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The future is fewer people writing code?

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Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#151

Post by rayiner »

ewzimm wrote: post #126
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.

I was focusing on 50 years into the development of the technology as a rough analogy. By 1966 it was much more mature, but look at how much things have changed. A mechanic from 1966 would find today's cars completely unrecognizable. They might appear somewhat similar from the outside, but on the inside they're basically just giant computers. We now have cars with varying levels of self-driving capabilities, drones re…

Cars are not "basically just giant computers" on the inside. Computers are used to control various engine parameters, and aspects of the transmission and suspension, but all the parts that make the car go are just refined versions of what existed in the 1960s. Okay, so now we use computers to control valve timing instead of mechanical means. But the principles of what valves are and how they make the engine work are very similar to 1966.

And that computing horsepower mostly goes towards fuel efficiency and safety. Which is nice, but almost certainly not the kind of progress people in the 1960's thought we'd make in automobiles over 50+ years.

> traditional pilots being essentially babysitters for autopilot systems

The first autopilot takeoff/cruise/landing happened in 1947.

> hyperloop designs

But we don't have hyperloops.

> I'd say those are much bigger changes than 1936-1986.

By 1986 we had fully-digital fly-by-wire aircraft. Our big achievement since then has been about a 20% improvement in fuel efficiency.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#152

Post by brianwawok »

bdrool wrote: post #97
dasil003 wrote: post #91

Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. No, the hard part of programming is understanding in very specific and rigid details how to accomplish a task. What the author doesn't realize is the enormous amount of processing power, shared culture and empathy that goes into human interaction. Even mighty Google doesn't have the compute power or the architect…

> Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. Programmers make it all the time too, or at least something very similar. See all those people who are on the endless quest for the "perfect" language, which usually means one which allows for writing the shortest code, sometimes at a very high cognitive cost for very little payoff. No, I really don't want to d…

Do you write in assembly?

If not, you clearly see some gain in more terse syntax.

Seems like a good thing to explore, although perhaps it should not be one's sole focus in life.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#153

Post by brianwawok »

milesokeefe wrote: post #140
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think an oil change is a tune up. Maybe it is.. My honda has 80k miles on it, and has had oil changes + tires replaced. That is it. Compare to a 1970s car and what it would need in the first 80k miles.

For even lower maintenance look at electric cars. I think Tesla has very very low maintenance requirements for the first years.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#154

Post by marcosdumay »

markbnj wrote: post #39
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…

>> We will have tools, accessible, easy tools; Arduinos and Pis of the future; sure. But it will not replace, nor eliminate or reduce the amount of code written. I think something eventually will, though. My reasoning for this conclusion is simply that I don't believe a significantly larger percentage of people will learn to write production software than are able to do so now. At the same time the need for software…

We will keep making developers more and more productive. And if there aren't enough of us to solve all the problems, well tough luck - let them unsolved, every profession is like that.

But if we create an AI that can understand people well enough to know what those people want without clear instructions, yes, we will have placed us out of the job market, together with everybody else.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#155

Post by nickbauman »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #150
nickbauman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a serious gap in the writer's mind about computation and programming. It's like the author is suggesting that "eventually we won't need writing: it will be replace by writing-thinking or picture-writing". It's completely absurd. Specific, complex ideas can only be described and communicated in text. Not pictures. Blueprints, for example, have a pictorial element to them, but their fundamental value is our abi…

I don't think we can distinguish text and pictures so easily. Look at Chinese, look at Egytian hieroglyphs. Even when "hierglyphics" is used as as a term of abuse of for programming languages synatax -- it ends up pretty popular. I thoroughly hated LabView when I had to program in it, but it did convince me that a graphical programming language could work -- if only it refrained from doing the cking stupid things tha…

I think we can distinguish. The ideograms and hieroglyphs have very, very specific rules about they can recombine, and that nothing to do with their pictorial aspects. It has to do with semantic / grammatical aspects.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#156

Post by openasocket »

brianwawok wrote: post #152
bdrool wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. Programmers make it all the time too, or at least something very similar. See all those people who are on the endless quest for the "perfect" language, which usually means one which allows for writing the shortest code, sometimes at a very high cognitive cost for very little payoff. No, I really don't want to d…

Do you write in assembly? If not, you clearly see some gain in more terse syntax. Seems like a good thing to explore, although perhaps it should not be one's sole focus in life.

The difference comes down to syntax vs. semantics. The problem with assembly isn't its syntax (mov eax, ebx is fairly readable), it's that the underlying semantics are too low level. Exploring new abstractions/semantics to use is very useful (local variables, first-class functions, algebraic data types, etc.), but optimizing solely for source program size leads to a language that's great for code golf and not much else.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#157

Post by sokoloff »

brianwawok wrote: post #153
milesokeefe wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I don't think an oil change is a tune up. Maybe it is.. My honda has 80k miles on it, and has had oil changes + tires replaced. That is it. Compare to a 1970s car and what it would need in the first 80k miles. For even lower maintenance look at electric cars. I think Tesla has very very low maintenance requirements for the first years.

> I don't think an oil change is a tune up. Maybe it is.

It's not.

I have a couple of 60s Mustangs and several newer cars. My original '65 needs ignition service (what most people call a "tune up") every couple of years (of very modest usage). My '66, converted to electronic ignition, gets about twice as long (and 10x as many miles) before needing ignition service. They both end up fouling plugs because of the terrible mixture control and distribution inherent in their carbureted designs.

My wife's 2005 Honda CR-V gets about 100K to a set of plugs. (Fuel injection, closed loop mixture control, and electronic ignition are the key enhancements that enable this long a time between tune-ups.)

My diesel Mercedes and Nissan LEAF obviously never get tune ups.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#158

Post by Jtsummers »

openasocket wrote: post #156
brianwawok wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you write in assembly? If not, you clearly see some gain in more terse syntax. Seems like a good thing to explore, although perhaps it should not be one's sole focus in life.

The difference comes down to syntax vs. semantics. The problem with assembly isn't its syntax (mov eax, ebx is fairly readable), it's that the underlying semantics are too low level. Exploring new abstractions/semantics to use is very useful (local variables, first-class functions, algebraic data types, etc.), but optimizing solely for source program size leads to a language that's great for code golf and not much el…

Outside of J/K/APL few languages truly attempt to optimize for source size. Few people truly, deliberately optimize around source size outside those language programmers, demoscene types, and mathematicians/engineers-turned-programmers.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#159

Post by pystack »

Jtsummers wrote: post #104
dasil003 wrote: post #91

Non-programmers make this mistake all the time: thinking that the syntax is the hard part of programming. No, the hard part of programming is understanding in very specific and rigid details how to accomplish a task. What the author doesn't realize is the enormous amount of processing power, shared culture and empathy that goes into human interaction. Even mighty Google doesn't have the compute power or the architect…

You agree with the author. >> No, the hard part of programming is understanding in very specific and rigid details how to accomplish a task. The real benefit of something like Project Bloks is that it actually removes the code; it allows children to begin thinking programmatically, without the obstacle of syntax. And this is a tough distinction to make, because people often use “programming” and “coding” synonymously…

Once I figure out the difficult specific and rigid details, I just want the most productive way to communicate these details to the computer. Writing code is the most productive, because it is more exact and I am faster typing than drawing/dragging/clicking. For example, with Vim, I can do a quick "Ack def function_name" to find the definition of a function.

For learning purposes, Project Bloks looks great. But when it comes to real work, I'd happily learn the syntax, as it lets me be more productive.

Re: The future is fewer people writing code?

#160

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

"Programming" is the task of making other tasks irrelevant. Thus, if we have all the software we could want, it means there aren't any jobs for anybody, whatever profession they choose.
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