18 ms·

The End of Coding

89 points by alexnorth 13y ago

danso 13y ago
Call me skeptical. Virtually everyone who has spent more than a few years programming can attest that it has, at the very least, opened a new dimension of logical thinking and problem-solving that is not easily found in other fields. I think the challenge of creating an interface to this kind of thinking that is friendly to non-coders is difficult enough...but the idea that once these tools are made, they'll grok what to do? Hmmm...We're much closer to a future where machine readers can read all manner of text out loud, but does that mean there's little use for teaching literacy? edit: Here's an example - I recently got done teaching a data basics class, and inevitably, my students ran into the problem of data typing in Excel...you type in something like "9/14" into a field, and it treats it like a date, and moreover, displays it as "Sep-14". But when you try to concatenate the field, or perform some other kind of operation on it that is not date-related, Excel treats it as an integer (number of days since 1904, or something like that). So Microsoft has arguably done something user-friendly here...virtually anyone who types in '9/14' probably means September 14, 2013. However, this isn't always the case, and if it isn't, you have to know how to format columns in Excel as text. Moreover, the operations upon date types are not at all intuitive. If you've done a minimal level of programming, you get the idea of data types, including dates and strings. Let's pretend Microsoft comes up with a way to perfectly guess what you mean when you've typed in a value...is it possible this will eliminate the need for the average user to have an understanding of data types in order to do non-trivial work?
- stelonix 13y ago
  There are many ways to mitigate these issues. The one I like to believe will be the most used would be a entire new way of using computers. Just like Google uses complex algorithms in order to try to give you better search results, I see no reason why Excel can't try to "learn" your usage. I'm quite saddened that it's 2013 and few applications try to learn more about the user's usage patterns.
  - ben336 13y ago
    Overaggressive learning algorithms can in some cases be more annoying than well thought out defaults. Especially since they won't be consistent (at least at first). Its not an easy thing to do right. For things like spreadsheet formatting, you want to have consistent behavior that you can rely on.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    I guess the difference is that what google does is already somewhat fuzzy, when you search for something you're not necessarily even sure what you want the search engine to return. We also don't expect the results to necessarily be perfect which is why the search engine returns more than one result. On the other hand when you're trying to do some specific task you already know in most cases exactly what you want to happen, so if it does something else then that is very frustrating.
    - stelonix 13y ago
      Well, that's the trade off I'm hoping people are willing to make. Just like we did it for search back when Google was new, for example: we had to learn how to use Google compared to whichever search engine we were using before. It's just like trying to learn a new application. I do believe unless the whole computing system/environment works in this new paradigm, the effort wouldn't have as much impact as I'm picturing in my mind.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        Google is good for searching immensely vast troves of information simply because there is no other way you could really do it. A categorical index of the entire internet would be fairly un-feasible. OTOH when we have smaller and more focused collections of information such as programming documentation or catalogues of similar products we tend to find it easier to navigate with categorical listings or simpler search algorithms.
    - takluyver 13y ago
      I've heard this idea encapsulated in a neat phrase: 'Control interfaces should not be intelligent'. I think I first read that after Wolfram Alpha was launched.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  The Excel rule is simple: if you want an expression then start it with '='.
jiggy2011 13y ago
The question that these sorts of articles always raise is ultimately , should we treat computation as something like mechanical expertise which is important but can be easily outsourced or is it more like literacy which is critical to just about every profession and is often used as a proxy for intelligence? It strikes me that the real difficulty is drawing a line between which tasks should be left to technical professionals and which should be within reach of the layman? This is much easier to define in the case of mechanical devices which tend to be fairly fixed function rather than computers which are applicable in an almost infinite number of tasks. For example , you wouldn't expect a car driver to be able to modify their own vehicle, but you would expect a lay computer user to be able to do tasks such as changing their wallpaper or installing software on their computer. I wonder if this is partly what is driving the popularity of computer hardware with artificially imposed constraints? Is it simply easier to understand when you use separate devices for reading books and playing games? It also begs the question over whether simply changing the means with which to do something changes the nature of the task. For example is somebody designing a complex logical system not "programming" because they are doing it inside of a spreadsheet program instead of an IDE?
- alexnorth 13y ago
  That's a good question. I don't have a personal answer yet, though I do like your mechanic example. But to your last point: I chose the word "coding" so as to refer specifically to the linear textual formal representation we use today. People will keep designing complex logical systems - indeed, I hope more people will become more capable of doing so, and I think better tools will help.
static_typed 13y ago
As the site now says "Error establishing a database connection " maybe the coding was ended a little too early?
- pragmar 13y ago
  Cached - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qjCebmDnUkcJ:alexn.id.au/2013/10/30/the-end-of-coding/+&cd=2&hl=en http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qjCebmD...
tfb 13y ago
I've been working on http://loggur.com http://loggur.com for a (very) long time now to address exactly what the author describes. (Note: The home page is very outdated and vague; I'm planning on redoing it upon release; see my other comments about the details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5811801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5811801) And I should point out that coding will never fully become unnecessary. Of course many of the repetitive parts of coding can be automated, but with all kinds of new ideas and unknown technologies that the future has in store for us, custom code will almost certainly always be required.
- riskable 13y ago
  Your site looks pretty good to me (and I just viewed it on my phone). Unless by "outdated" you mean, "it doesn't contain the most up-to-date information about our product(s)." In that case, well, I look forward to seeing it! Already added to my Google Calendar. BTW: I know you're probably trying to collect emails of interested parties with your "get notified" form but you may wish to consider a direct "Add to Google Calendar" link or button. Here's an example of how to create such a link: http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=Loggur%20Launch&dates=20131109/undefined&details=Loggur.com%20launch%20date&location=loggur.com&trp=false&sprop=loggur.com&sprop=name:http%3A%2F%2Floggur.com http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=Lo... If HN supported proper linking it wouldn't look so ugly :)
  - tfb 13y ago
    Thanks! 8) By "outdated", I was referring to the product description(s). Nice idea for the Google Calendar! Is that a fairly common thing? I can't recall seeing it anywhere else, but it could just be the bubble I'm in.
jtheory 13y ago
I feel like I've been reading this article every year, with some variation but the same yet-unrealized potential every time. I'm not an expert in "human" coding or AI, but I get the same vibe from both of them -- until you try it yourself, it seems pretty reasonable that someone will solve this problem fairly soon. And it has seemed that way for many years now. Simple CRUD apps can already be built with simple, friendly interfaces. The simple apps will continue to get easier for non-programmers to assemble without "coding". But real life requirements get comlicated soon -- your simple CRUD app now needs to auto-charge customers every time they foo 100 bars, unless it's been less than a month (in which case you charge a prorated total at month end), and early subscribers are grandfathered in to a simple fixed monthly charge. How will you click-and-drag that? Or explain it clearly in natural language, without multiple possible interpretations? People make complicated stuff in Excel spreadsheets, and while it starts off as fairly vanilla, it quickly becomes something as complicated (if not more so) than writing a standard computer program in code. Natural language serves a purpose -- mostly around navigating complicated social situations, including expressing general desires to others (who have motivations of their own, and will interpret according to their own internal rules). It's fuzzy and generally non-specific because that's how we are. Why do we imagine our normal ways of interacting with each other can be applied to instructing a process to execute complex & strict logic? I'm pretty sure we can make progress -- clean up the leakiest abstractions from software to APIs to hardware... -- and sort out the best way to build coding languages so they are as intuitive as possible for humans -- but I don't think "code" generally is going to disappear anytime soon.
- 300bps 13y ago
  You were able to read the website? All I see is: Error establishing a database connection Maybe the OP should hire a coder to fix his site?
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    Do as everyone does; keep reloading; you'll catch it :) Besides it being the reason the db is not responding.
  - 13y ago
fka 13y ago
ironic. :)
mattdmrs 13y ago
> If you’re a programmer and this offends you, consider how much more value you could create if you didn’t spend half your time as a glorified PSD->HTML translator. As the author states, the idea of abstracting away the complexity of creating user interfaces isn't new, but I think it's wrong to think we could one day create tools that lets you do that without having to write code and still keep all the flexibility of going sufficiently low-level. An application platform usually gives you low-level building blocks (e.g. Core Animation) and higher-level ones (e.g. UIControl and family). You can construct visual tools to manipulate the latter, but you can't do the same with the former, since they're much more than just position and parameters. Reducing this difference in complexity by blaming it on the tools is misguided IMHO. There an inherent complexity in coding that isn't its weakness but rather it's advantage. You can't abstract away coding just like you can't abstract away human language or writing. Could you substitute an essay with a very detailed painting?
- riskable 13y ago
  I was just about to write something like this. Just because you've got a pretty GUI that grandma could use to assemble a sophisticated "app" doesn't mean you have to take away the low-level functionality. What's wrong with "right-click -> open component in editor"? I'd also like to add that a lot of people think "coding" means "typing" and their idea of the ultimate abstraction involves a lot of drag & drop. That would be just fine for starting the development of an app but would get really annoying really fast as you start to add more features and functionality. At the very least give us the option to perform every single task with the keyboard in an efficient manner.
- gte910h 13y ago
  It vaguely feels like he's talking about http://www.ni.com/labview/ http://www.ni.com/labview/ which is just graphical programming (and is far less able to meet the level of specifications most tasks truly have than a real programming language, IMO).
wslh 13y ago
In the short term it's more about automation/reduction of work than end of coding. For example, in the past I paid designers hundreds or few thousands for creating a new version of my web page, now I use Twitter Bootstrap or a theme and pay a few hundreds for customization. Now, million of software developers are working on the same problems at the same time, they are asking the same question and following the same Q&A path in sites like SO. There is a lot of space for automation. Regarding new tools for ending coding, nobody came up with a solution yet and there are a lot of smart people who are/were thinking about it. Surely it will be a breakthrough but it will work for solving domain specific problems. It's impossible to solve it for the "general coding problem".
arethuza 13y ago
I can remember seeing adverts for "The Last One" in the early 1980s while I was still at school - this was a menu based BASIC application builder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_%28software%29
- walshemj 13y ago
  Interesting before I saw you post I made a similar comment I saw this around the time I started work!!
Murk 13y ago
I said a similar sort of thing to someone just last week. He thought I was nuts. Time will tell. The end of the world is nigh. etc.
walshemj 13y ago
yeah right I can recall a hyped product called "the last one" which was supposed to do this and that was for the PET and Apple II Era in the 70's
jackmaney 13y ago
Ah yes, the end of coding is inevitable, the PC is dead, and 2013 will surely become the year of the Linux desktop.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  > 2013 will surely become the year of the Linux desktop There's still a non-zero chance that this one come true. It does not fit well within the others.
  - rejschaap 13y ago
    > There's still a non-zero chance that this one come true. Best joke of the year.
coldcode 13y ago
As the author of Trapeze (spreadsheet like application from way back then) is was nice to be mentioned. People have been trying to make coding go away even before I started coding and so far it's still moving more in the opposite direction.
lispylol 13y ago
I agree. I think we will continue to abstract our communication with machines until the act of having to type code into a computer is a task that is largely only performed by a small subset of society (programmers). But even when the day of having to do very minimal physical coding to direct computers arrives, I think there are still many benefits for the majority of people to learning this crude and dated form of coding. Perhaps not necessarily to become programmers, but to at least have some understanding of the guts of machines that power society. In fact, I think the further removed we get from the physical code in directing machines, the stronger the imperative we have to expect future generations to understand not just what something is, but how and why it works.
- jdiez17 13y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. I was talking to my professors the other day about this; I think writing code will have be similar to capturing photographs: before, only professionals could take a picture: they had to operate this complicated machine, and then they had to develop the film in a dark room by impregnating them with chemicals. Nowadays, most of the population has an immensely capable camera in their pocket. I foresee that something similar will happen with programming. Most people will be able to command their computer and teach them to do new things, without having to know the first thing about how they actually work. There will still be people that fiddle with data structures and pathfinding algorithms, but they will be doing it for research purposes or because they need a highly specialised application.
  - lispylol 13y ago
    Yeah, I think photography is a good analogy for capturing (no pun intended) this trend. And maybe I'm just being overly sentimental, but I feel like because it's so easy to do things with our devices now without knowing how they work, that they're often under-appreciated. For example, there's this popular interview that Louis C.K did on Conan, where he said "Everything's awesome, and nobody's happy". Sure, most of that frustration can be attributed to the human condition, but ignorance also plays a big role. If people knew (and I don't) how planes actually worked (at at basic level, of course), it's harder to get frustrated about spotty Wifi.
jcutrell 13y ago
To accomplish the complexity of issues I face on a daily basis in code, I would hate to build in a GUI. I can type faster than I can search for the right button in Photoshop. Ask anyone who lives in their terminal - it will increase (rather than decrease) your productivity and agility. This isn't because the gui isn't well made. I think a better prediction is, writing code and building constructs will be easier. Cognitive overhead will be reduced. That's the design problem - not coding.
Demiurge 13y ago
I don't think this is going to happen, even if someone invents direct mind-computer interface. Our thoughts are not precise enough. Everyone who has transcribed a mathematical equation realizes that context free grammar is just the most efficient way to express exactly what we want.
gshubert17 13y ago
Alex North writes: "For a long time, GUI builders were crap. GUI builders are still crap: they often provide a poor representation of what the rendered interface will look like, are not powerful enough for developers to achieve exactly what they want, and are too complicated and laden with programming concepts for non-programmers to use them." Beginning about 1995, Borland's Delphi (now CodeGear / Embarcadero) seemed to me to have a pretty nice IDE for making GUIs on Microsoft Windows. Any opinions on Delphi or information on anything similar for Linux or Mac?
- Zigurd 13y ago
  There is no GUI builder that enables building app-specific direct manipulation. GUI-builders really should not be called GUI builders unless you think a parade of dialog boxes is a GUI.
- narag 13y ago
  Try Lazarus: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ About "GUI builders were crap. GUI builders are still crap": that's just BS. Not usable by non-programmers? Of course. But that hand-wavy dismissal is terribly lazy. Identifying what's exactly wrong and specially how to improve is the difficult part.
Zigurd 13y ago
I was about to respond to his claims by pointing out that spreadsheets are a gateway drug for coding and that everyone who tries to do things without coding ends up coding. Code is remarkably universal. The article claims spreadsheets are an example of a post-coding tool, but they, and his other examples, really aren't. Notably, "visual programming" has been a failure. I expect the end of coding to be presaged by things that break the linear symbolic language model. There are no such successful things.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I agree that spreadsheets count as programming, since formulas are code. But spreadsheets also add a memory model (cell references) and a UI (rows and columns), and these three things are all smushed together, or rather overlap perfectly, while in general-purpose programming they are independent and there is no such overlap. That's perhaps what makes spreadsheets simpler and more accessible.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    Spreadsheets are accessible programming to people motivated enough to understand what happens when you have more than a simple column sum in a spreadsheet, which could be called "programming in constraints." and then that beautiful code-less, flow-less, condition-less paradise lasts only until you need a macro.
- thatthatis 13y ago
  Anybody who says spreadsheets aren't coding hasn't written a bank valuation model. Though I agree, they were my gateway drug to programming.
KiwiCoder 13y ago
Coding's demise is both inevitable (for certain types of coding) and improbable (for other types). The debate hinges on how you define coding. I wrote about this when Visual Studio LightSwitch promised "CODING OPTIONAL" (verbatim, from the installation splash screen): http://cvmountain.com/2011/10/programming-without-coding/ http://cvmountain.com/2011/10/programming-without-coding/ An excerpt from my 2011 post - The dream endures, but why? One reason could be a lack of trust. Successful software needs constant maintenance. As a software product becomes harder and more costly to maintain (as most do) the boss who doesn't quite trust his team will be tempted to look for alternatives that appear more trustworthy. This basic lack of trust becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as communication breaks down and the team and the boss begin to work in opposition. The boss is now a prime target for being sold the idea that software development can be very nearly automated. It’s not a logical process, it’s an emotional one. In other cases the boss simply lacks the necessary understanding. They might think that programming is actually an unskilled or semi-skilled profession, where the programmer simply memorises a quirky list of words and symbols and then types them in according to a specification written by someone in marketing. All this raises the question of what it means to program a computer.
websitescenes 13y ago
There are already tools like you describe and many people use them. The issue is that these tools create vanilla, cookie cutter solutions that rarely fit the situation precisely. If you want a truly original or custom work flow that will fit the situation precisely, then your going to have to code to some extent. Here is an example: artiste er is a program that bypasses the need for handwriting markup. Sure you made a template but it looks like every other shitty Aristeer site. Coding will always be an advantage for those that are willing. The rest can be ok mediocrity.
gte910h 13y ago
Programming is the new literacy. It isn't going away, it's 5 years out from being a mandatory high school or middle school topic.
- Dirlewanger 13y ago
  5 years? Mandatory?? You're being insanely optimistic.
  - bkurtz13 13y ago
    I would consider that pessimistic. If that becomes true, the tremendous job security I have now would start to evaporate.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Nah. People have been saying that since the 60s, and it will never happen. Honestly, I think it's a bad idea. Programming skills turn over too quickly. If people in my age bracket had learned computer programming in middle school or high school, they would have been dragged through one sort of BASIC or another and then promptly forgotten about it. Which is probably better than them remembering it and being frustrated that nothing would let them use those skills. If they were to learn something technical, I'd much rather it be a simple robotics class. A little bit of programming, a little bit of electronics, a little bit of Mech E, and a lot of problem-solving, self-teaching, and making of things that work. Those are skills that last, as does the attitude that they can figure things out if they want.
- yoloswag 13y ago
  I think you overestimate the intelligence of 99% of people.
delinka 13y ago
Every time I see a UI-to-code translator or converter[1], I find that it produces terribly crufty output- they tend to take that high-level design and regurgitate The Code that would produce "correct" results. Maybe the answer is applying compiler-type optimizations to the output. On the other hand, maybe the answer is learning logic ... nay, code. [1] The one currently on my mind is the web publisher part of Microsoft Access from about 2000. Certainly not today's state-of-the-art, but representative of the typical tool.
6d0debc071 13y ago
Can I see certain aspects of coding becoming automated? Certainly. And I can think of some visual ways of presenting code that are very attractive in the extra information they give to the programmer. But something like, 'give me the set of all things that....' (let ((set1 (remove-if #'(lambda (x) (not (things that....))) from-lst))) 'BODY) How'd you do that in Excel? Probably something like SUMIF - (I don't really use Excel much so I don't know if there's something that returns a list of things matching a predicate.) Yes, doubtless that can be expressed more concisely than the code. Heck you could wrap that up and just call it fetchset and have it go. (set1 (fetchset (things-that) from-lst)) But there you're putting more load on the person learning the arcana of certain macros or functions - and it's honestly not that much more concise in terms of headspace, you still have to think about sets for it to make any sense at all. It's not clear how that would translate into a visual interface of any significant power or how doing so would simplify the concepts that one would have to learn. You know? Will programming get more efficient? Count on it. Will we automate tasks that are just following a pattern? Yeah. But will we stop coding? Well, if you think about coding as being typing, then maybe we will. I don't think that visual interfaces are efficient enough to let you stick together all the concepts you need in a reasonable space of time without actually typing - but it's possible. But will we stop thinking computationally? (Which is the real essence of coding I feel.) I don't think so. It seems to me that you have to know what you want a computer to do, or you have to have the computer guess at it. And the problem with guessing at it, other than the computer being wrong, is that if you're not a precise thinker; if don't know fairly precisely what you want to do; then you can't even mean certain things. Assuming quicksort hasn't been invented yet, how do you tell the computer that you want quicksort if it's guessing, what cues does the computer take from a general expression that you want a faster kind of sort? Now whether that will reduce coding to mathematics I don't know. I'd tend to think not, if for no better reason than that programming includes a kind of coevolutionary mastery that can be a more fitting route for some people into thinking about things like transformations and sets and so on. I'm deeply indebted to programming for helping me think about maths in a way other than my teacher just reading black-box formula at the class.
xntrk 13y ago
Every time I see a article like this I think back to my frist programming class in high school. The teacher asked us a simple homework question. Describe all of the steps it takes to make a sandwich. This seems like a simple task. Get all the ingredients and put them together. This is simple to explain to human because they can make choices on their own and generally understand how a food is constructed. But when are are trying to teach a robot how to make a sandwich you have to exaplain every little detail because it doesn't understand that bread comes in a plastic bag or how to open it, or where the fridge is, or not make the sandwich on the floor. Everyone in the class got the question wrong because they were all missing details. I believe that code is going to be around for a very long time because it is currently the only way to truely express 'exactly' what you mean.
williamcotton 13y ago
Spreadsheets work better than code in some instances. Visual data-flow (boxes and noodles) in some instances. Graphing calculators in others. Hell, even Morphic and VB have their place! Each of these tools creates a 'function' in some way or another. The main problem I see is that it is too hard to make a function in a spreadsheet, combine it with a function made in a data-flow graph editor, and all tied together with a function made in a text coding language. We need to make the publishing and consumption of 'functions' easier. I've started the work on the underlying framework. Please stay tuned!
ilaksh 13y ago
I know that everyone will disagree, but for the most part, programmers shouldn't be writing code either. There are a lot of good tools out there. The problem is that programming by definition is writing code. And tools that don't involve code are for non-programmers. The problem is the definition of programming. And the fact that people are afraid they won't be considered a 'real' programmer if they don't write cryptic code. I believe that right around the time that programmers start to figure that out, general AIs will come out about 1.5 times as smart as the smartest human, and at that point ordinary human's childish perspectives and problems won't be very relevant.
- codygman 13y ago
  What are some of these good tools you are talking about that make it no longer necessary to write "cryptic" code?
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  This is so ethereal. What do you really mean by this? What is it that programmers have to figure out? That they have been bad boys and girls using cryptic code? ... Ok go make video editing package without any of ths "coding" nonsense and then explain it to us childish programmers. :) No but seriously I don't think there is a lot here ...
normloman 13y ago
Regular people have a hard enough time doing every day tasks on the computer with GUIs. If we can't make regular work easy, how the hell do you expect to make programming easy?
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  Regular people have a hard enough time doing every day tasks. Full stop.
consultant23522 13y ago
I feel like what companies mean when they say that children should learn to program is that they should learn problem solving and critical thinking skills. In my experience these things are saved for only the children who are tested and marked as "gifted" but average joe should also benefit greatly from a healthy dose of learning these skills.
thibauts 13y ago
We don't program the computer as much as we program ourselves. We may be able to build tools that reduce the burden but making a computer debug itself without either re-stating the expected outcomes and/or understanding the "intent" of the running code seems pretty much out of reach by definition.
protomyth 13y ago
We still have a lot of work to do in tooling to make things simpler. Take for example Xcode. Xcode is harder to use than the old Interface Builder / Project Manager combo. We continue to add complexity that works for experts, but is a pain to onboard people. It is amazing how many people got HyperCard, but would not be able to touch Xcode.
dasil003 13y ago
The tools will only improve, but the use of the tools will continue to be restricted to those who are currently coders until we solve AI. The end of coding can only be accomplished by true AI as most humans are not capable of expressing requirements precisely enough for a software program to be generated without a bunch of follow up questions. The primary value of a good software developer is to identify and ask these questions as soon as possible. Writing the code is relatively easy.
noir_lord 13y ago
I'm still waiting for the hard AI we where promised was 10 years away 40 years ago. These posts beside some hand waving never actually attack the meat of the issue, don't predict the demise of something unless you know what is going to kill it.
bhewes 13y ago
Please, this is like saying no new works of Poetry, Philosophy, Fiction, Drama, Religion will be written. Reminds me of Fukuyama's ridiculous "End of History" argument.
georgemcbay 13y ago
Eventually we will be obsoleted by the machines, but this will not happen soon and we'll be the second last to go (entertainers will be the last).
- svantana 13y ago
  But before that, we will have some pretty amazing tools that will make us feel like magicians (regrettably for all too short a time though)
lnanek2 13y ago
So far visual coding has just been useful for minting more CS degrees, not actually getting stuff done. Can't really see things going this guy's direction.
Mikeb85 13y ago
Coding is simply telling a computer what to do. Even to a certain degree, entering a term into Google's search engine is a type of coding. And maybe that will be the future, parsers and compilers that can turn plain language into computer instructions. We're not terribly far off with transpilers/compilers that turn Python and other high level languages into C or native code... Until a computer can program itself (which may never happen), there's going to be a person telling it what to do - and no matter whether it's a formula in a spreadsheet, a programming language, or something higher level, it'll still be code...
svachalek 13y ago
For decades we've done coding the only way we can given the hardware available. But nowadays program sizes are approaching the amount of information stored in human DNA, which is a blueprint for a self-fueled, self-healing, self-reproducing nanotech computing machine that puts any modern software to shame. I'm beginning to think we're doing it wrong.
lcedp 13y ago
Why nobody wonders that it is still required to know math to develop engineering construction. Or that it is required to know chemistry to create dish washing products. Why then so many people find it strange that to write a program you must.. program.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
This is hand waving month or something. Oh this just so cute but honestly when you are ready to be serious and deal with complex things and not GUI for "Grandma" then you will see this is little more than a vague performance of day dreaming. The only way for the to come to fruition some sort of strong AI, even then ... Show some non trivial examples, not this HTML GUI stuff.

89 points by alexnorth 13y ago

danso 13y ago

Call me skeptical. Virtually everyone who has spent more than a few years programming can attest that it has, at the very least, opened a new dimension of logical thinking and problem-solving that is not easily found in other fields. I think the challenge of creating an interface to this kind of thinking that is friendly to non-coders is difficult enough...but the idea that once these tools are made, they'll grok what to do? Hmmm...We're much closer to a future where machine readers can read all manner of text out loud, but does that mean there's little use for teaching literacy? edit: Here's an example - I recently got done teaching a data basics class, and inevitably, my students ran into the problem of data typing in Excel...you type in something like "9/14" into a field, and it treats it like a date, and moreover, displays it as "Sep-14". But when you try to concatenate the field, or perform some other kind of operation on it that is not date-related, Excel treats it as an integer (number of days since 1904, or something like that). So Microsoft has arguably done something user-friendly here...virtually anyone who types in '9/14' probably means September 14, 2013. However, this isn't always the case, and if it isn't, you have to know how to format columns in Excel as text. Moreover, the operations upon date types are not at all intuitive. If you've done a minimal level of programming, you get the idea of data types, including dates and strings. Let's pretend Microsoft comes up with a way to perfectly guess what you mean when you've typed in a value...is it possible this will eliminate the need for the average user to have an understanding of data types in order to do non-trivial work?

stelonix 13y ago
There are many ways to mitigate these issues. The one I like to believe will be the most used would be a entire new way of using computers. Just like Google uses complex algorithms in order to try to give you better search results, I see no reason why Excel can't try to "learn" your usage. I'm quite saddened that it's 2013 and few applications try to learn more about the user's usage patterns.
- ben336 13y ago
  Overaggressive learning algorithms can in some cases be more annoying than well thought out defaults. Especially since they won't be consistent (at least at first). Its not an easy thing to do right. For things like spreadsheet formatting, you want to have consistent behavior that you can rely on.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  I guess the difference is that what google does is already somewhat fuzzy, when you search for something you're not necessarily even sure what you want the search engine to return. We also don't expect the results to necessarily be perfect which is why the search engine returns more than one result. On the other hand when you're trying to do some specific task you already know in most cases exactly what you want to happen, so if it does something else then that is very frustrating.
  - stelonix 13y ago
    Well, that's the trade off I'm hoping people are willing to make. Just like we did it for search back when Google was new, for example: we had to learn how to use Google compared to whichever search engine we were using before. It's just like trying to learn a new application. I do believe unless the whole computing system/environment works in this new paradigm, the effort wouldn't have as much impact as I'm picturing in my mind.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      Google is good for searching immensely vast troves of information simply because there is no other way you could really do it. A categorical index of the entire internet would be fairly un-feasible. OTOH when we have smaller and more focused collections of information such as programming documentation or catalogues of similar products we tend to find it easier to navigate with categorical listings or simpler search algorithms.
  - takluyver 13y ago
    I've heard this idea encapsulated in a neat phrase: 'Control interfaces should not be intelligent'. I think I first read that after Wolfram Alpha was launched.
CmonDev 13y ago
The Excel rule is simple: if you want an expression then start it with '='.

jiggy2011 13y ago

The question that these sorts of articles always raise is ultimately , should we treat computation as something like mechanical expertise which is important but can be easily outsourced or is it more like literacy which is critical to just about every profession and is often used as a proxy for intelligence? It strikes me that the real difficulty is drawing a line between which tasks should be left to technical professionals and which should be within reach of the layman? This is much easier to define in the case of mechanical devices which tend to be fairly fixed function rather than computers which are applicable in an almost infinite number of tasks. For example , you wouldn't expect a car driver to be able to modify their own vehicle, but you would expect a lay computer user to be able to do tasks such as changing their wallpaper or installing software on their computer. I wonder if this is partly what is driving the popularity of computer hardware with artificially imposed constraints? Is it simply easier to understand when you use separate devices for reading books and playing games? It also begs the question over whether simply changing the means with which to do something changes the nature of the task. For example is somebody designing a complex logical system not "programming" because they are doing it inside of a spreadsheet program instead of an IDE?

alexnorth 13y ago
That's a good question. I don't have a personal answer yet, though I do like your mechanic example. But to your last point: I chose the word "coding" so as to refer specifically to the linear textual formal representation we use today. People will keep designing complex logical systems - indeed, I hope more people will become more capable of doing so, and I think better tools will help.

static_typed 13y ago

As the site now says "Error establishing a database connection " maybe the coding was ended a little too early?

pragmar 13y ago
Cached - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qjCebmDnUkcJ:alexn.id.au/2013/10/30/the-end-of-coding/+&cd=2&hl=en http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qjCebmD...

tfb 13y ago

I've been working on http://loggur.com http://loggur.com for a (very) long time now to address exactly what the author describes. (Note: The home page is very outdated and vague; I'm planning on redoing it upon release; see my other comments about the details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5811801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5811801) And I should point out that coding will never fully become unnecessary. Of course many of the repetitive parts of coding can be automated, but with all kinds of new ideas and unknown technologies that the future has in store for us, custom code will almost certainly always be required.

riskable 13y ago
Your site looks pretty good to me (and I just viewed it on my phone). Unless by "outdated" you mean, "it doesn't contain the most up-to-date information about our product(s)." In that case, well, I look forward to seeing it! Already added to my Google Calendar. BTW: I know you're probably trying to collect emails of interested parties with your "get notified" form but you may wish to consider a direct "Add to Google Calendar" link or button. Here's an example of how to create such a link: http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=Loggur%20Launch&dates=20131109/undefined&details=Loggur.com%20launch%20date&location=loggur.com&trp=false&sprop=loggur.com&sprop=name:http%3A%2F%2Floggur.com http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&text=Lo... If HN supported proper linking it wouldn't look so ugly :)
- tfb 13y ago
  Thanks! 8) By "outdated", I was referring to the product description(s). Nice idea for the Google Calendar! Is that a fairly common thing? I can't recall seeing it anywhere else, but it could just be the bubble I'm in.

jtheory 13y ago

I feel like I've been reading this article every year, with some variation but the same yet-unrealized potential every time. I'm not an expert in "human" coding or AI, but I get the same vibe from both of them -- until you try it yourself, it seems pretty reasonable that someone will solve this problem fairly soon. And it has seemed that way for many years now. Simple CRUD apps can already be built with simple, friendly interfaces. The simple apps will continue to get easier for non-programmers to assemble without "coding". But real life requirements get comlicated soon -- your simple CRUD app now needs to auto-charge customers every time they foo 100 bars, unless it's been less than a month (in which case you charge a prorated total at month end), and early subscribers are grandfathered in to a simple fixed monthly charge. How will you click-and-drag that? Or explain it clearly in natural language, without multiple possible interpretations? People make complicated stuff in Excel spreadsheets, and while it starts off as fairly vanilla, it quickly becomes something as complicated (if not more so) than writing a standard computer program in code. Natural language serves a purpose -- mostly around navigating complicated social situations, including expressing general desires to others (who have motivations of their own, and will interpret according to their own internal rules). It's fuzzy and generally non-specific because that's how we are. Why do we imagine our normal ways of interacting with each other can be applied to instructing a process to execute complex & strict logic? I'm pretty sure we can make progress -- clean up the leakiest abstractions from software to APIs to hardware... -- and sort out the best way to build coding languages so they are as intuitive as possible for humans -- but I don't think "code" generally is going to disappear anytime soon.

300bps 13y ago
You were able to read the website? All I see is: Error establishing a database connection Maybe the OP should hire a coder to fix his site?
- tluyben2 13y ago
  Do as everyone does; keep reloading; you'll catch it :) Besides it being the reason the db is not responding.
- 13y ago

fka 13y ago

ironic. :)

mattdmrs 13y ago

> If you’re a programmer and this offends you, consider how much more value you could create if you didn’t spend half your time as a glorified PSD->HTML translator. As the author states, the idea of abstracting away the complexity of creating user interfaces isn't new, but I think it's wrong to think we could one day create tools that lets you do that without having to write code and still keep all the flexibility of going sufficiently low-level. An application platform usually gives you low-level building blocks (e.g. Core Animation) and higher-level ones (e.g. UIControl and family). You can construct visual tools to manipulate the latter, but you can't do the same with the former, since they're much more than just position and parameters. Reducing this difference in complexity by blaming it on the tools is misguided IMHO. There an inherent complexity in coding that isn't its weakness but rather it's advantage. You can't abstract away coding just like you can't abstract away human language or writing. Could you substitute an essay with a very detailed painting?

riskable 13y ago
I was just about to write something like this. Just because you've got a pretty GUI that grandma could use to assemble a sophisticated "app" doesn't mean you have to take away the low-level functionality. What's wrong with "right-click -> open component in editor"? I'd also like to add that a lot of people think "coding" means "typing" and their idea of the ultimate abstraction involves a lot of drag & drop. That would be just fine for starting the development of an app but would get really annoying really fast as you start to add more features and functionality. At the very least give us the option to perform every single task with the keyboard in an efficient manner.
gte910h 13y ago
It vaguely feels like he's talking about http://www.ni.com/labview/ http://www.ni.com/labview/ which is just graphical programming (and is far less able to meet the level of specifications most tasks truly have than a real programming language, IMO).

wslh 13y ago

In the short term it's more about automation/reduction of work than end of coding. For example, in the past I paid designers hundreds or few thousands for creating a new version of my web page, now I use Twitter Bootstrap or a theme and pay a few hundreds for customization. Now, million of software developers are working on the same problems at the same time, they are asking the same question and following the same Q&A path in sites like SO. There is a lot of space for automation. Regarding new tools for ending coding, nobody came up with a solution yet and there are a lot of smart people who are/were thinking about it. Surely it will be a breakthrough but it will work for solving domain specific problems. It's impossible to solve it for the "general coding problem".

arethuza 13y ago

I can remember seeing adverts for "The Last One" in the early 1980s while I was still at school - this was a menu based BASIC application builder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_%28software%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_%28software%29

walshemj 13y ago
Interesting before I saw you post I made a similar comment I saw this around the time I started work!!

Murk 13y ago

I said a similar sort of thing to someone just last week. He thought I was nuts. Time will tell. The end of the world is nigh. etc.

walshemj 13y ago

yeah right I can recall a hyped product called "the last one" which was supposed to do this and that was for the PET and Apple II Era in the 70's

jackmaney 13y ago

Ah yes, the end of coding is inevitable, the PC is dead, and 2013 will surely become the year of the Linux desktop.

marcosdumay 13y ago
> 2013 will surely become the year of the Linux desktop There's still a non-zero chance that this one come true. It does not fit well within the others.
- rejschaap 13y ago
  > There's still a non-zero chance that this one come true. Best joke of the year.

coldcode 13y ago

As the author of Trapeze (spreadsheet like application from way back then) is was nice to be mentioned. People have been trying to make coding go away even before I started coding and so far it's still moving more in the opposite direction.

lispylol 13y ago

I agree. I think we will continue to abstract our communication with machines until the act of having to type code into a computer is a task that is largely only performed by a small subset of society (programmers). But even when the day of having to do very minimal physical coding to direct computers arrives, I think there are still many benefits for the majority of people to learning this crude and dated form of coding. Perhaps not necessarily to become programmers, but to at least have some understanding of the guts of machines that power society. In fact, I think the further removed we get from the physical code in directing machines, the stronger the imperative we have to expect future generations to understand not just what something is, but how and why it works.

jdiez17 13y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. I was talking to my professors the other day about this; I think writing code will have be similar to capturing photographs: before, only professionals could take a picture: they had to operate this complicated machine, and then they had to develop the film in a dark room by impregnating them with chemicals. Nowadays, most of the population has an immensely capable camera in their pocket. I foresee that something similar will happen with programming. Most people will be able to command their computer and teach them to do new things, without having to know the first thing about how they actually work. There will still be people that fiddle with data structures and pathfinding algorithms, but they will be doing it for research purposes or because they need a highly specialised application.
- lispylol 13y ago
  Yeah, I think photography is a good analogy for capturing (no pun intended) this trend. And maybe I'm just being overly sentimental, but I feel like because it's so easy to do things with our devices now without knowing how they work, that they're often under-appreciated. For example, there's this popular interview that Louis C.K did on Conan, where he said "Everything's awesome, and nobody's happy". Sure, most of that frustration can be attributed to the human condition, but ignorance also plays a big role. If people knew (and I don't) how planes actually worked (at at basic level, of course), it's harder to get frustrated about spotty Wifi.

jcutrell 13y ago

To accomplish the complexity of issues I face on a daily basis in code, I would hate to build in a GUI. I can type faster than I can search for the right button in Photoshop. Ask anyone who lives in their terminal - it will increase (rather than decrease) your productivity and agility. This isn't because the gui isn't well made. I think a better prediction is, writing code and building constructs will be easier. Cognitive overhead will be reduced. That's the design problem - not coding.

Demiurge 13y ago

I don't think this is going to happen, even if someone invents direct mind-computer interface. Our thoughts are not precise enough. Everyone who has transcribed a mathematical equation realizes that context free grammar is just the most efficient way to express exactly what we want.

gshubert17 13y ago

Alex North writes: "For a long time, GUI builders were crap. GUI builders are still crap: they often provide a poor representation of what the rendered interface will look like, are not powerful enough for developers to achieve exactly what they want, and are too complicated and laden with programming concepts for non-programmers to use them." Beginning about 1995, Borland's Delphi (now CodeGear / Embarcadero) seemed to me to have a pretty nice IDE for making GUIs on Microsoft Windows. Any opinions on Delphi or information on anything similar for Linux or Mac?

Zigurd 13y ago
There is no GUI builder that enables building app-specific direct manipulation. GUI-builders really should not be called GUI builders unless you think a parade of dialog boxes is a GUI.
narag 13y ago
Try Lazarus: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ About "GUI builders were crap. GUI builders are still crap": that's just BS. Not usable by non-programmers? Of course. But that hand-wavy dismissal is terribly lazy. Identifying what's exactly wrong and specially how to improve is the difficult part.

Zigurd 13y ago

I was about to respond to his claims by pointing out that spreadsheets are a gateway drug for coding and that everyone who tries to do things without coding ends up coding. Code is remarkably universal. The article claims spreadsheets are an example of a post-coding tool, but they, and his other examples, really aren't. Notably, "visual programming" has been a failure. I expect the end of coding to be presaged by things that break the linear symbolic language model. There are no such successful things.

gruseom 13y ago
I agree that spreadsheets count as programming, since formulas are code. But spreadsheets also add a memory model (cell references) and a UI (rows and columns), and these three things are all smushed together, or rather overlap perfectly, while in general-purpose programming they are independent and there is no such overlap. That's perhaps what makes spreadsheets simpler and more accessible.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Spreadsheets are accessible programming to people motivated enough to understand what happens when you have more than a simple column sum in a spreadsheet, which could be called "programming in constraints." and then that beautiful code-less, flow-less, condition-less paradise lasts only until you need a macro.
thatthatis 13y ago
Anybody who says spreadsheets aren't coding hasn't written a bank valuation model. Though I agree, they were my gateway drug to programming.

KiwiCoder 13y ago

Coding's demise is both inevitable (for certain types of coding) and improbable (for other types). The debate hinges on how you define coding. I wrote about this when Visual Studio LightSwitch promised "CODING OPTIONAL" (verbatim, from the installation splash screen): http://cvmountain.com/2011/10/programming-without-coding/ http://cvmountain.com/2011/10/programming-without-coding/ An excerpt from my 2011 post - The dream endures, but why? One reason could be a lack of trust. Successful software needs constant maintenance. As a software product becomes harder and more costly to maintain (as most do) the boss who doesn't quite trust his team will be tempted to look for alternatives that appear more trustworthy. This basic lack of trust becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as communication breaks down and the team and the boss begin to work in opposition. The boss is now a prime target for being sold the idea that software development can be very nearly automated. It’s not a logical process, it’s an emotional one. In other cases the boss simply lacks the necessary understanding. They might think that programming is actually an unskilled or semi-skilled profession, where the programmer simply memorises a quirky list of words and symbols and then types them in according to a specification written by someone in marketing. All this raises the question of what it means to program a computer.

websitescenes 13y ago

There are already tools like you describe and many people use them. The issue is that these tools create vanilla, cookie cutter solutions that rarely fit the situation precisely. If you want a truly original or custom work flow that will fit the situation precisely, then your going to have to code to some extent. Here is an example: artiste er is a program that bypasses the need for handwriting markup. Sure you made a template but it looks like every other shitty Aristeer site. Coding will always be an advantage for those that are willing. The rest can be ok mediocrity.

gte910h 13y ago

Programming is the new literacy. It isn't going away, it's 5 years out from being a mandatory high school or middle school topic.

Dirlewanger 13y ago
5 years? Mandatory?? You're being insanely optimistic.
- bkurtz13 13y ago
  I would consider that pessimistic. If that becomes true, the tremendous job security I have now would start to evaporate.
wpietri 13y ago
Nah. People have been saying that since the 60s, and it will never happen. Honestly, I think it's a bad idea. Programming skills turn over too quickly. If people in my age bracket had learned computer programming in middle school or high school, they would have been dragged through one sort of BASIC or another and then promptly forgotten about it. Which is probably better than them remembering it and being frustrated that nothing would let them use those skills. If they were to learn something technical, I'd much rather it be a simple robotics class. A little bit of programming, a little bit of electronics, a little bit of Mech E, and a lot of problem-solving, self-teaching, and making of things that work. Those are skills that last, as does the attitude that they can figure things out if they want.
yoloswag 13y ago
I think you overestimate the intelligence of 99% of people.

delinka 13y ago

Every time I see a UI-to-code translator or converter[1], I find that it produces terribly crufty output- they tend to take that high-level design and regurgitate The Code that would produce "correct" results. Maybe the answer is applying compiler-type optimizations to the output. On the other hand, maybe the answer is learning logic ... nay, code. [1] The one currently on my mind is the web publisher part of Microsoft Access from about 2000. Certainly not today's state-of-the-art, but representative of the typical tool.

6d0debc071 13y ago

Can I see certain aspects of coding becoming automated? Certainly. And I can think of some visual ways of presenting code that are very attractive in the extra information they give to the programmer. But something like, 'give me the set of all things that....' (let ((set1 (remove-if #'(lambda (x) (not (things that....))) from-lst))) 'BODY) How'd you do that in Excel? Probably something like SUMIF - (I don't really use Excel much so I don't know if there's something that returns a list of things matching a predicate.) Yes, doubtless that can be expressed more concisely than the code. Heck you could wrap that up and just call it fetchset and have it go. (set1 (fetchset (things-that) from-lst)) But there you're putting more load on the person learning the arcana of certain macros or functions - and it's honestly not that much more concise in terms of headspace, you still have to think about sets for it to make any sense at all. It's not clear how that would translate into a visual interface of any significant power or how doing so would simplify the concepts that one would have to learn. You know? Will programming get more efficient? Count on it. Will we automate tasks that are just following a pattern? Yeah. But will we stop coding? Well, if you think about coding as being typing, then maybe we will. I don't think that visual interfaces are efficient enough to let you stick together all the concepts you need in a reasonable space of time without actually typing - but it's possible. But will we stop thinking computationally? (Which is the real essence of coding I feel.) I don't think so. It seems to me that you have to know what you want a computer to do, or you have to have the computer guess at it. And the problem with guessing at it, other than the computer being wrong, is that if you're not a precise thinker; if don't know fairly precisely what you want to do; then you can't even mean certain things. Assuming quicksort hasn't been invented yet, how do you tell the computer that you want quicksort if it's guessing, what cues does the computer take from a general expression that you want a faster kind of sort? Now whether that will reduce coding to mathematics I don't know. I'd tend to think not, if for no better reason than that programming includes a kind of coevolutionary mastery that can be a more fitting route for some people into thinking about things like transformations and sets and so on. I'm deeply indebted to programming for helping me think about maths in a way other than my teacher just reading black-box formula at the class.

xntrk 13y ago

Every time I see a article like this I think back to my frist programming class in high school. The teacher asked us a simple homework question. Describe all of the steps it takes to make a sandwich. This seems like a simple task. Get all the ingredients and put them together. This is simple to explain to human because they can make choices on their own and generally understand how a food is constructed. But when are are trying to teach a robot how to make a sandwich you have to exaplain every little detail because it doesn't understand that bread comes in a plastic bag or how to open it, or where the fridge is, or not make the sandwich on the floor. Everyone in the class got the question wrong because they were all missing details. I believe that code is going to be around for a very long time because it is currently the only way to truely express 'exactly' what you mean.

williamcotton 13y ago

Spreadsheets work better than code in some instances. Visual data-flow (boxes and noodles) in some instances. Graphing calculators in others. Hell, even Morphic and VB have their place! Each of these tools creates a 'function' in some way or another. The main problem I see is that it is too hard to make a function in a spreadsheet, combine it with a function made in a data-flow graph editor, and all tied together with a function made in a text coding language. We need to make the publishing and consumption of 'functions' easier. I've started the work on the underlying framework. Please stay tuned!

ilaksh 13y ago

I know that everyone will disagree, but for the most part, programmers shouldn't be writing code either. There are a lot of good tools out there. The problem is that programming by definition is writing code. And tools that don't involve code are for non-programmers. The problem is the definition of programming. And the fact that people are afraid they won't be considered a 'real' programmer if they don't write cryptic code. I believe that right around the time that programmers start to figure that out, general AIs will come out about 1.5 times as smart as the smartest human, and at that point ordinary human's childish perspectives and problems won't be very relevant.

codygman 13y ago
What are some of these good tools you are talking about that make it no longer necessary to write "cryptic" code?
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
This is so ethereal. What do you really mean by this? What is it that programmers have to figure out? That they have been bad boys and girls using cryptic code? ... Ok go make video editing package without any of ths "coding" nonsense and then explain it to us childish programmers. :) No but seriously I don't think there is a lot here ...

normloman 13y ago

Regular people have a hard enough time doing every day tasks on the computer with GUIs. If we can't make regular work easy, how the hell do you expect to make programming easy?

dinkumthinkum 13y ago
Regular people have a hard enough time doing every day tasks. Full stop.

consultant23522 13y ago

I feel like what companies mean when they say that children should learn to program is that they should learn problem solving and critical thinking skills. In my experience these things are saved for only the children who are tested and marked as "gifted" but average joe should also benefit greatly from a healthy dose of learning these skills.

thibauts 13y ago

We don't program the computer as much as we program ourselves. We may be able to build tools that reduce the burden but making a computer debug itself without either re-stating the expected outcomes and/or understanding the "intent" of the running code seems pretty much out of reach by definition.

protomyth 13y ago

We still have a lot of work to do in tooling to make things simpler. Take for example Xcode. Xcode is harder to use than the old Interface Builder / Project Manager combo. We continue to add complexity that works for experts, but is a pain to onboard people. It is amazing how many people got HyperCard, but would not be able to touch Xcode.

dasil003 13y ago

The tools will only improve, but the use of the tools will continue to be restricted to those who are currently coders until we solve AI. The end of coding can only be accomplished by true AI as most humans are not capable of expressing requirements precisely enough for a software program to be generated without a bunch of follow up questions. The primary value of a good software developer is to identify and ask these questions as soon as possible. Writing the code is relatively easy.

noir_lord 13y ago

I'm still waiting for the hard AI we where promised was 10 years away 40 years ago. These posts beside some hand waving never actually attack the meat of the issue, don't predict the demise of something unless you know what is going to kill it.

bhewes 13y ago

Please, this is like saying no new works of Poetry, Philosophy, Fiction, Drama, Religion will be written. Reminds me of Fukuyama's ridiculous "End of History" argument.

georgemcbay 13y ago

Eventually we will be obsoleted by the machines, but this will not happen soon and we'll be the second last to go (entertainers will be the last).

svantana 13y ago
But before that, we will have some pretty amazing tools that will make us feel like magicians (regrettably for all too short a time though)

lnanek2 13y ago

So far visual coding has just been useful for minting more CS degrees, not actually getting stuff done. Can't really see things going this guy's direction.

Mikeb85 13y ago

Coding is simply telling a computer what to do. Even to a certain degree, entering a term into Google's search engine is a type of coding. And maybe that will be the future, parsers and compilers that can turn plain language into computer instructions. We're not terribly far off with transpilers/compilers that turn Python and other high level languages into C or native code... Until a computer can program itself (which may never happen), there's going to be a person telling it what to do - and no matter whether it's a formula in a spreadsheet, a programming language, or something higher level, it'll still be code...

svachalek 13y ago

For decades we've done coding the only way we can given the hardware available. But nowadays program sizes are approaching the amount of information stored in human DNA, which is a blueprint for a self-fueled, self-healing, self-reproducing nanotech computing machine that puts any modern software to shame. I'm beginning to think we're doing it wrong.

lcedp 13y ago

Why nobody wonders that it is still required to know math to develop engineering construction. Or that it is required to know chemistry to create dish washing products. Why then so many people find it strange that to write a program you must.. program.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

This is hand waving month or something. Oh this just so cute but honestly when you are ready to be serious and deal with complex things and not GUI for "Grandma" then you will see this is little more than a vague performance of day dreaming. The only way for the to come to fruition some sort of strong AI, even then ... Show some non trivial examples, not this HTML GUI stuff.