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Ask HN: How do we make more money?
Do you remember back in the day when programmer salary was at an all time high? People could be making above $80,000 a year easily coding in FORTRAN or COBOL, or if you knew anything about computers, you could get a job?
What ever happened to this? It makes sense that as time goes on, computer literacy increases, and the demand for skilled programmers decreases. This is sadly inevitable. But what we as programmers, the skill in an age where there is not much of it, need to rise again.
We need to either invent a new wave of computing that makes javascript, PHP, web-design, Java, SQL, C++, and Indians seem obsolete. I am not talking about making something easier that out performs, I am talking about something that is harder and much more difficult to learn. The functional paradigm, for example, would be a great way to do this. Just strangle all of the conventional tutorials out of a language and make it the de facto programming language. We just need to figure out how we would do something like this: a full scale deployment to make a language like this #1.
If this seems bleakly infeasible, then where else can we go where the market is about to explode? Where just for knowing something a little bit ahead of time, you can make a decent salary? What is going to be the next silicon valley?
- jstanley 13y agoThis sounds like a cynical effort to increase your pay at others' expense. How do you make more money? Provide more value.
- kohanz 13y ago"We need to either invent a new wave of computing that makes javascript, PHP, web-design, Java, SQL, C++, and Indians seem obsolete." Huh?! I can't downvote yet, but unless I'm misunderstanding the above, your line of thinking is reprehensible.
- timajwilliams 13y agoI was hoping that was an acronym i've not heard yet, but I fear it is not.
- anywherenotes 13y agoAgreed, and I cannot down-vote as well, so I'll just up-vote you.
- mcintyre1994 13y agoI'm completely lost. You want to create a new programming language, artificially somehow make it the only language people want to employ people for anything, while somehow making sure there's no tutorials, no Indians (including presumably those who may be on HN?) can learn it and on top of all that doesn't actually out-perform or provide any advantage to the client - it's just harder to learn and use. What's the benefit to anybody other than you, and why do you think anybody would want to tell you how to achieve that, making the assumption that it's even possible?
- Tichy 13y agoWhy don't you just become a Java Enterprise Developer? That is essentially the new Cobol. Note that if you look who created what language and framework, you can see exactly what you describe: technologies like J2EE were created by companies who want to make money by selling the time of consultants. Therefore they have to be so complex that you can not handle them without consultants. Once you are entangled in a Weblogic+J2EE+Oracle system, there is no way out and you need scores of consultants. In contrast frameworks like Rails were created to make the lives of their creators easier. It shows.
- shire 13y agoThe real is answer is learn Java. Perhaps Android or Java EE