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And today is the greatest time to be a programmer in the history of the profession. If ninjas and rockstars and brogrammers are part of it, it's certainly bette

And today is the greatest time to be a programmer in the history of the profession. If ninjas and rockstars and brogrammers are part of it, it's certainly better than building war simulations and calculating civilian casualty rates in the case of mutually assured destruction in order to advance your profession and provide for your loved ones. Those were not halcyon days for mathematicians, physicists and engineers. I'll take the juvenilization of the profession instead.

mjwalshe 15y ago
Where do you think most of the research funding an AI and ML came from? At my first job we did some work in expert systems and Ai(applying it to engineering problems) and one guy moved from those projects because of his concerns sbout the source of the funding.
robatsu 15y ago
I think the early, mid 90's were a lot more interesting time to be a programmer than now, just before the Internet explosion. Back then, a bigger percentage of the focus was on using computers to do something, solve a problem directly (as opposed to implicitly) and the computers were actually getting powerful enough to do things on a cheap basis. People's cat pictures were a vanishingly small portion of the landscape. As an example, cheap computing power is one of the reasons that while at the beginning of the 90's, nuclear power was considered a money losing proposition by electric utilities and everyone was trying to get out from under them but by the end of the decade, all the utilities were hanging on to their nukes for dear life and trying to figure out how to extend their licenses/service life. Now, a much bigger percentage of the focus is simply getting information out of one spot, tranporting it to another, dolling it up w/some marketing glitz. That's not to say that the cool stuff isn't still going on, but that it is a smaller percentage and the profession has been dumbed down significantly (hence brogrammers and all).
- radagaisus 15y ago
  Things that weren't in the mid 90's: stack overflow, google, gmail, google docs, os x, github, git, torrents, and basically every tool I use to make things with my computer (besides bash). No I don't want to go back.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - ams6110 15y ago
    Yeah, back then you actually had to read documentation (yes, it existed) and more or less know what you are doing. Copy/paste coding and questions from colleagues like "How to connect to datbase, pls help urgently!" were unheard of.
  - angersock 15y ago
    You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but it's unfortunate that you seem so heavily defined by your tools (especially when they aren't even one's you've written).
quacker 15y ago
I agree with your sentiment, but it's plain ignorance to believe that those "war simulations" or any other software developed by the military is always intended to raise the kill count and not prevent casualties. To make my point, I would bet the invention of C made the military more effective in some fashion or other, but that's only a consequence of solving the more basic problems C was intended to address. I think it's hard to argue that the problems IBM was solving, or those that the military solves, are really any different in that respect. They solve one problem and then the solution can and will be adapted for other purposes, and it's often hard to judge whether that's a net good or not.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
philwelch 15y ago
The mathematicians, physicists, and engineers of that era helped to preserve the survival of our civilization so you could have the luxury of being an idealistic pacifist.
- DanBC 15y ago
  Some of them worked for Nazi Germany or Stalinist regime or horrific Japanese medical "science" / torture so not all of them were working for freedom. Scientists sometimes say that science is neutral, and it's up to society to use the results wisely. I appreciate that scientists don't always have freedom of choice under a brutal regime.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    I was talking about American scientists ("our civilization"), though the other western allies would qualify as well. Sorry about the confusion.
    - DanBC 15y ago
      EDIT: My reply sounds bickering. Sorry, it isn't meant to! Stalin was a western ally. Stalin was, without doubt, evil. German scientists worked for the US; they were recruited through Operation Paperclip. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip) There's interesting stuff about President Truman's anti-Nazi directive (tl;dr: Don't use scientists who were (or were supportive of) Nazis) and the way that was ignored.
      - philwelch 15y ago
        > Stalin was a western ally. No he wasn't; he was just an ally. The term "western allies" excludes the Soviet Union, that's why I intentionally chose it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Allies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Allies German scientists that helped the US, to whatever extent they helped the US, did help to preserve our civilization, even if they tried to destroy it during the war. But let's ignore them; I'm talking about the thousands of American scientists and engineers worked on defense applications in the 20th century, and to some extent about those of Britain, Canada, France, and so forth.

mjwalshe 15y ago

Where do you think most of the research funding an AI and ML came from? At my first job we did some work in expert systems and Ai(applying it to engineering problems) and one guy moved from those projects because of his concerns sbout the source of the funding.

robatsu 15y ago

I think the early, mid 90's were a lot more interesting time to be a programmer than now, just before the Internet explosion. Back then, a bigger percentage of the focus was on using computers to do something, solve a problem directly (as opposed to implicitly) and the computers were actually getting powerful enough to do things on a cheap basis. People's cat pictures were a vanishingly small portion of the landscape. As an example, cheap computing power is one of the reasons that while at the beginning of the 90's, nuclear power was considered a money losing proposition by electric utilities and everyone was trying to get out from under them but by the end of the decade, all the utilities were hanging on to their nukes for dear life and trying to figure out how to extend their licenses/service life. Now, a much bigger percentage of the focus is simply getting information out of one spot, tranporting it to another, dolling it up w/some marketing glitz. That's not to say that the cool stuff isn't still going on, but that it is a smaller percentage and the profession has been dumbed down significantly (hence brogrammers and all).

radagaisus 15y ago
Things that weren't in the mid 90's: stack overflow, google, gmail, google docs, os x, github, git, torrents, and basically every tool I use to make things with my computer (besides bash). No I don't want to go back.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ams6110 15y ago
  Yeah, back then you actually had to read documentation (yes, it existed) and more or less know what you are doing. Copy/paste coding and questions from colleagues like "How to connect to datbase, pls help urgently!" were unheard of.
- angersock 15y ago
  You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but it's unfortunate that you seem so heavily defined by your tools (especially when they aren't even one's you've written).

quacker 15y ago

I agree with your sentiment, but it's plain ignorance to believe that those "war simulations" or any other software developed by the military is always intended to raise the kill count and not prevent casualties. To make my point, I would bet the invention of C made the military more effective in some fashion or other, but that's only a consequence of solving the more basic problems C was intended to address. I think it's hard to argue that the problems IBM was solving, or those that the military solves, are really any different in that respect. They solve one problem and then the solution can and will be adapted for other purposes, and it's often hard to judge whether that's a net good or not.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

philwelch 15y ago

The mathematicians, physicists, and engineers of that era helped to preserve the survival of our civilization so you could have the luxury of being an idealistic pacifist.

DanBC 15y ago
Some of them worked for Nazi Germany or Stalinist regime or horrific Japanese medical "science" / torture so not all of them were working for freedom. Scientists sometimes say that science is neutral, and it's up to society to use the results wisely. I appreciate that scientists don't always have freedom of choice under a brutal regime.
- philwelch 15y ago
  I was talking about American scientists ("our civilization"), though the other western allies would qualify as well. Sorry about the confusion.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    EDIT: My reply sounds bickering. Sorry, it isn't meant to! Stalin was a western ally. Stalin was, without doubt, evil. German scientists worked for the US; they were recruited through Operation Paperclip. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip) There's interesting stuff about President Truman's anti-Nazi directive (tl;dr: Don't use scientists who were (or were supportive of) Nazis) and the way that was ignored.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      > Stalin was a western ally. No he wasn't; he was just an ally. The term "western allies" excludes the Soviet Union, that's why I intentionally chose it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Allies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Allies German scientists that helped the US, to whatever extent they helped the US, did help to preserve our civilization, even if they tried to destroy it during the war. But let's ignore them; I'm talking about the thousands of American scientists and engineers worked on defense applications in the 20th century, and to some extent about those of Britain, Canada, France, and so forth.