5 ms·

Programmers are increasingly needed for everything. I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot

by hooby 5y ago

Programmers are increasingly needed for *everything*. I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch - can't plow their fields, when the gps-software that drives the tractor isn't working. Apart from that, programming is becoming every other job - as far as domain knowledge is concerned. I've personally experienced (multiple times!) professional accounting companies complaining about not being able to just modify official invoices (totally illegal) but having to cancel and re-issue them with a new invoice number (how it MUST be done). -> It's now the responsibility of the programmers to understand how accounting works. Professional accountants just click a button and expect the software to "do the right thing". -> As in this case, the professional accountant no longer adds much value, they'll probably be entirely replaced by software at some point. A more relatable example might be Taxis drivers. It might take years still, but at some point, all Taxis will be self-driving vehicles, created by robots in a fully automated factory. Programmers will be needed for the driving software and the factory software. You might still need some mechanics to repair the factory robots - until when that job is done by robots as well (that have to be programmed). It currently seems more likely to me, that we are headed towards a future, where programming is the *only* job - and everything else is done by software.

nokcha 5y ago
> I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch - can't plow their fields, when the gps-software that drives the tractor isn't working. Seems like quite a dangerous situation, if something like the Carrington Event knocks the grid offline for an extended period of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Seeing how we coped with Covid has made me wonder how well we would manage an event like that. Supposedly we are well prepared in the UK but that was also the case for Covid and we know how that turned out.
  - rajin444 5y ago
    The average age of death for Covid is higher than the average life expectancy. You’re going to have a hard time convincing people that is a true crisis.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      What about the state of the health care system? Hospital occupancy?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - hooby 5y ago
      Wow... "It's not a crisis, because (mostly) only old people die." I'm speechless.
dystroy 5y ago
For taxi drivers, the most important change was already done and it took decades: it wasn't replacing them with self driving vehicles. It was replacing very competent drivers having a perfect knowledge of the town and of the optimal paths with drivers with absolutely no competence needed. We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans.
- ido 5y ago
  I remember this free book making the same argument (I've read it many - maybe 20? - years ago but I recall enjoying it at the time): https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
- hooby 5y ago
  Sounds quite similar to my accountants-example, doesn't it?
  - trenchgun 5y ago
    Indeed it does.
- dom96 5y ago
  > We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans. Wow, this is a very prescient quote. I think we will hear this repeated often in the years to come.
  - lytefm 5y ago
    There are two ways to look at it, though: One is to lament how previously specialized professions like taxi drivers become replaced by low-skilled laborers who just need to drive and use an app. The other way is to appreciate how technology augments what humans can do and be more productive. It's not like all accountants got fired when Excel started being a thing: It's that they got way more work done! There is no sign of a decrease in demand for labour in countries like the US or Germany: Quite the opposite, we have to get a lot more efficient in order to sustain an aging population!
csomar 5y ago
I agree and I don't think many people understand the implications. They complain that AI-driving is not good enough (it's not) but they hardly understand the consequence if it was (millions will need to pivot to something else). I have a much better example: Invisalign -> https://www.invisalign.com https://www.invisalign.com This is straight into doctors (orthodontists) territory. To explain the concept, a scanner will scan your jaw and then Invisalign will produce a series of aligners that you need to take in order. The orthodontist job? It's just to follow up on you in case something goes wrong. As they get better on this, the orthodontist job becomes less important and he can take multiple patients. The guy I consulted with told me that he can do some of the follow up remotely thanks to the iPhone camera. It's these small things that are going to drive massive demand for software developers in the future. Software was limited to accounting/communication in the last decade. Now we are getting in a decade where software will apply to lots of other fields: Transportation, Medical, Tourism, Food, Banking, etc... The demand is about to go up by a LOT. The demand for skilled software developers is going to heat up beyond the wildest of our imagination. ps: just my opinion.
- Damogran6 5y ago
  While the need for Orthodontists is going to go DOWN. I see the same thing with the cloud. I’ve racked a server or two in my career, run a cable or four to a managed switch, and deployed PCs to desktops… ALL of that is going away. There’s going to be a small subset of people managing datacenters, rather than populations of people in metro areas managing datacenters for companies of any size. Laptops are deployed pre-configured and they just hook up to the available Wifi…that labor is going away. Good? Bad? I dunno, it just is…the Buggywhip manufacturers went and did something else.
simonh 5y ago
>we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch... They're still perfectly capable of milking their cows the old way, it just doesn't make any sense to do so. I think this is a non-problem.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  The individual farmer could do it and could fill a milk pail for his family's needs for the day, but he couldn't fill a tanker truck for Krogers. He could walk the fields and sow seed by the fistful from a bag over his shoulders, but he couldn't drill 30 acres per hour like he could with a modern tractor and planter. Technology in agriculture is a force multiplier that has allowed the fraction of the population employed as farmers to crash from 90% in colonial times, 83% in the year 1800, 55% in 1850, 31% in 1900, 5% in 1950, and down to less than 1% today. That 1% could not feed the world without automated milking parlors and high-speed tractors. If Y22k hit John Deere's DRM this spring, some 50% of fields would lay fallow, and we'd have 50% less food in the fall....it would be devastating.
  - simonh 5y ago
    >If Y22k hit John Deere's DRM this spring, some 50% of fields would lay fallow, and we'd have 50% less food in the fall....it would be devastating. I actually doubt it, those aren't the only tractors in the world, or even the US. It would be annoying, and expensive, but hardly the end of the world. Also consider that the fact these things are automated makes us less susceptible to other forms of supply chain disruption that might affect a highly manual process, like a pandemic for example.
    - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
      John Deere has 53% of the US tractor market and 60% of the combine market. They're not the only tractors in the US, true, just most of them. The machines are run late into the night, 7 days a week, during the narrow window of weather appropriate for planting and harvesting seasons. Prices would skyrocket, which would reduce demand, and yes, consumption would change, and yes, food would be imported...but at the margins, millions would starve.
whoomp12342 5y ago
man, thats terrifying from a birds eye view especially given how terrible lots of us are at writing good code
whoomp12342 5y ago
keep in mind, accounting is a broad field. I dont see accountants being replaced. There are three main sections of accountants: Audit, Tax, and Corporate. Corporate is the cushiest and most likely to be automated. Auditing is much like consulting and require human conversations and complex analysis. Maybe one day with sophisticated AI, but not any time soon. Tax constantly changes and need accountants to understand and translate to the programmers on a continual basis, and there will always be adept accountants with better interpretations for $$$ hire. Could they be automated? sure, the easiest way would be to have the govt automatically file, but they wont because the industry doesn't want that.

Programmers are increasingly needed for *everything*. I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot

by hooby 5y ago

nokcha 5y ago

> I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch - can't plow their fields, when the gps-software that drives the tractor isn't working. Seems like quite a dangerous situation, if something like the Carrington Event knocks the grid offline for an extended period of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Seeing how we coped with Covid has made me wonder how well we would manage an event like that. Supposedly we are well prepared in the UK but that was also the case for Covid and we know how that turned out.
- rajin444 5y ago
  The average age of death for Covid is higher than the average life expectancy. You’re going to have a hard time convincing people that is a true crisis.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    What about the state of the health care system? Hospital occupancy?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - hooby 5y ago
    Wow... "It's not a crisis, because (mostly) only old people die." I'm speechless.

dystroy 5y ago

For taxi drivers, the most important change was already done and it took decades: it wasn't replacing them with self driving vehicles. It was replacing very competent drivers having a perfect knowledge of the town and of the optimal paths with drivers with absolutely no competence needed. We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans.

ido 5y ago
I remember this free book making the same argument (I've read it many - maybe 20? - years ago but I recall enjoying it at the time): https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
hooby 5y ago
Sounds quite similar to my accountants-example, doesn't it?
- trenchgun 5y ago
  Indeed it does.
dom96 5y ago
> We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans. Wow, this is a very prescient quote. I think we will hear this repeated often in the years to come.
- lytefm 5y ago
  There are two ways to look at it, though: One is to lament how previously specialized professions like taxi drivers become replaced by low-skilled laborers who just need to drive and use an app. The other way is to appreciate how technology augments what humans can do and be more productive. It's not like all accountants got fired when Excel started being a thing: It's that they got way more work done! There is no sign of a decrease in demand for labour in countries like the US or Germany: Quite the opposite, we have to get a lot more efficient in order to sustain an aging population!

csomar 5y ago

I agree and I don't think many people understand the implications. They complain that AI-driving is not good enough (it's not) but they hardly understand the consequence if it was (millions will need to pivot to something else). I have a much better example: Invisalign -> https://www.invisalign.com https://www.invisalign.com This is straight into doctors (orthodontists) territory. To explain the concept, a scanner will scan your jaw and then Invisalign will produce a series of aligners that you need to take in order. The orthodontist job? It's just to follow up on you in case something goes wrong. As they get better on this, the orthodontist job becomes less important and he can take multiple patients. The guy I consulted with told me that he can do some of the follow up remotely thanks to the iPhone camera. It's these small things that are going to drive massive demand for software developers in the future. Software was limited to accounting/communication in the last decade. Now we are getting in a decade where software will apply to lots of other fields: Transportation, Medical, Tourism, Food, Banking, etc... The demand is about to go up by a LOT. The demand for skilled software developers is going to heat up beyond the wildest of our imagination. ps: just my opinion.

Damogran6 5y ago
While the need for Orthodontists is going to go DOWN. I see the same thing with the cloud. I’ve racked a server or two in my career, run a cable or four to a managed switch, and deployed PCs to desktops… ALL of that is going away. There’s going to be a small subset of people managing datacenters, rather than populations of people in metro areas managing datacenters for companies of any size. Laptops are deployed pre-configured and they just hook up to the available Wifi…that labor is going away. Good? Bad? I dunno, it just is…the Buggywhip manufacturers went and did something else.

simonh 5y ago

>we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch... They're still perfectly capable of milking their cows the old way, it just doesn't make any sense to do so. I think this is a non-problem.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
The individual farmer could do it and could fill a milk pail for his family's needs for the day, but he couldn't fill a tanker truck for Krogers. He could walk the fields and sow seed by the fistful from a bag over his shoulders, but he couldn't drill 30 acres per hour like he could with a modern tractor and planter. Technology in agriculture is a force multiplier that has allowed the fraction of the population employed as farmers to crash from 90% in colonial times, 83% in the year 1800, 55% in 1850, 31% in 1900, 5% in 1950, and down to less than 1% today. That 1% could not feed the world without automated milking parlors and high-speed tractors. If Y22k hit John Deere's DRM this spring, some 50% of fields would lay fallow, and we'd have 50% less food in the fall....it would be devastating.
- simonh 5y ago
  >If Y22k hit John Deere's DRM this spring, some 50% of fields would lay fallow, and we'd have 50% less food in the fall....it would be devastating. I actually doubt it, those aren't the only tractors in the world, or even the US. It would be annoying, and expensive, but hardly the end of the world. Also consider that the fact these things are automated makes us less susceptible to other forms of supply chain disruption that might affect a highly manual process, like a pandemic for example.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    John Deere has 53% of the US tractor market and 60% of the combine market. They're not the only tractors in the US, true, just most of them. The machines are run late into the night, 7 days a week, during the narrow window of weather appropriate for planting and harvesting seasons. Prices would skyrocket, which would reduce demand, and yes, consumption would change, and yes, food would be imported...but at the margins, millions would starve.

whoomp12342 5y ago

man, thats terrifying from a birds eye view especially given how terrible lots of us are at writing good code

whoomp12342 5y ago

keep in mind, accounting is a broad field. I dont see accountants being replaced. There are three main sections of accountants: Audit, Tax, and Corporate. Corporate is the cushiest and most likely to be automated. Auditing is much like consulting and require human conversations and complex analysis. Maybe one day with sophisticated AI, but not any time soon. Tax constantly changes and need accountants to understand and translate to the programmers on a continual basis, and there will always be adept accountants with better interpretations for $$$ hire. Could they be automated? sure, the easiest way would be to have the govt automatically file, but they wont because the industry doesn't want that.