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Compare these two senerio. Suppose the whole world needs a treatment for a virus. A medicine has been released. The world will still need a doctor per 1000 pat

by habibur 18y ago

Compare these two senerio. Suppose the whole world needs a treatment for a virus. A medicine has been released. The world will still need a doctor per 1000 patient to diagnose and pescribe it. That translates to hundread million active jobs. Now suppose a new computer virus is in the wild. One man codes the solution and releases it, say for free. The world will not need a second man for this solution, ever. Zero job created. Once a software has been built and finished, it's a done job. How many cycles can one run enhancing it, or find a better solution? For a software to be used by 5 billion people, how many programmers do we need? Compare it back with the doctors.

mdasen 18y ago
It's true to an extent. However, most people aren't that adept with computers. My friends constantly ask me to fix things on their computers when there are perfectly available fixes out there. Likewise, if a treatment is over-the-counter, people can treat themselves. The prescription example is more an issue of legislating a business model - if the government legislated that people had to have an IT guy diagnose their computer and dispense the treatment, it would be the same. NOTE: Clearly there are good reasons for legislating that certain treatments be administered by a doctor and not the patient themselves. I'm not trying to argue that it's a maliciously legislated model, just that people often do treat themselves with OTC stuff. People really often need help with their computers. Even simple things like installing drivers. They're available right from the manufacturer. You click a few things and then you're done. Yet, people in their 20s ask for help because they can't understand it. Like medicine, software can always be better. So, even if you think that administration isn't an issue to be dealt with, there's still a lot to be done to make computers better and there always will be. Can my computer understand my voice? There's software, but it's not Star Trek-like. More to be done.
- eru 18y ago
  How about exchanging doctors with medical researchers and drug designers --- to make the analogy fit?
jodrellblank 18y ago
How does your model account for the large long-term growth in worldwide programming over the past few decades?
- habibur 18y ago
  That was during the era when hardware was going from MHz to GHz creating a vacancy of software for running on these new systems. Now that things have settled down, so has growth.

by habibur 18y ago

mdasen 18y ago

It's true to an extent. However, most people aren't that adept with computers. My friends constantly ask me to fix things on their computers when there are perfectly available fixes out there. Likewise, if a treatment is over-the-counter, people can treat themselves. The prescription example is more an issue of legislating a business model - if the government legislated that people had to have an IT guy diagnose their computer and dispense the treatment, it would be the same. NOTE: Clearly there are good reasons for legislating that certain treatments be administered by a doctor and not the patient themselves. I'm not trying to argue that it's a maliciously legislated model, just that people often do treat themselves with OTC stuff. People really often need help with their computers. Even simple things like installing drivers. They're available right from the manufacturer. You click a few things and then you're done. Yet, people in their 20s ask for help because they can't understand it. Like medicine, software can always be better. So, even if you think that administration isn't an issue to be dealt with, there's still a lot to be done to make computers better and there always will be. Can my computer understand my voice? There's software, but it's not Star Trek-like. More to be done.

eru 18y ago
How about exchanging doctors with medical researchers and drug designers --- to make the analogy fit?

jodrellblank 18y ago

How does your model account for the large long-term growth in worldwide programming over the past few decades?

habibur 18y ago
That was during the era when hardware was going from MHz to GHz creating a vacancy of software for running on these new systems. Now that things have settled down, so has growth.