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I disagree. Think about it like this: Excel can do more than punch cards can, but it's also harder to learn. So you can put in more effort and get more out, e.g

by rcme 3y ago

I disagree. Think about it like this: Excel can do more than punch cards can, but it's also harder to learn. So you can put in more effort and get more out, e.g. you might need 130% of the knowledge, but you get 150% of the result. These new generative AI algorithms make things easier, but they produce worse results. E.g. you can put in 50% of the effort and get 80% of the result. By lowering the amount of knowledge required to build something, you open up the labor pool to more unskilled labor. So while technically the "number of developers" will increase, the ranks will be increased with unskilled labor and the profession will cease to be desirable knowledge work. This is very similar to how craftsmen and tradespeople were replaced with automation. For example, "Luddites" are known as people who dislike technological progress, but they were really textile workers who opposed having their high-skill jobs replaced by low-skill laborers with the factory owners pocketing the difference between the high and low skill pay.

qsort 3y ago
Excel is harder to learn than 1970s-era Fortran? Excel is actually a good comparison. It's easy to learn, it works just fine for small stuff, it's easy to misuse, it's hard to catch mistakes, and more often than not at a certain point the grown-ups have to take over and rewrite the project using actually working technology. > the ranks will be increased with unskilled labor and the profession will cease to be desirable knowledge work. The real skill in software development has never been coding, but rather formally specifying problems and turning them into a complete set of instruction. If people could do that, we'd be all out of a job already. Java syntax isn't rocket science, folks...
welshwelsh 3y ago
I feel like you could say the same about Python. There's nothing you can do in Python that you can't do in C. But while Python is easier to learn and use than C, it's less efficient, in some cases hundreds of times slower than C, let alone expertly-optimized assembly. But the ease of application development in languages like Python has expanded the scope of what can be realistically done with software, causing developer employment and salaries to rise while lowering the required computer science knowledge. As for the luddites, they lacked imagination. Low-skilled laborers might have been able to make textiles, but there were plenty of lucrative opportunities for talented people able to design, build and maintain machinery instead of merely operating it. It was not uncommon for talented engineers to become factory owners themselves, some of whom started as unskilled laborers (Samuel Slater, for example).

by rcme 3y ago

qsort 3y ago

Excel is harder to learn than 1970s-era Fortran? Excel is actually a good comparison. It's easy to learn, it works just fine for small stuff, it's easy to misuse, it's hard to catch mistakes, and more often than not at a certain point the grown-ups have to take over and rewrite the project using actually working technology. > the ranks will be increased with unskilled labor and the profession will cease to be desirable knowledge work. The real skill in software development has never been coding, but rather formally specifying problems and turning them into a complete set of instruction. If people could do that, we'd be all out of a job already. Java syntax isn't rocket science, folks...

welshwelsh 3y ago

I feel like you could say the same about Python. There's nothing you can do in Python that you can't do in C. But while Python is easier to learn and use than C, it's less efficient, in some cases hundreds of times slower than C, let alone expertly-optimized assembly. But the ease of application development in languages like Python has expanded the scope of what can be realistically done with software, causing developer employment and salaries to rise while lowering the required computer science knowledge. As for the luddites, they lacked imagination. Low-skilled laborers might have been able to make textiles, but there were plenty of lucrative opportunities for talented people able to design, build and maintain machinery instead of merely operating it. It was not uncommon for talented engineers to become factory owners themselves, some of whom started as unskilled laborers (Samuel Slater, for example).