31–37 of 37 posts
Computer Programming is going to be the last or nearly the last actual job that humans will have. I'm not worried.
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. A…
In my experience it's not a question of exposure, it's a question of the pay being offered. Most programmers that kids know probably don't make very much money. That could be changed if there was more exposure for those who greatly enjoy and profit from the craft.
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…
> ... custom software is more than 90% of all software out there. I've read this in several variations for years. But I've never seen a reference. Is this just a myth or can anyone point to real research which provides evidence for the claim?
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.
If programmers are in short supply become one and make tons of money. If they are over-supplied become an entrepreneur, hire lots of cheap programmers and change the world. Think positively.
Only thing is cheap programmers generally -- not exclusively -- but generally suck.
In this situation be a good programmer - it's not hard, just requires diligence and methodical learning of new stuff.
Nonsense. Programmers aren't artists, they're engineers. The difference is progress. Whereas art hasn't come a long way since Rembrandt and Mozart, engineering has. Open Source is just the stuff that's easy and has already been done. Progress won't happen if everyone has to develop it over and over again or spend millions on licenses for trivial products. (Note: Article is from 2003, bottom of IT crisis)
Whereas art hasn't come a long way since Rembrandt and Mozart, engineering has.
I'm sure it was just a lapse of attention on your part, though.
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. A…
Historically, the kids who'll become really good programmers don't have to be exposed to it before college. They'll already have started programming before they're in high school. If they're really drawn to it, noone will be able to keep them away from it that long. In my experience it's not a question of exposure, it's a question of the pay being offered. Most programmers that kids know probably don't make very much…
By contrast, even the most NCLB-starved schools tend to have some art and music programs, even if they're cut way back, and virtually everyone has some (perhaps inadequate) PE classes and access to pickup games of basketball or stickball or whatever. There's really no imminent chance of the number of people who have done "some" programming coming within two orders of magnitude of the number of people who have done "some" art or played "some" sports.