4 ms·

We've been giving our work away to each other for free as open source to help improve each other's productivity for 30+ years now and that's only made our profe

by simonw 11mo ago

We've been giving our work away to each other for free as open source to help improve each other's productivity for 30+ years now and that's only made our profession more valuable.

websiteapi 11mo ago
I see little proof open source has resulted in higher wages and not the fact that everything is being digitized and the subsequent demand for such people to assist in such.
- simonw 11mo ago
  I'm not sure how I can prove it, but ~25 years ago building software without open source sucked. You had to build everything from scratch! It took months to get even the most basic things up and running. I think open source is the single most important productivity boost to our industry that's ever existed. Automated testing is a close second. Google, Facebook, many others would not have existed without open source to build on. And those giants and others like them that were enabled by open source employed a TON of people, at competitive rates that greatly increased our salaries.
  - websiteapi 11mo ago
    even if that's true it's clear enough AI will reduce the demand for swe
    - simonw 11mo ago
      I don't think that's certain. I'm hoping for a Jevons paradox situation where AI drives down the cost of producing software to the point that companies that previously weren't in the market for custom software start hiring software engineers. I think we could see demand go up.
  - throw1235435 11mo ago
    Indeed it did; I remember those times. All else being equal I still think SWE salaries on average would of been higher if we kept it like that given basic economics - there would of been a lot less people capable of doing it but the high ROI automation opportunities would of still been there. The fact that "it sucked" usually creates more scarcity on the supply side; which all being equal means higher wages and in our capitalist society - status. Other professions that are older as to the parent comment already know this and don't see SWE as very "street smart" disrupting themselves. I've seen articles recently like "at least we aren't in coding" from law, accounting, etc an an anecdote to this. With AI at least locally I'm seeing the opposite now - less hiring, less wage pressure and in social circles a lot less status when I mention I'm a SWE (almost sympathy for my lot vs respect only 5 years ago). While I don't care for the status aspect, although I do care for my ability to earn money, some do. At least locally inflation adjusted in my city SWE wages bought more and were higher in general compared to others in the 90's-2000's than on wards (ex big tech). Partly because this difficulty and low level knowledge meant only very skilled people could participate.
    - ipdashc 11mo ago
      > ex big tech I mean, this seems like a pretty big thing to leave out, no? That's where all the crazy high salaries were! Also, there are still legacy places that more or less build software like it's 1999. I get the impression that embedded, automotive, and such still rely a lot on proprietary tools, finicky manual processes, low level languages (obviously), etc. But those are notorious for being annoying and not very well paid.
      - throw1235435 11mo ago
        I'm talking about what I perceive to be the median salary/conditions with big tech being only a part of that. My point is more that I remember back in that period good salaries could be had outside big tech too even in the boring standard companies that you state. I remember banks, insurance, etc paying very well for example compared to today for an SWE/tech worker - the good opportunities seemed more distributed. For example I've seen contract rates for some of the people we hire haven't really changed for 10 years for developers. Now at best they are on par with other professional white collar workers; and the competition seems fiercer (e.g. 5 interviews for a similar salary with leetcode games rather than experienced based interviews). Making software easier and more abstract has allowed less technical people into the profession, allowed easier outsourcing, meant more competition/interview prep to filter out people (even if the skills are not used in the job at all), more material for AI to train on, etc. To the parent comment's point I don't think it has boosted salaries and/or conditions on average for the SWE - in the long run (10 years +) it could be argued that economically the opposite has occurred.
  - christophilus 11mo ago
    25 years ago, I was slinging apps together super fast using VB6. It was awesome. It was a level of productivity few modern stacks can approach.
    - ipdashc 11mo ago
      I'm too young to have used VB in the workforce, but I did use it in school, and honestly off that alone I'm inclined to agree. I've seen VB namedropped frequently, but I feel like I've yet to see a proper discussion of why it seems like nothing can match its productivity and ease of use for simple desktop apps. Like, what even is the modern approach for a simple GUI program? Is Electron really the best we can do? MS Access is another retro classic of sorts that, despite having a lot of flaws, it seems like nothing has risen to fill its niche other than SaaS webapps like airtable.
      - simonw 11mo ago
        You can add Macromedia Flash to that list - nothing has really replaced it, and as a result the world no longer has an approachable tool for building interactive animations.
      - whateverboat 11mo ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnaGZHe8wws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnaGZHe8wws This is a nice video on why Electron is the best you might be able to do.
        ipdashc 11mo ago
        Thanks for the link - this is a cool video. Though it seems like it's mostly focusing on the performance/"bloat" side of things. I do agree that's an annoying aspect of Electron, and I do think his justifications for it are totally fair, but I was more so thinking about ease of use, especially for nontechnical people / beginners. My memory of it is very fuzzy, but I recall VB being literally drag-and-drop, and yet still being able to make... well, acceptable UIs. I was able to figure it out just fine in middle school. In comparison, here's Electron's getting started page: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/ https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/ The "quick start" is two different languages across three different files. The amount of technologies and buzzwords flying around is crazy, HTML, JS, CSS, Electron, Node, DOM, Chromium, random `charset` and `http-equiv` boilerplate... I have to imagine it'd be rather demoralizing as a beginner. I think there's a large group of "nontechnical" users out there (usually derided by us tech bros as "Excel programmers" or such) that can perfectly understand the actual logic of programming, but are put off by the amount of buzzwords and moving parts involved, and I don't blame them at all. (And sure, don't want to go in too hard on the nostalgia. 2000s software was full of buzzwords and insane syntax too, we've improved a lot. But it had some upsides.) It just feels like we lost the plot at some point when we're all using GUI-based computers, but there's no simple, singular, default path to making a desktop GUI app anymore on... any, I think, of the popular desktop OSes?
fshacf 11mo ago
[flagged]
aussieguy1234 11mo ago
This makes sense. Imagine PHP or NodeJS without a framework, or front end development without React. Your projects would take much longer to build. The time saved with the open source frameworks and libraries is more than what an AI agent can save you.

by simonw 11mo ago

We've been giving our work away to each other for free as open source to help improve each other's productivity for 30+ years now and that's only made our profession more valuable.

websiteapi 11mo ago

I see little proof open source has resulted in higher wages and not the fact that everything is being digitized and the subsequent demand for such people to assist in such.

simonw 11mo ago
I'm not sure how I can prove it, but ~25 years ago building software without open source sucked. You had to build everything from scratch! It took months to get even the most basic things up and running. I think open source is the single most important productivity boost to our industry that's ever existed. Automated testing is a close second. Google, Facebook, many others would not have existed without open source to build on. And those giants and others like them that were enabled by open source employed a TON of people, at competitive rates that greatly increased our salaries.
- websiteapi 11mo ago
  even if that's true it's clear enough AI will reduce the demand for swe
  - simonw 11mo ago
    I don't think that's certain. I'm hoping for a Jevons paradox situation where AI drives down the cost of producing software to the point that companies that previously weren't in the market for custom software start hiring software engineers. I think we could see demand go up.
- throw1235435 11mo ago
  Indeed it did; I remember those times. All else being equal I still think SWE salaries on average would of been higher if we kept it like that given basic economics - there would of been a lot less people capable of doing it but the high ROI automation opportunities would of still been there. The fact that "it sucked" usually creates more scarcity on the supply side; which all being equal means higher wages and in our capitalist society - status. Other professions that are older as to the parent comment already know this and don't see SWE as very "street smart" disrupting themselves. I've seen articles recently like "at least we aren't in coding" from law, accounting, etc an an anecdote to this. With AI at least locally I'm seeing the opposite now - less hiring, less wage pressure and in social circles a lot less status when I mention I'm a SWE (almost sympathy for my lot vs respect only 5 years ago). While I don't care for the status aspect, although I do care for my ability to earn money, some do. At least locally inflation adjusted in my city SWE wages bought more and were higher in general compared to others in the 90's-2000's than on wards (ex big tech). Partly because this difficulty and low level knowledge meant only very skilled people could participate.
  - ipdashc 11mo ago
    > ex big tech I mean, this seems like a pretty big thing to leave out, no? That's where all the crazy high salaries were! Also, there are still legacy places that more or less build software like it's 1999. I get the impression that embedded, automotive, and such still rely a lot on proprietary tools, finicky manual processes, low level languages (obviously), etc. But those are notorious for being annoying and not very well paid.
    - throw1235435 11mo ago
      I'm talking about what I perceive to be the median salary/conditions with big tech being only a part of that. My point is more that I remember back in that period good salaries could be had outside big tech too even in the boring standard companies that you state. I remember banks, insurance, etc paying very well for example compared to today for an SWE/tech worker - the good opportunities seemed more distributed. For example I've seen contract rates for some of the people we hire haven't really changed for 10 years for developers. Now at best they are on par with other professional white collar workers; and the competition seems fiercer (e.g. 5 interviews for a similar salary with leetcode games rather than experienced based interviews). Making software easier and more abstract has allowed less technical people into the profession, allowed easier outsourcing, meant more competition/interview prep to filter out people (even if the skills are not used in the job at all), more material for AI to train on, etc. To the parent comment's point I don't think it has boosted salaries and/or conditions on average for the SWE - in the long run (10 years +) it could be argued that economically the opposite has occurred.
- christophilus 11mo ago
  25 years ago, I was slinging apps together super fast using VB6. It was awesome. It was a level of productivity few modern stacks can approach.
  - ipdashc 11mo ago
    I'm too young to have used VB in the workforce, but I did use it in school, and honestly off that alone I'm inclined to agree. I've seen VB namedropped frequently, but I feel like I've yet to see a proper discussion of why it seems like nothing can match its productivity and ease of use for simple desktop apps. Like, what even is the modern approach for a simple GUI program? Is Electron really the best we can do? MS Access is another retro classic of sorts that, despite having a lot of flaws, it seems like nothing has risen to fill its niche other than SaaS webapps like airtable.
    - simonw 11mo ago
      You can add Macromedia Flash to that list - nothing has really replaced it, and as a result the world no longer has an approachable tool for building interactive animations.
    - whateverboat 11mo ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnaGZHe8wws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnaGZHe8wws This is a nice video on why Electron is the best you might be able to do.
      - ipdashc 11mo ago
        Thanks for the link - this is a cool video. Though it seems like it's mostly focusing on the performance/"bloat" side of things. I do agree that's an annoying aspect of Electron, and I do think his justifications for it are totally fair, but I was more so thinking about ease of use, especially for nontechnical people / beginners. My memory of it is very fuzzy, but I recall VB being literally drag-and-drop, and yet still being able to make... well, acceptable UIs. I was able to figure it out just fine in middle school. In comparison, here's Electron's getting started page: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/ https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/ The "quick start" is two different languages across three different files. The amount of technologies and buzzwords flying around is crazy, HTML, JS, CSS, Electron, Node, DOM, Chromium, random `charset` and `http-equiv` boilerplate... I have to imagine it'd be rather demoralizing as a beginner. I think there's a large group of "nontechnical" users out there (usually derided by us tech bros as "Excel programmers" or such) that can perfectly understand the actual logic of programming, but are put off by the amount of buzzwords and moving parts involved, and I don't blame them at all. (And sure, don't want to go in too hard on the nostalgia. 2000s software was full of buzzwords and insane syntax too, we've improved a lot. But it had some upsides.) It just feels like we lost the plot at some point when we're all using GUI-based computers, but there's no simple, singular, default path to making a desktop GUI app anymore on... any, I think, of the popular desktop OSes?

fshacf 11mo ago

[flagged]

aussieguy1234 11mo ago

This makes sense. Imagine PHP or NodeJS without a framework, or front end development without React. Your projects would take much longer to build. The time saved with the open source frameworks and libraries is more than what an AI agent can save you.