is doing strip mining by men with shovels, the value they create is not the price of the mined material, but the value that that material brings when it's put to good use. If someone comes along start doing strip mining by truck and bulldozer, they will spend a fraction of the man hours, and yet create orders of magnitude more value.
  - gtsop 5y ago
    With all the respect, but you've got your economics wrong. That's alright though, i don't mean to be disrespectful by saying that. The bedrock of prices is human time spent (yes there are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions) > If someone comes along start doing strip mining by truck and bulldozer, they will spend a fraction of the man hours, and yet create orders of magnitude more value They only reason the truck guy would create orders of magnitude more value is that, in genreral, the rest of the people would work manually. The truck guy would sell the volume of mined materials at the market rate and the market rate is based on manual labor. The truck guy has an advantage. When everyone gets a truck though, his advantage will be lost. He will make as much money as the others and prices will drop because suddenly everyone has a truck and it cheaper to mine because way less manual labour is involved
    - dusted 5y ago
      It's entirely okay for you to have that point of view. I disagree though, he wouldn't sell at a market rate, he would sell below, and enough below that market saturates at his own price, this either increases the market size or new markets based on the wider and cheaper availability of his product emerge. Recognizing what to do is the most important.
      - gtsop 5y ago
        Whether they would sell below market rate is subject to strategic, legal and even political factors. However, bare in mind there are math involved here. If the market sells 1 ton of iron for 20$ (manual labour) and I manage to get a truck I could either sell 1 ton for 20$ as the others and make more profit than them, or I could sell, let's say 1 ton for 10$. This is a strategic move that would squeeze the competition, but it means I sell more product for less money than others. It's not 100% the correct move for every company at every buisness sector. There are even more agressive moves, selling goods bellow cost in order to squeeze out the competition. There are even less companies that can pull this off. At the end of the day, technological advantages are ephemeral and are meant to be used (by whichever strategy) while the competition hasn't caught up yet. When the competition catches up prices inevitably fall (unless there is a cartel of course but that is another topic)
- malthuswaswrong 5y ago
  >if that were the case we would all run "programs " 24/7 on our computers and produce infinite value. Ever heard of bitcoin mining? j/k :D
  - gtsop 5y ago
    Haha, yeah I thought of it as soon as I typed the words :D I know you are joking, but seriously speaking, it is only a single class of programs out there and does not necesserily create value, most people would run that at a loss So technically speaking, yes some programs can, under certain conditions, be ran 24/7 and make value :D
- dusted 5y ago
  >Programs do not by themselves produce value because. if that were the case we would all run "programs " 24/7 on our computers and produce infinite value. Web shops, they're programs running on a computer 24/7 making money doing a job a person could do, they cost next to nothing.
- narcraft 5y ago
  Since you said "economic value" specifically, I'd have to say that the man-hours are only one of the factors that could determine value. Strictly speaking, economic value is determined by supply and demand. Man-hours are a cost and help determine the shape and position of the supply curve of a given good or service, but the demand side is almost completely independent of how much effort it takes to produce something. Instead the demand curve will be shaped the culmination of individuals' marginal utilities (the perceived value of the next additional unit of a thing) for the good or service in question. On a more philosophical note, value is entirely subjective, but the equilibrium price model is compatible with value's subjectivity and gives us a powerful paradigm for understanding why some things are more "valuable" than others
malthuswaswrong 5y ago
A penny saved is a penny earned. Many programmers are employed to automate tasks and reduce labor requirements. That adds value to the organization. You are splitting hairs by saying "the program" vs "the programming". You are a wizard that casts spells to make people's jobs easier. What exactly that means depends on the management. Once a job becomes easier they can either pay fewer employees to do the job or they can take more clients with the staff they have. That's not my decision. My job is to add value to the enterprise by reducing labor costs.
- karpierz 5y ago
  The parent's point is that you don't make money by casting arbitrary spells, you make money by solving problems for people. You happen to solve them by casting spells, but they're not paying you for the spell, they're paying to make the problem go away.
  - dusted 5y ago
    Exactly, and the value gained by solving the problem is going to be larger than the value of the spells that did it. Nobody is going to pay more money for a program than they're going to make from having that program.
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      > Nobody is going to pay more money for a program than they're going to make from having that program. Maybe not intentionally. Unintentionally, though, it happens all the time! Like I've worked on several games for small companies that failed to find an audience and didn't sell well upon release, as well as large new initiatives for large corporations that either never fully materialized or were made to sell with a couple of clients in mind that never ended up signing the contract so those projects ended up getting discarded after the corporation had me put several months of work into them. Thankfully I've also worked on programs that have had a lot of impact as well.
      - 5y ago
willcipriano 5y ago
With this explanation I'm not sure how managers add value. If you asked me previously, I'd say they pick what problems we solve but since I'm apparently in charge of that as well. What do they do exactly? The way I see it is I'm like a contractor. If you want me to put a purple roof on the house you are building, fine but don't come crying to me when nobody wants to buy it.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  I think in most orgs managers are supposed to _extract_ value, not to add. The best image could be of the relation between a singer and their manager: some singers do everything themselves, others will benefit from someone focusing on maintaining a stream of money flowing in.

by dusted 5y ago

gtsop 5y ago

> Programming is a skill sure, but it does not create value, it creates programs. Economic value is created when a human being spends man-hours to produce an artifact that other people need and thus are willing to pay for. Programming is a form of working, as is designing, researching, building, plumbing etc. The artifact of programming (ie the program) is the value you create by working. Programs do not by themselves produce value because. if that were the case we would all run "programs " 24/7 on our computers and produce infinite value. Programs help other human beings produce value by putting in the man-hours in a more efficient manner than without the program

dusted 5y ago
Only a little bit, the idea is what creates the majority of value, not the actual work put in. The man-hours spent are irrelevant. If someone is doing strip mining by men with shovels, the value they create is not the price of the mined material, but the value that that material brings when it's put to good use. If someone comes along start doing strip mining by truck and bulldozer, they will spend a fraction of the man hours, and yet create orders of magnitude more value.
- gtsop 5y ago
  With all the respect, but you've got your economics wrong. That's alright though, i don't mean to be disrespectful by saying that. The bedrock of prices is human time spent (yes there are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions) > If someone comes along start doing strip mining by truck and bulldozer, they will spend a fraction of the man hours, and yet create orders of magnitude more value They only reason the truck guy would create orders of magnitude more value is that, in genreral, the rest of the people would work manually. The truck guy would sell the volume of mined materials at the market rate and the market rate is based on manual labor. The truck guy has an advantage. When everyone gets a truck though, his advantage will be lost. He will make as much money as the others and prices will drop because suddenly everyone has a truck and it cheaper to mine because way less manual labour is involved
  - dusted 5y ago
    It's entirely okay for you to have that point of view. I disagree though, he wouldn't sell at a market rate, he would sell below, and enough below that market saturates at his own price, this either increases the market size or new markets based on the wider and cheaper availability of his product emerge. Recognizing what to do is the most important.
    - gtsop 5y ago
      Whether they would sell below market rate is subject to strategic, legal and even political factors. However, bare in mind there are math involved here. If the market sells 1 ton of iron for 20$ (manual labour) and I manage to get a truck I could either sell 1 ton for 20$ as the others and make more profit than them, or I could sell, let's say 1 ton for 10$. This is a strategic move that would squeeze the competition, but it means I sell more product for less money than others. It's not 100% the correct move for every company at every buisness sector. There are even more agressive moves, selling goods bellow cost in order to squeeze out the competition. There are even less companies that can pull this off. At the end of the day, technological advantages are ephemeral and are meant to be used (by whichever strategy) while the competition hasn't caught up yet. When the competition catches up prices inevitably fall (unless there is a cartel of course but that is another topic)
malthuswaswrong 5y ago
>if that were the case we would all run "programs " 24/7 on our computers and produce infinite value. Ever heard of bitcoin mining? j/k :D
- gtsop 5y ago
  Haha, yeah I thought of it as soon as I typed the words :D I know you are joking, but seriously speaking, it is only a single class of programs out there and does not necesserily create value, most people would run that at a loss So technically speaking, yes some programs can, under certain conditions, be ran 24/7 and make value :D
dusted 5y ago
>Programs do not by themselves produce value because. if that were the case we would all run "programs " 24/7 on our computers and produce infinite value. Web shops, they're programs running on a computer 24/7 making money doing a job a person could do, they cost next to nothing.
narcraft 5y ago
Since you said "economic value" specifically, I'd have to say that the man-hours are only one of the factors that could determine value. Strictly speaking, economic value is determined by supply and demand. Man-hours are a cost and help determine the shape and position of the supply curve of a given good or service, but the demand side is almost completely independent of how much effort it takes to produce something. Instead the demand curve will be shaped the culmination of individuals' marginal utilities (the perceived value of the next additional unit of a thing) for the good or service in question. On a more philosophical note, value is entirely subjective, but the equilibrium price model is compatible with value's subjectivity and gives us a powerful paradigm for understanding why some things are more "valuable" than others

malthuswaswrong 5y ago

A penny saved is a penny earned. Many programmers are employed to automate tasks and reduce labor requirements. That adds value to the organization. You are splitting hairs by saying "the program" vs "the programming". You are a wizard that casts spells to make people's jobs easier. What exactly that means depends on the management. Once a job becomes easier they can either pay fewer employees to do the job or they can take more clients with the staff they have. That's not my decision. My job is to add value to the enterprise by reducing labor costs.

karpierz 5y ago
The parent's point is that you don't make money by casting arbitrary spells, you make money by solving problems for people. You happen to solve them by casting spells, but they're not paying you for the spell, they're paying to make the problem go away.
- dusted 5y ago
  Exactly, and the value gained by solving the problem is going to be larger than the value of the spells that did it. Nobody is going to pay more money for a program than they're going to make from having that program.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    > Nobody is going to pay more money for a program than they're going to make from having that program. Maybe not intentionally. Unintentionally, though, it happens all the time! Like I've worked on several games for small companies that failed to find an audience and didn't sell well upon release, as well as large new initiatives for large corporations that either never fully materialized or were made to sell with a couple of clients in mind that never ended up signing the contract so those projects ended up getting discarded after the corporation had me put several months of work into them. Thankfully I've also worked on programs that have had a lot of impact as well.
    - 5y ago

willcipriano 5y ago

With this explanation I'm not sure how managers add value. If you asked me previously, I'd say they pick what problems we solve but since I'm apparently in charge of that as well. What do they do exactly? The way I see it is I'm like a contractor. If you want me to put a purple roof on the house you are building, fine but don't come crying to me when nobody wants to buy it.

makeitdouble 5y ago
I think in most orgs managers are supposed to _extract_ value, not to add. The best image could be of the relation between a singer and their manager: some singers do everything themselves, others will benefit from someone focusing on maintaining a stream of money flowing in.