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I think the argument is that the skill level and number of people needed for most development jobs will be lowered with platforms and tools that make it easy fo

by mkr-hn 13y ago

I think the argument is that the skill level and number of people needed for most development jobs will be lowered with platforms and tools that make it easy for a minimally trained user to do it. Someone still has to make the tools and platforms, but implementing them won't take as many people. Think about how many wildly popular websites run with a handful of people. How long will it be before you don't even need more than a few people in a datacenter? Robots will eventually be able to change out dead drives on a RAID array and inspect the backup generator as well as a technician. People saying things like "everyone should be a developer" are coding the same people they're encouraging out of a potential career path. Which is fine, but the contradiction gets annoying.

nohuck13 13y ago
I think that's a key question, but I've never been a fan of the notion that robots (or efficient frameworks) are going to put us all out of jobs. If you look at what we've actually seen in the last 20 years, efficient frameworks enable entrepreneurship and wealth creation on a scale that wasn't possible in the past. Sure, there are fewer people employed doing nitty gritty stuff, but the size of the economic pie is far bigger than it once was, largely because of labor-saving technology and frameworks. If you want to argue that better frameworks will drive down wages, the argument to make is that better frameworks will reduce development time without facilitating wealth-creation. EDIT: maybe this will happen, I can't predict the future. Rereading your post, I guess this is more or less what you were saying. But then the question is, what's going to change to reduce growth?
- ori_b 13y ago
  The argument is that the pie is already unevenly distributed. In the future, it will be even more unevenly distributed, and the skewing of the distribution will outpace the growth of the pie.
  - peterjancelis 13y ago
    No. Wealth will be more volatile. The smart will get richer.
    - ori_b 13y ago
      That doesn't contradict what I said. It may be concentrated among the smart, but it will still be concentrated.
      - mkr-hn 13y ago
        More importantly, the people at the top need the people lower on the ladder to pay their salary, either through companies that advertise or by paying directly. There may be an implosion at the top if they automate too many jobs away before magic market forces create replacements.
rjsw 13y ago
You had toolmakers in the auto industry too.
mbesto 13y ago
People saying things like "everyone should be a developer" In a larger sense these people are simply saying "we need more skilled labor" Think about how many wildly popular websites run with a handful of people. And yet Google, Amazon, Groupon, etc can't always get sales or support done correctly without people. Very few companies are massive commercial successes without a large amounts of people. I can only think of a few off the top of my head, and they aren't the norm.
SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
>Think about how many wildly popular websites run with a handful of people. You're talking about the "Silver Bullet," [1] whether you mean to or not. There have been hundreds of attempts to reduce the complexity of development, starting in the '50s and continuing pretty much continually until today. And just as Fred Brooks describes in the book I linked, that kind of productivity increase doesn't happen in software. And won't happen in software. You do get ways of better managing complexity. Look at object-oriented programming, for example. That's a recent development, right? Sure, as long as you're old enough to consider the 1970s to be "recent." [2] Not me, thanks. ;) The best you do get is a single problem being solved in a somewhat general manner. The CMS gives us a generic web site/blog. Square and others give us easy commerce integration. And so on: Specific common problems solved really well. Yes, these are things that previously took many man-hours of time to create one-off versions of, but what happens is that people want more and more complex (and differentiated!) functionality in their web sites or apps. And that differentiation is by definition not able to be packaged in bulk. As soon as it gets interesting, I don't care how easy you've made the "language" that specifies it, you still need a programmer to implement it. Or someone who can think like one. And most people not only don't think like programmers, they firmly believe they can't think like programmers, and so refuse to even try to learn how. Or at the very least they have an image that programming is dull or dry or boring. There are still huge barriers to people entering programming en masse. And even if they did, it would be the lowest complexity jobs that would be harder to get -- the ones where the barrier to entry is really low. I work tasks a few tiers of complexity above those jobs; I'm not worried about being replaced by a new wave of college graduates any time soon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#Hi...
dclowd9901 13y ago
And what's different is that auto workers weren't also building and designing the factories they worked in. Certainly there's something to be said for being the one who can design and build a tool vs being the one who can simply use it.

by mkr-hn 13y ago

nohuck13 13y ago

I think that's a key question, but I've never been a fan of the notion that robots (or efficient frameworks) are going to put us all out of jobs. If you look at what we've actually seen in the last 20 years, efficient frameworks enable entrepreneurship and wealth creation on a scale that wasn't possible in the past. Sure, there are fewer people employed doing nitty gritty stuff, but the size of the economic pie is far bigger than it once was, largely because of labor-saving technology and frameworks. If you want to argue that better frameworks will drive down wages, the argument to make is that better frameworks will reduce development time without facilitating wealth-creation. EDIT: maybe this will happen, I can't predict the future. Rereading your post, I guess this is more or less what you were saying. But then the question is, what's going to change to reduce growth?

ori_b 13y ago
The argument is that the pie is already unevenly distributed. In the future, it will be even more unevenly distributed, and the skewing of the distribution will outpace the growth of the pie.
- peterjancelis 13y ago
  No. Wealth will be more volatile. The smart will get richer.
  - ori_b 13y ago
    That doesn't contradict what I said. It may be concentrated among the smart, but it will still be concentrated.
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      More importantly, the people at the top need the people lower on the ladder to pay their salary, either through companies that advertise or by paying directly. There may be an implosion at the top if they automate too many jobs away before magic market forces create replacements.

rjsw 13y ago

You had toolmakers in the auto industry too.

mbesto 13y ago

People saying things like "everyone should be a developer" In a larger sense these people are simply saying "we need more skilled labor" Think about how many wildly popular websites run with a handful of people. And yet Google, Amazon, Groupon, etc can't always get sales or support done correctly without people. Very few companies are massive commercial successes without a large amounts of people. I can only think of a few off the top of my head, and they aren't the norm.

SomeCallMeTim 13y ago

>Think about how many wildly popular websites run with a handful of people. You're talking about the "Silver Bullet," [1] whether you mean to or not. There have been hundreds of attempts to reduce the complexity of development, starting in the '50s and continuing pretty much continually until today. And just as Fred Brooks describes in the book I linked, that kind of productivity increase doesn't happen in software. And won't happen in software. You do get ways of better managing complexity. Look at object-oriented programming, for example. That's a recent development, right? Sure, as long as you're old enough to consider the 1970s to be "recent." [2] Not me, thanks. ;) The best you do get is a single problem being solved in a somewhat general manner. The CMS gives us a generic web site/blog. Square and others give us easy commerce integration. And so on: Specific common problems solved really well. Yes, these are things that previously took many man-hours of time to create one-off versions of, but what happens is that people want more and more complex (and differentiated!) functionality in their web sites or apps. And that differentiation is by definition not able to be packaged in bulk. As soon as it gets interesting, I don't care how easy you've made the "language" that specifies it, you still need a programmer to implement it. Or someone who can think like one. And most people not only don't think like programmers, they firmly believe they can't think like programmers, and so refuse to even try to learn how. Or at the very least they have an image that programming is dull or dry or boring. There are still huge barriers to people entering programming en masse. And even if they did, it would be the lowest complexity jobs that would be harder to get -- the ones where the barrier to entry is really low. I work tasks a few tiers of complexity above those jobs; I'm not worried about being replaced by a new wave of college graduates any time soon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#Hi...

dclowd9901 13y ago

And what's different is that auto workers weren't also building and designing the factories they worked in. Certainly there's something to be said for being the one who can design and build a tool vs being the one who can simply use it.