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>Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our ci

by dmorgan 14y ago

>Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our civilization is already code or it will be. That's an extremely short-sighted way to look at it. In fact, take out the non-programmers, and all programming will collapse -- literally come to a halt. You know, guys like those that grow and transport out food, clean up the streets and the garbage, cook our meals, mine our coal, produce our energy, drill our petrol, build our houses, etc etc. People seem to think that because he have the "information superhighway" (sic) we're, say, above actual highways. Where the fact is that without truckers and highways and oil and the like, the "information superhighway" will collapse in a few days. In fact, you can take programming out of the picture, and the whole world will keep on turning, at least as well as it did in the sixties or fifties. The reverse, not so much. Programming is indeed a pervasive but insignificant in the grand scheme of things addition to the workings of our society.

guard-of-terra 14y ago
There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building. There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines. And while we gradually do that, we'll need more and more programmers. Or maybe we will fail horribly, but not because it could not be done; and somebody will do this a few centuries later.
- dmorgan 14y ago
  >There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building. This is sci-fi as for now, and for the foreseeable future. It's like someone in 1800 saying that the mailman is not needed anymore, because we could use electronic mail. Possible, but far off in the future. See the factories that make iPhones for example: some prefer manual to robotic labor, because it is cheaper. >There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines. There are several reasons. One of them is that such technology and in such scale has not been invented yet (or has not been "engineered for widespread actual use"). Another is the power needed for all this, especially in a global scale. And there are lots of social reasons too: what will you do with the BILLIONS of people whose work is not needed anymore? Unless you come up with some equal pay for all scheme, there will be blood. As for programmers, by the same logic you dismissed manual labour in favor of robotic labour, we could have program writing programs, or trivial "connect the dots" programming solutions for non programmers, that would make the demand for programmers even less, not more.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    We live in sci-fi. The only things withholding this sci-fi from happening: lack of competent workforce (programmers and roboengineers) and lack of vision. It's going to arrive. Currently I'm a programmer not a politician, therefore social reasons are not my problem. My problem is converting as many tasks in the world to code. And that will keep me busy and pay me a salary. We could have a program writing programs, but I won't bet on that. Somebody will still have to give it orders; and the guy giving orders to a program is a programmer by definition. You will have a lot of programmers overseeing computers and robots do various tasks, and that would be the largest and busiest part of the workplace.
  - dmorgan 14y ago
    >We live in sci-fi. So were are our servant robots and flying cars? >The only things withholding this sci-fi from happening: lack of competent workforce (programmers and roboengineers) and lack of vision. That's too generic an accusation. One could say that about any problem. >We could have a program writing programs, but I won't bet on that. Somebody will still have to give it orders; and the guy giving orders to a program is a programmer by definition. You will have a lot of programmers overseeing computers and robots do various tasks, and that would be the largest and busiest part of the workplace. So, your vision of sci-fi future is conveniently constrained such that programmers are always needed and in large quantities. Why seeing everything we currently do becoming automated as an easy task, and not also the overseeing of "computers and robots doing various tasks"? If you trust them to do the work, you can also trust them to do it correctly, and built the required self-correction routines.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      No. We don't have means of teleporting matter; this is a problem; and we can't blame it on lack of vision yet. We don't know how to do it, don't know if it's physiclly possible. Sure you can automate more and more things, in this case programmer will be the last [productive] job remaining. One that slowly wane when more and more things are fully automatic and all other jobs already gone.
    - akurilin 14y ago

by dmorgan 14y ago

guard-of-terra 14y ago

There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building. There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines. And while we gradually do that, we'll need more and more programmers. Or maybe we will fail horribly, but not because it could not be done; and somebody will do this a few centuries later.

dmorgan 14y ago
>There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building. This is sci-fi as for now, and for the foreseeable future. It's like someone in 1800 saying that the mailman is not needed anymore, because we could use electronic mail. Possible, but far off in the future. See the factories that make iPhones for example: some prefer manual to robotic labor, because it is cheaper. >There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines. There are several reasons. One of them is that such technology and in such scale has not been invented yet (or has not been "engineered for widespread actual use"). Another is the power needed for all this, especially in a global scale. And there are lots of social reasons too: what will you do with the BILLIONS of people whose work is not needed anymore? Unless you come up with some equal pay for all scheme, there will be blood. As for programmers, by the same logic you dismissed manual labour in favor of robotic labour, we could have program writing programs, or trivial "connect the dots" programming solutions for non programmers, that would make the demand for programmers even less, not more.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  We live in sci-fi. The only things withholding this sci-fi from happening: lack of competent workforce (programmers and roboengineers) and lack of vision. It's going to arrive. Currently I'm a programmer not a politician, therefore social reasons are not my problem. My problem is converting as many tasks in the world to code. And that will keep me busy and pay me a salary. We could have a program writing programs, but I won't bet on that. Somebody will still have to give it orders; and the guy giving orders to a program is a programmer by definition. You will have a lot of programmers overseeing computers and robots do various tasks, and that would be the largest and busiest part of the workplace.
- dmorgan 14y ago
  >We live in sci-fi. So were are our servant robots and flying cars? >The only things withholding this sci-fi from happening: lack of competent workforce (programmers and roboengineers) and lack of vision. That's too generic an accusation. One could say that about any problem. >We could have a program writing programs, but I won't bet on that. Somebody will still have to give it orders; and the guy giving orders to a program is a programmer by definition. You will have a lot of programmers overseeing computers and robots do various tasks, and that would be the largest and busiest part of the workplace. So, your vision of sci-fi future is conveniently constrained such that programmers are always needed and in large quantities. Why seeing everything we currently do becoming automated as an easy task, and not also the overseeing of "computers and robots doing various tasks"? If you trust them to do the work, you can also trust them to do it correctly, and built the required self-correction routines.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    No. We don't have means of teleporting matter; this is a problem; and we can't blame it on lack of vision yet. We don't know how to do it, don't know if it's physiclly possible. Sure you can automate more and more things, in this case programmer will be the last [productive] job remaining. One that slowly wane when more and more things are fully automatic and all other jobs already gone.
  - akurilin 14y ago