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The future is fewer people writing code?

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Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#131

Post by freerobots »

spotman wrote: post #24

Maybe an unpopular opinion here, but I agree with the article overall. My view is less that programming is going away, and more that all jobs are. Not immediately or anything, but I don't think we are going to magically produce programming jobs for all the masses who are going to need a job. Having been at this over 15 years I have single handedly automated thousands of jobs, and of those a healthy handful are making…

Supporting your opinion the BLS puts the job outlook of a programmer at -8% between 2014 and 2024.

I hold the same opinion as you. I think that new languages and tooling will empower people to do more with less while being easier to learn. Combine this with globalization plus stagnating economies and the outlook of programming as a career seems less lucrative.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#132

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rayiner wrote: post #72
ewzimm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't necessarily judge the future of of a technology by its past. Consider transportation. Imagine it's 1936, automobiles have been around for 50 years, but there are still plenty of people getting around by horse. Some people are claiming that in another 50 years, by 1986, horses will be hardly used for transportation compared to cars, other people say that horses have been used for thousands of years, there's…

Your example actually cuts the other way. Imagine it's 1966 and someone tells you that the cars, trains, and planes will " have to be dramatically different in 50 years," yet lo and behold a trip from NYC to LA takes about the same amount of time now as it did back then and the Northeast Regional is a hair slower than the Metroliner used to be.

Well, it's dramatic in the little things, but not so much in the big things.

Cars now go 100,000 miles between tune-ups. They used to go, what? 10,000 miles?

Cars are much safer in collisions than they used to be.

Most cars now have air conditioners. I've driven in a car without AC in Arizona in July; believe me, AC can be a really big deal.

Most cars now have automatic transmissions, power steering, and power brakes.

And cars get much better fuel economy.

Driving from NYC to LA takes less time due to interstates and higher road speeds (and cars that can comfortably handle those speeds). Not half the time, but still a significant improvement.

And yet, most cars are not dramatically different as far as the experience of driving them is concerned. Nothing in the last 50 years looks revolutionary. It's been an accumulation of improvements, but there has been no game changer.

I suspect that the next 50 years in computing will be similar.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#133

Post by AnimalMuppet »

laumars wrote: post #43
pmlnr wrote: post #6

“50 years from now, I can’t imagine people programming as we do today. It just can’t be." Dear writer, let me introduce you to FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, or BASIC. These are alive languages, all 50+ years old. Coding didn't change much. The languages, the methodologies, the ideas change, but the approach is the same, and whoever thinks this will soon (50 years is not _that_ far) changes, have never had to debug something…

Aside specialty industries, the way the average programmer codes in a very different way to what it would have been like 50 years ago.

Yes and no.

Yes, in that the tools are massively better. So is the hardware that it all runs on.

No, in that you still have to tell the computer precisely and unambiguously exactly what you want it to do, and how, mostly in text. The level of detail required today is somewhat less, due to better tools, but at a high level the work hasn't changed.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#135

Post by jfe »

Any time a new idea comes along, there's always someone who claims everyone needs to learn it, and that it needs to become a part of school curriculum.

In my opinion, the ability to think laterally is far more valuable than the ability to think 'computationally'. The latter is comprised of essentially one pattern of thinking -- procedural -- while the former opens one to an infinite set of patterns with which to think.

The computer is a decent vehicle for exploring patterns or modes of thinking once you've discovered them, but the goal should be to explore the pattern, not the vehicle.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#136

Post by sdegutis »

maker1138 wrote: post #125

Programming is done in code for the same reason mathematics is done in notation, for specificity. Doing programming in plain English would be just as cumbersome as doing math in plain English. I don't think anyone can quite fully imagine the nightmare of trying to program in a recursively enumerable language[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy

Hell, even trying to explain how a relatively simple shopping cart web app works, unambiguously, in plain English, to an executive, is extremely tedious and verbose, requires defining a lot of specific terms, and at the end of the day it still confuses the hell out of him.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#137

Post by grossvogel »

justinlardinois wrote: post #95

Is "computational thinking" really something that isn't already being taught in schools? There's a link to an article that spends three pages defining it: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15110-s13/Wing06-ct.pdf It alludes to computer science, but really it just boils down to solving problems by breaking them into parts. In other words, problem solving skills. It doesn't sound like anything special to me.

I don't think it's being taught adequately to lots of people who aren't destined for careers in tech or academia. Look at the nearly universal disdain for math and especially "story problems," as well as the mystical aura of "coding" outside of those tech / academic circles.

In that context, I do think early encounters with programming might be a great entry point to "computational thinking" for some who aren't well served by existing curricula. It certainly makes more sense to me than trying to train every child to write code for its own sake.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#138

Post by beachstartup »

sdegutis wrote: post #136
maker1138 wrote: post #125

Programming is done in code for the same reason mathematics is done in notation, for specificity. Doing programming in plain English would be just as cumbersome as doing math in plain English. I don't think anyone can quite fully imagine the nightmare of trying to program in a recursively enumerable language[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy

Hell, even trying to explain how a relatively simple shopping cart web app works, unambiguously, in plain English, to an executive, is extremely tedious and verbose, requires defining a lot of specific terms, and at the end of the day it still confuses the hell out of him.

you should work for better executives.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#140

Post by milesokeefe »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #132
rayiner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example actually cuts the other way. Imagine it's 1966 and someone tells you that the cars, trains, and planes will " have to be dramatically different in 50 years," yet lo and behold a trip from NYC to LA takes about the same amount of time now as it did back then and the Northeast Regional is a hair slower than the Metroliner used to be.

Well, it's dramatic in the little things, but not so much in the big things. Cars now go 100,000 miles between tune-ups. They used to go, what? 10,000 miles? Cars are much safer in collisions than they used to be. Most cars now have air conditioners. I've driven in a car without AC in Arizona in July; believe me, AC can be a really big deal. Most cars now have automatic transmissions, power steering, and power brakes…

>Cars now go 100,000 miles between tune-ups. They used to go, what? 10,000 miles?

I'm curious what your definition of tune-up is, because I don't believe there exists a car that can go that far unmaintained without doing lasting damage to various systems.

After a quick Google, my impression is that most 2016 cars have a first maintenance schedule around 5k-6k miles. Some as low as 3,750.

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