The more I examine it, the more I realise that at this point in time, the programming profession is a trap.
I'll try to explain it.
1.
20 years ago we were called "computer geeks". Young people fond of computers.
This term does not apply anymore. Now everyone under 20 is a computer geek.
My daughter is 5. You know what 5-yo kids draw in school ? User interfaces. That's right. Checkboxes and buttons and sliders. They don't know what they are called, but they know how to use them. Every day they draw UIs and computers and they play with them at school, then they come home and interact with their tablets.
But that is the coming generation. Today, even if you've never seen a computer, you can catch on pretty quickly, because:
2.
There is almost no entry barrier into the profession.
After a month of tutorials and interview training you can get a job as a junior developer.
In fact, there're so many learning opportunities right now that it doesn't seem fair.
Anyone anywhere can learn to do what you do - and better, because he can learn from the best.
And they can produce better code faster, because:
3.
Services like Github have trivialised code sharing and reuse.
Each library solves some kind of problem. Before, it required days or even months of work and research.
Now, it's just a 'pod install' or 'npm install' .
But it's good, right ? It's so much easier to develop software now...
That's true, however, given the way things are evolving:
3.1. If it has any 'general-purpose' value, what you're working on right now is (or will soon be) obsolete, because someone else will release it as an
open source lib. Good for everyone, not as good for all the programmers who would have been paid to develop their version of it.
Of course, we can ride the wave and try to keep current with all that's happening, right ? Well, turns out that's not so trivial anymore, because:
4.
The field has become extremely wide and each area is an ocean in itself. Take 'the backend' : there are dozens of languages and frameworks, each of them being updated weekly. Or iOS Development. Machine learning ? Computer vision ? Sound engineering ? ....
You did notice this didn't you ?
And if that isn't enough food for thought, then
5.
AI will eat our lunch pretty soon. Maybe 5, maybe 10 years from now, there will be no 'programmers', because everyone will be a programmer.
The tools, libraries and techniques will be sufficiently advanced for anyone to speak the requirements and design ideas and the AI will write all the underlying code.
AI combined with the 5 year olds of today who are already doing UX design.
Note that this wasn't the case 5-10 years ago. Before the iPhone, Github, Khan academy and Coding Bootcamps, the industry was a different beast.
What the future holds is of course unknown, but the signs are that 'programming' is not a skill that will feed you for the rest of your life. Time to think about other things you're good ;).