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Democratization of software engineering means giving everyone the opportunity to learn. Not handing them a black box with a few instructions then sending them o

• threatofrain 3y ago
  Democratization of software means that more people than ever can make things. This is absolutely the case with software today. We have kids creating games with drag-and-drop visual programming languages. One developer can get a worthy full-stack prototype in front of an investor in a month (or less!), and these stories are gaining steam. Soon we may have no-code solutions getting good enough to warrant broader adoption. No-code solutions are as black box as you can get, and it's also as anti-learning as you can get in terms of the underlying technology and its theoretical principles. But this is also an example of more people than ever making things.
  • pjc50 3y ago
    Someone wrote "if people are using your tool to turn out a lot of half-baked garbage, then your tool is a huge success", which really reframed my view on these things. It was originally in the context of one of the "game maker" tools, but applies to any kind of simplification. A tool which only allows perfect solutions by perfect users is one that rejects a lot of work and prevents a huge number of projects from ever happening at all. Useful for safety-critical work, but not everything is safety-critical.