5 ms·
No programmers for the future?
These days we're having so many programmers going for the sexy web and mobile platforms and actually very few people go for the low level or 'hardcore' semi-conductor stuff. I have only met 3 fellow x86 assembler programmers and even when I go to stackoverflow.com to ask an intel x86 assembler language question, it may take 3 days for me to get a reply, while for a javascript or python question it takes just 2 minutes. If this is the case then who will create the next Linux? Android? Or what I'm I getting wrong?
- chewxy 12y agoI'm placing my bet that there will always be people who are interested in systems programming. They're the Night Watch (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thenightwatch.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thenightw...) There will always be people who after years of doing high level stuff, get curious about the low level implementations, start asking questions about how data is represented in the machines, and then get sucked in and they stay there. I'm personally not too worried about the fact that there are fewer systems programmers, because those who do it in the future, are those who are interested in it. That will ensure higher quality software in general.
- briantkim 12y agoTrue. So according to your point, today we may have quite a number of Mark Zuckerbergs but few of Bill Gates or Linus Tovarlds. Or I got it wrong?
- chewxy 12y agoI wouldn't put it as such. They're all one-offs. But consider how fast gcc started supporting x86_64. I am not worried about the supply of people who do systems programming
- walterbell 12y agoMaybe the systems programmers are on mailing lists instead of web forums?
- joeclark77 12y agoThere will always be more "tool users" than "tool builders". I think what you're really lamenting is that the "tool users" are claiming the same title and status (aka "programmer"). Perhaps the "tool builders" need a new brand to set themselves apart. How about electron whisperer?
- briantkim 12y agoYour point is valid Joe. The tool users dare not claim the same status. A googler can never claim he's Larry or Sergey
- lovelearning 12y agoMy feeling is that most such systems programming specialists are too busy working for their employers in the hardware, OS and embedded industries, to blog or participate actively in discussion forums. They are members of the "dark matter developers" group [1]. That said, a github search for assembly language repos and assembly language code phrases throws up some 270 repos and upwards of 100,000 code files. So I don't think asm is doing too badly. Your experience is probably only anecdotal. May I suggest that you contribute your bit to popularising asm by putting up some of your projects here on Show HN. There must be other people like me who have been intimately familiar with asm in the past and felt the thrill of coding in it, but have lost touch with it and now feel intimidated by its verbosity. Some interesting projects may rekindle that interest. For example, recently there was a "Show HN" of a bare bones assembly language game written by students for the raspberry pi, and that made me start learning ARM assembly. Put up something like that, or even something a lot simpler (personally, I'd be interested in a beginner's tutorial on coding and building a simple console program for Windows and Linux platforms, using modern x86_64 assembler and modern tools). [1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen99.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen9...
- seesomesense 12y agoYou are looking in the wrong places. Try places like edaboard. Just the microcontroller subforum has over 200,000 posts.