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Programmers becoming "starving artists"

linux.com

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Re: Programmers becoming "starving artists"

#11

Post by Daishiman »

Among the many erroneous assumptions this makes is that the demand for software is not elastic or limited by the cost of development. In reality what would happen is that if code becomes cheaper companies will get more than they could before to automate increasingly larger aspects of their infrastructure, improve the quality of their current software, and make custom software more accesible to small businesses.

As the very same article says, custom software is more than 90% of all software out there. The cost of licenses for proprietary enterprise software like Oracle, AIX, SAP, etc. is dwarfed by the costs of consulting and customization to make those fit into existing infrastructures.

Programmers aren't going anywhere. If anything more people will need training, more computers will need fixing, and more experts will need to be called to fix the newbie's mistakes. Just because there are more programmers in general doesn't mean that the number of competent programmers will increase.

Re: Programmers becoming "starving artists"

#13

Post by gridspy »

Daishiman wrote: post #11

Among the many erroneous assumptions this makes is that the demand for software is not elastic or limited by the cost of development. In reality what would happen is that if code becomes cheaper companies will get more than they could before to automate increasingly larger aspects of their infrastructure, improve the quality of their current software, and make custom software more accesible to small businesses. As th…

I think you are right - more programmers will drive more demand for programming, not just lower wages.

Re: Programmers becoming "starving artists"

#14

Post by jimmyjim »

j_baker wrote: post #3

"Now computer literacy is widespread enough, and basic programming tools have gotten easy enough to use, that the ability "to write a program" is no longer in short supply, and with the Internet at our fingertips we all have the combined output of the whole world's supply of programming talent available to us, not just programmers in our own city, state or country." Methinks that the author doesn't understand the dif…

> "Now computer literacy is widespread enough, and basic programming tools have gotten easy enough to use, that the ability "to write a program" is no longer in short supply, and with the Internet at our fingertips we all have the combined output of the whole world's supply of programming talent available to us, not just programmers in our own city, state or country."

On the contrary. I wish it were. Notice Apple's efforts to streamline the UI on all of its devices so that any idiot could use them without a problem. The computer literacy goes only so far as operating a GUI application, not anywhere toward the more important underlying theories of computer programming.

Re: Programmers becoming "starving artists"

#15

Post by resplin »

Starving artist is not a good analogy. Software is a trade that provides economic benefit to the recipient, rather than purely entertainment.

Better analogies would be to an architect, general contractor, plumber, or mechanic. Anyone can do these jobs with proper training. They don't live off repeated sales of single pieces of intellectual property. And they all make reliable livings (though few of them become millionaires).

Re: Programmers becoming "starving artists"

#17

Post by JohnnyBrown »

resplin wrote: post #15

Starving artist is not a good analogy. Software is a trade that provides economic benefit to the recipient, rather than purely entertainment. Better analogies would be to an architect, general contractor, plumber, or mechanic. Anyone can do these jobs with proper training. They don't live off repeated sales of single pieces of intellectual property. And they all make reliable livings (though few of them become millio…

I think the tradesman analogy is good, but the future programming career may have elements of the starving artist in it as well. Working for free to build a portfolio is a feature typical of creative trades that would be foreign to an architect or plumber.

Re: Programmers becoming "starving artists"

#18

Post by fragmede »

nutmeg wrote: post #7

I work with open source technology in my job all the time, and I don't think there's any danger of someone freely implementing the custom systems we need to support our clients' needs. Just because everyone knows how a wrench works doesn't mean my mechanic is fixing my car for free.

Bits are trivially copyable; alternators not so much.

Re: Programmers becoming "starving artists"

#20

Post by blahedo »

It may be that this comes to pass eventually, but soon? Not a chance. The majority of kids don't even have any access to a programming course until college. The students I see in my intro courses often don't even have a very solid understanding of what a (mathematical) function is, much less have the precision-of-thought skills one needs to successfully program. It's one of the main things we have to teach in CS1. And these are the kids that actually want to learn to program.

So, not soon, no.

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