5 ms·

But obviously increasing avg and sr programmer productivity by many x implies many fewer jobs for programmers. That’s the point we’re interested in.

mattnewport 4y ago
Is that obvious? The history of programming has been full of things that have at least claimed to increase programmer productivity, everything from high level languages to smart refactoring IDEs, debuggers, PaaS, etc and in all that time the trend has been towards more jobs for programmers not fewer.
- redox99 4y ago
  Productivity with modern tools (SPAs, microservices) is often a lot lower than oldschool stuff (django/rails, maybe even Visual Basic, Delphi)
brookst 4y ago
You seem to be saying that there is fixed demand for programmers and oversupply means less hiring. But the history of technology says that demand is recursive; the more tech produced, the more demand there is for producers. There may be a time when we hit the old “the whole world only needs 5 computers”[0] limit, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close. AI is providing leverage to create net more programming; it is not replacing programmers in a zero sum game. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing.supercomputers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing...
- flippinburgers 4y ago
  Sounds a bit too much like a perpetual motion machine to me.
  - brookst 4y ago
    Isn’t that true of any economy? Think of how many people are employed in general. How could this number of people have been employed 200 years ago?
  - nmcfarl 4y ago
    I’ve got a computer in all of my light switches. There’s a limit to this, but I’m not quite sure where it is.
thingification 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy > In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs.
- dw_arthur 4y ago
  The lump of labor fallacy says nothing about a particular type of job. A category of jobs can become non-productive versus a technology and the workers within those jobs should get reallocated to more productive jobs.

mattnewport 4y ago

Is that obvious? The history of programming has been full of things that have at least claimed to increase programmer productivity, everything from high level languages to smart refactoring IDEs, debuggers, PaaS, etc and in all that time the trend has been towards more jobs for programmers not fewer.

redox99 4y ago
Productivity with modern tools (SPAs, microservices) is often a lot lower than oldschool stuff (django/rails, maybe even Visual Basic, Delphi)

brookst 4y ago

You seem to be saying that there is fixed demand for programmers and oversupply means less hiring. But the history of technology says that demand is recursive; the more tech produced, the more demand there is for producers. There may be a time when we hit the old “the whole world only needs 5 computers”[0] limit, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close. AI is providing leverage to create net more programming; it is not replacing programmers in a zero sum game. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing.supercomputers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/computing...

flippinburgers 4y ago
Sounds a bit too much like a perpetual motion machine to me.
- brookst 4y ago
  Isn’t that true of any economy? Think of how many people are employed in general. How could this number of people have been employed 200 years ago?
- nmcfarl 4y ago
  I’ve got a computer in all of my light switches. There’s a limit to this, but I’m not quite sure where it is.

thingification 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy > In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs.

dw_arthur 4y ago
The lump of labor fallacy says nothing about a particular type of job. A category of jobs can become non-productive versus a technology and the workers within those jobs should get reallocated to more productive jobs.