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The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

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Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#11

Post by spamizbad »

shhehebehdh wrote: post #4

Doubt it. For whatever reason, it seems like the way of thinking required for even simple programming doesn’t come naturally to most people. I saw this with a bunch of kids I went through nearly CS classes with. People who could not wrap their heads around pointers or reference semantics. People who didn’t get polymorphism and seemingly couldn’t no matter how many times you went through it with them. People who could…

I think when you get started coding earlier, your existing knowledge about the world doesn't disrupt the seemingly idiosyncratic way languages and computers operate and describe operations.

But one issue that definitely is a killer is just that some people, even if they have a "knack" for it, just don't enjoy programming and find the whole thing tedious and frustrating and/or the attitude of "I'm done with school. I'm done learning new things. Just put me to work".

Those two traits greatly limit the pool of people who are willing to work as a software developer, despite being fully capable of doing the work.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#13

Post by red_hare »

I buy it.

Two of my most blue collar friends just made the jump. One a mechanic the other a deli worker, via bootcamps in their late-20s. Neither hated their jobs, but they also couldn’t afford to move out of their parents houses on those incomes.

For now, they seem to be doing “blue collar” programming work. Mostly freelance basic front-end and rails development. The question to me is if they broaden their scope into other specialties and how quickly that happens. That’ll be my indicator to how long my own overpaid salary might last.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#14

Post by bobjordan »

marsrover wrote: post #3

Always the journalists coming up with these ideas.

To be fair, at least he has a github account. That said, his most complex contribution to open source seems to be a script that prints a stream of freak out words, created the day after Donald Trump was elected.

var wordToPrint = ["oh god", "no", "please", "no", "no", "no", "no", "no", "oh crap", "oh crap", "oh lord", "oh no", "no", "help", "no", "no", "oh crap", "oh god", "please", "oh man", "no", "oh f-", "oh wow", "oh wow", "wtf", "no", "i can't", "i can't", "i can't even", "oh fuck", "i -- oh no", "shit no", "oh man", "oh man", "oh please", "i can't even", "no no no", "no no no", "no no no", "ugh ugh", "ugh", "ugh ugh crap", "it ... can't", "i can't", "it can't no i can't", "make it stop", "i'm ...", "i'm ...", "it's ...", "oh oh oh oh", "oh oh oh oh oh", "nnnonnnnooo", "nnnonnnonnoo", "ugh", "gnnnaah", "gnaaaah", "gaaah", "wtaf", "wt actual f", "what what what", "it ... no", "no ... i ...", "...", "..."];

https://github.com/pomeranian99/election-night/blob/master/j...

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#15

Post by alistairSH »

"But any blue-collar coder will be plenty qualified to sling Java­Script for their local bank. "

Even highly trained software engineers can barely get security correct. What makes this journalist think somebody with a few years of high school programming can do any better?

I'm not sure I buy the "blue collar coder" prediction. At least not in the US. That type of work is currently outsourced to India and parts of Eastern Europe. There's an entire industry of code factories that already exists - are these US-based blue-collar coders going to be any more effective than off-shoring?

And within the US, code already permeates other professional roles. Staff accountants and data analysts do lightweight (and sometimes heavyweight) programming in Excel and other business tools. And hobbyists program things like home automation in Lua.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#16

Post by fromthestart »

umvi wrote: post #10

Bootcamps I swear train cargo cult programmers. It may work for some, but in my experience they lack the understanding of why they are typing what they are typing. They can go through the motions of what they've been trained to do, but they get stuck extremely easily and have no idea how to help themselves. So then when you start explaining why their program does not work, their eyes glaze over when you start talking…

It wouldn't surprise me. They cram a ton of material into a handful of greuling rushed weeks.

Then again apparently many if not most devs leave college with a four year CS degree and can't code either, so maybe it's just a reflection of typical ability.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#17

Post by king_magic »

No, it really super isn't. Look, I'm all for teaching CS/programming to toddlers through people in their 90s - but the blunt, brutal reality is that not everyone can do this work. Full stop.

That does not make programming a good candidate for widespread, blue-collar work.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#18

Post by everdev »

Blue collar jobs aren't low paying due to lack of skill or value, it's due to excess supply. In the bay area we have plumbers who charge $150/hr, the same rate I charge for coding, due to a low supply of plumbers.

The catch is that plumbing and other trades haven't changed much in the last 100 years. Coding is changing constantly. Therefore the supply of coders who can professionally use the latest technology is always small, hence a high paying rate. Only once coding itself stops progressing and innovating will supply be able to catch up to demand.

You might be seeing blue collar rates with HTML which is ubiquitous and changing relatively slowly.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#20

Post by menzoic »

The article presents the idea of a future mass pool of novice coders who don't (or don't need to) level up, that can take care of simple things like "manage the login page". I think that underestimates the complexity of code. A lot of things could go wrong if you have the majority of your codebase being worked on by novices, no matter how simple the feature. The simplest feature can also be: a single point of failure for the entire application, bottleneck hurting user experience, huge security risk, evolve into an unmanageable mess of brittle code. I personally (without evidence) believe it's possible for every healthy human to learn how to code and increase their skills over time. I don't think a factory line approach works for building software. For that to happen there would need to be more advanced tooling that leaves developers with work more similar to configuration management than coding.
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