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None of that actually proved to be true. Tech was certainly not over after the dotcom bubble burst, which is what he's talking about. People have lost jobs to

None of that actually proved to be true. Tech was certainly not over after the dotcom bubble burst, which is what he's talking about. People have lost jobs to offshoring, but the growth in software engineering demand in the US vastly outpaced the losses to offshoring. If anything, offshoring helped deal with the fact that demand vastly outpaced supply over the last few decades. As for "we probably don't need this many programmers"... maybe? Or more accurately, we probably don't need this many programmers making as much money as they were making for the past few years. Corrections happen in every sector now and then.

solardev 3y ago
I don't have a Twitter account and can't see the context around his post, but all of these things can be true at the same time. It's not a binary yes/no you should/should not learn to program situation... all of those are variables to consider. If someone's not interested in programming, they shouldn't feel obligated to learn it just because someone with outside economic interests wants them to. These folks don't necessarily have their best interests at heart (like VCs, CEOs, presidents, or other people who would benefit from the fruits of programmer labor more than the programmers themselves would). As a class, programmers are some of the least happy people I know, and burnout seems to be increasingly common. Sure, we make more money on average (even then, not always, compared to mid-managers and such) but you make a lot of health and social sacrifices in choosing this career path. It's a lonely, often dreary path full of debugging often-pointless code that will largely be discarded in a few years anyway. I'd still stand by the overall gist of my comment, that the overall economic conditions have changed since the 90s and 2000s, when tech easily made a whole class of zillionnaires. These days, for most of us in the industry, it's just another middle-class job. To be fair, though, there aren't many middle class jobs left :( IMO that's the bigger problem, not a lack of run-of-the-mill programmers.

solardev 3y ago

I don't have a Twitter account and can't see the context around his post, but all of these things can be true at the same time. It's not a binary yes/no you should/should not learn to program situation... all of those are variables to consider. If someone's not interested in programming, they shouldn't feel obligated to learn it just because someone with outside economic interests wants them to. These folks don't necessarily have their best interests at heart (like VCs, CEOs, presidents, or other people who would benefit from the fruits of programmer labor more than the programmers themselves would). As a class, programmers are some of the least happy people I know, and burnout seems to be increasingly common. Sure, we make more money on average (even then, not always, compared to mid-managers and such) but you make a lot of health and social sacrifices in choosing this career path. It's a lonely, often dreary path full of debugging often-pointless code that will largely be discarded in a few years anyway. I'd still stand by the overall gist of my comment, that the overall economic conditions have changed since the 90s and 2000s, when tech easily made a whole class of zillionnaires. These days, for most of us in the industry, it's just another middle-class job. To be fair, though, there aren't many middle class jobs left :( IMO that's the bigger problem, not a lack of run-of-the-mill programmers.