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We do have programs that write programs. Who's using them? I like your optimism, but the average guy with an MBA definitely can't throw a MVP together, especia

by imsky 13y ago

We do have programs that write programs. Who's using them? I like your optimism, but the average guy with an MBA definitely can't throw a MVP together, especially not in 2013 when the low hanging fruit have been steadily picked off. The bar is continuously being raised, and it'll be cheaper for the MBA to hire a developer to throw that MVP together, using highly complex and abstract components. If I'm getting the second half of your reply right, you're saying it's the availability of high-quality low-complexity zero-cost solutions to mundane problems that's going to put software developers out of a job. But that's exactly what I address in my post - these things were going to be automated anyway. And don't be disappointed by a user base attracted to glossy boxes - some of them will get curious eventually.

timr 13y ago
"We do have programs that write programs. Who's using them?" If you count things like Weebly, the answer is: a "whole bunch of people", heading rapidly toward "everyone". Not that long ago, every Weebly customer would have meant a programming job for someone. That kind of work is gone. Then take a close look at AWS, Heroku, Rackspace...those were all systems engineering jobs. Startups don't have to hire people to do that now. What used to be thousands of jobs is now maybe a tenth of that. "the average guy with an MBA definitely can't throw a MVP together" You're wrong. It happens all the time. It happens so often that's a cliche. You can't go to a meetup in the valley without being assaulted by ten brohans looking for "feedback" on their "MVP". The important thing to realize is that the need for software engineers doesn't scale with the maximum complexity of software projects; it scales as a function of the average complexity: think of a bell curve, where the X-axis is "complexity", and "need for engineers" is the area under the curve to one side of some vertical line. We keep moving that line further and further toward greater complexity. So far, the distribution has shifted to keep up, but there's no guarantee that will keep happening. Are we going to need people to write complex, novel software in 2050? Absolutely. Will we need more people than we need to write complex, novel software today? That's not a question with a predictable answer. It might well turn out that the "average" programmer (say, the ones who know how to use Rails and jQuery and are fond of complaining about interview questions involving algorithms) is a doomed creature.
- imsky 13y ago
  A website is not a program, let's be fair. It's at most a minimum amount of logic wrapped around content. Automating it is easy, and it has long ago lost its prestige. Re MBA guys - maybe we have a different understanding of MVP here. I don't mean PowerPoint-ware - I mean version 0.1 of a product solving real problems. MBAs that are working on something more complex than yet another social network will immediately look for an engineer. I'm not missing the average/maximum-complexity point at all, but I have a different view on it than you do. The average complexity won't stay constant, it'll keep increasing, and the average programmer will have to adapt. Will that mean a reduction in demand? I doubt it - we've yet to see the full extent of how software can be used. On the flip side, I constantly see clients looking for someone to fix or alter their "automated" installations - the average programmer will surely be in enough demand from these cases alone.
  - lightcatcher 13y ago
    >A website is not a program, let's be fair. It's at most a minimum amount of logic wrapped around content. Automating it is easy, and it has long ago lost its prestige. Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website. Now you're demoting producing a website to something that doesn't even require programmers, saying it's been automated for several years. I think this proves exactly the point of the GP. Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills. Examples of succesful companies with not difficult to program MVPs: AirBnB, Instagram, Twitter, Groupon. I believe many MBAs could build something like these given some time. If we want to broaden the category from MBAs to just STEM students, I know very few STEM students at my college (which is ~97% STEM majors) who couldn't build more than a MVP for one of these sites given 2-3 months.
  - imsky 13y ago
    @lightcatcher: >Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website. It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - HTML and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - that programmers entered the picture. > Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills. Good point, but are they doing it? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Airbnb all had technical founders. The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on. An MBA aware of this complexity deserves all the success he or she can get.

by imsky 13y ago

timr 13y ago

"We do have programs that write programs. Who's using them?" If you count things like Weebly, the answer is: a "whole bunch of people", heading rapidly toward "everyone". Not that long ago, every Weebly customer would have meant a programming job for someone. That kind of work is gone. Then take a close look at AWS, Heroku, Rackspace...those were all systems engineering jobs. Startups don't have to hire people to do that now. What used to be thousands of jobs is now maybe a tenth of that. "the average guy with an MBA definitely can't throw a MVP together" You're wrong. It happens all the time. It happens so often that's a cliche. You can't go to a meetup in the valley without being assaulted by ten brohans looking for "feedback" on their "MVP". The important thing to realize is that the need for software engineers doesn't scale with the maximum complexity of software projects; it scales as a function of the average complexity: think of a bell curve, where the X-axis is "complexity", and "need for engineers" is the area under the curve to one side of some vertical line. We keep moving that line further and further toward greater complexity. So far, the distribution has shifted to keep up, but there's no guarantee that will keep happening. Are we going to need people to write complex, novel software in 2050? Absolutely. Will we need more people than we need to write complex, novel software today? That's not a question with a predictable answer. It might well turn out that the "average" programmer (say, the ones who know how to use Rails and jQuery and are fond of complaining about interview questions involving algorithms) is a doomed creature.

imsky 13y ago
A website is not a program, let's be fair. It's at most a minimum amount of logic wrapped around content. Automating it is easy, and it has long ago lost its prestige. Re MBA guys - maybe we have a different understanding of MVP here. I don't mean PowerPoint-ware - I mean version 0.1 of a product solving real problems. MBAs that are working on something more complex than yet another social network will immediately look for an engineer. I'm not missing the average/maximum-complexity point at all, but I have a different view on it than you do. The average complexity won't stay constant, it'll keep increasing, and the average programmer will have to adapt. Will that mean a reduction in demand? I doubt it - we've yet to see the full extent of how software can be used. On the flip side, I constantly see clients looking for someone to fix or alter their "automated" installations - the average programmer will surely be in enough demand from these cases alone.
- lightcatcher 13y ago
  >A website is not a program, let's be fair. It's at most a minimum amount of logic wrapped around content. Automating it is easy, and it has long ago lost its prestige. Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website. Now you're demoting producing a website to something that doesn't even require programmers, saying it's been automated for several years. I think this proves exactly the point of the GP. Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills. Examples of succesful companies with not difficult to program MVPs: AirBnB, Instagram, Twitter, Groupon. I believe many MBAs could build something like these given some time. If we want to broaden the category from MBAs to just STEM students, I know very few STEM students at my college (which is ~97% STEM majors) who couldn't build more than a MVP for one of these sites given 2-3 months.
- imsky 13y ago
  @lightcatcher: >Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website. It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - HTML and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - that programmers entered the picture. > Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills. Good point, but are they doing it? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Airbnb all had technical founders. The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on. An MBA aware of this complexity deserves all the success he or she can get.