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The author of that piece quotes EWD, but not in full, which is odd -- were he to have done so, it would have strengthened his thesis, viz.: "Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better." -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Summary: « the skills required of professional and successful programmers are drastically different from the ones needed back in the 1990s. The profession now requires less mathematics and algorithms and instead emphasizes more skills under the umbrella term "sociotech." » is founder and CEO of software engineering and management platform .
I think their case for advancement of development technologies or how much social interaction was needed in the 90's is a bit flawed.
Having worked in corporate IT, with all its human and technical challenges, i agree that the "sociotech" elements are critical for engineering, but I also think that corporates massively misunderstand the value of the hacker culture and underestimate the extent to which the "sociotech" challenges are a direct result of having a weak "hacker" culture... we should challenge the "band aid" approach to fixing corporate b…
Based purely on my personal experiences, leaders who have both boxes ticked are even more unicorn-y than the fabled 10x engineer.
As if this stops you from re-inventing the wheel in attempt to understand more. Understanding things is what distinguishes programmers.
I had exactly the same discussion with one of my friends that wants to become a programmer. His argument was that programming is not fun at all because all we do is use libraries and frameworks. My counter-argument was the paragraph above.
He implies that this somehow falls into “socitech” ability, which it is not. Maintainable code is precise, well-factored code — almost pedantic — which requires an orthogonal (if not counterpointed) talent to the more “social” talents. I would go further to say that a mathematical understanding or at least inclination is required to write maintainable code. (In the sense that the same is required to write a readable academic paper.)
Another assumption he seems to make here is that somehow there are all these algorithmic hackers who sit and write algorithms all day. No, I doubt this has been some kind of norm ever. Most of what we (business software) programmers write is business logic and data processing with an occasional, infrequent need — but need nevertheless — to break out a unique algorithm.
You can scale up all you want and into the future but we are always going to need to understand the difference between a O(n^2) and O(n) algorithm.
I’m sick of these kinds of pieces that are pure philistinism. The future isn’t going to save you from your lack of technical skills, education and awareness. Stay curious and develop yourself — your social self as much as your craft and profession.
> This programming bible earned a famous comment from Bill Gates: "It took incredible discipline, and several months, for me to read it." I know he's a trillionaire and all and probably smarter than me but still - as somebody who spent a full three years reading and working through the problems in the first three books, I wonder how deep an understanding he could really have walked away with after just a few months.
Wouldn't programmers know how to code it themselves without req. Stack Overflow? I would be pissed spending $100k /year on programmer who uses Stack Overflow.
The average salary for a Programmer is $89,128 in San Francisco, CA. Salaries estimates are based on 238 salaries submitted anonymously to Glassdoor by Programmer employees in San Francisco, CA....
are coders really making $240k /year?
https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/san-francisco-programmer-s...?
This guy also seems to think programmers are so mentally deficient they are unable communicate with the 'open source community' and that this is in some way how programmers discover new technologies. He also thinks people did not contribute code in the 1990s. Where did all this software come from? Typical business view of open source. Originally b-schools actually lectured that open source was anti-business like a trade union. Now I guess they think it is sort of a crutch for too-dumb-to-breathe programmers?
There are tons of people like this guy in tech. Coded a year or two and found out the were a taker and not a maker. Still pretending to be a maker though. Their idealized programmer befits a corporation. Colors in the lines and writes "perfect code" which has no meaning other than has been annointed by CR's as to make it seem owned by the company rather than the individual. Their ideal programmer is someone who doesn't need to understand the details, works as a unit in a team, and gathers all of their knowledge by "getting help" from the company. It is absolutely blasphemy in the corporate world to suggest that anyone synthesize his or her own ideas. That's of course ridiculous but in a business setting, the takers absolutely must discount creative thought of employees 100% which literally the "product" up for grabs in tech companies. Obviously if people knew the value and how to exploit their own original ideas they wouldn't need the fucking company or takers.
As far as math and algorithms, those are more important than ever. The reason you don't see people working on those is that those people are hidden from public and private view, jealously guarded by the takers who think they control them. Natural sciences did not fucking change since the 90's. A surface to air missile or high frequency trading algorithm or advanced simulation is as costly and valuable as ever. It's the author perception of what is valuable that has changed. He's looking for code monkeys to exploit who will "get help" and write "clean code" whatever the hell that means.