Programmers overestimate how complex coding to solve problems actually is. Look at data science, you have tons of people with years worth of domain specific knowledge picking up enough python/ML on a weekend course to outperform those with PhDs in computerscience. And sure those people won’t be able to write their own implementation of lisp in C, but they don’t have to, that’s not as valuable. I feel like we have English lit majors complaining that programmers can’t write books because “they didn’t study literature for 8 years” and we all know that to just be ridiculesly off. Yet here we have software developers saying that highschoolers can’t program because they didn’t spend 8 years studying algorthms and cryptography.
The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
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Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#32This topic recycles on HN pretty frequently. I don't believe it. I have many friends that aren't coders and it helps me remember how big the skill gap is.
Unless you've done substantial training, code seems just as opaque as medicine, or law, or most fields of engineering. Any job that requires substantial training and trust not to royally screw everything up pays well.
Perhaps 30% of the population has the creativity and analytical skills to make a decent programmer. And maybe 10% of those find a job largely comparable to doing math homework enjoyable.
Programming isn't as old as most fields of engineering, but it's older than a generation of workers. If coding was going to be commoditised it would have happened decades ago
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#33The meaning of coding has changed a lot. It somehow changed from cpu, algorithm, data structure, relational model, programming language, http/tcp-ip to whatever latest js frameworks, whatever aws provides, NoSQL-ing everything and neuro-networking everything. And I feel like the way programmer solve problems seems to be evolving into finding whatever framework/SaaS that solves 50% of the problem, and bending the remaining problem at hand to fit the framework/SaaS they chose
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#34I 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 int…
The people I know who've done the same are broadening pretty quick. Makes me glad I've been putting so much of my own overpaid salary into savings: 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.'
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#35The next blue collar job is journalism.
And entertainment.
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#36Bootcamps 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.
The point of a CS degree isn't to teach you to code.
Also the amount of time spent in class is roughly equivalent between a 4 year CS degree and a rigorous, full-time bootcamp. 2 hrs of class, 4 days/week, 28 weeks/year in most universities vs. ~10 hrs/day, 6 days/week over 13-17 weeks in bootcamps.
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#37No, 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.
Frameworks will eventually turn most jobs we do now into low-skill office jobs. Maybe not WordPress 6.0, but WordPress 10.0 certainly will be easy enough for just about anybody to use. We won't call them programmers, but they'll be doing all the jobs we used to do, if we're lucky enough to have moved up. Just how like tasks that used to be done by doctors are now done by nurses, and tasks that used to be done by lawy…
No, they won't. Frameworks often introduce new layers of complexity and abstract away important details to the point where either entirely new frameworks are eventually needed, or you need an army of "framework specialists" who understand the subtleties of particular frameworks - and who end up needing to re-specialize on shiny new frameworks when old ones are discarded in an endless cycle of framework insanity.
In my 25 years of programming, I've never seen the ever-progressing march of new frameworks really solve the underlying technical difficulty of engineering software. Sometimes they help, more often than not they hurt, and are more often than not ephemeral in the grand scheme of things.
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#38Bootcamps 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…
This is actually just how I learn. I never understand anything abstract the first time I read about it or use it. In fact there were many things in software that I just did because it was "best practices" without understanding why. I could read about the Why all day long but until I experience the Why it will never really click for me. I eventually understood why because I kept trying things out, asking questions, an…
I think you need a particular type of personality for the bootcamps to be effective. Like you said, you need to thrive on curiosity and have a thirst for knowledge. Not everyone is like that. I have a few friends who think programming is like learning how to solve a rubik's cube: you go to the training, learn how to do it, and bam, you are now trained and can solve any rubik's cube.
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#39Bootcamps 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…
I think you're right, and I think it just comes down to Time. A lot of people sneer at traditional university CS degrees as being wasteless and unnecessary, but that's one thing they do right; the combined total time of CS courses you take might rival the time spent in a 6 month intensive bootcamp, but its spread out over more Time.
People need Time to understand abstraction. Most engineers start with the abstraction ("how do I write an API in Node") then work their way down when problems arise ("wait, why is my app slow? what's an event loop?"), but if all you have is the 6 months you simply aren't going to get very deep. Then you're on the job, while simultaneously adulting (if you weren't already adulting during the bootcamp). So you're set up to evolve at a much slower rate than your coworkers because you're missing fundamental understanding of the lower levels of abstraction and how they fit together.
I really think it comes down to having two classes of software engineer, just like electricians vs electrical engineers and nurses vs doctors. Each role has a very important place in our modern economy, and you can make a blue collar living in the more easily accessible ones. But you simply can't replace deep domain knowledge of low-level abstractions, nor the many specialized fields in CS like performance engineering, authentication/authorization, machine learning, cloud engineering/infrastructure, etc.
Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)
#40Doubt 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…
Yep. We had a 50% dropout rate in year 1 at my university. Most of those were in it for the money, but didn’t have enough personal interest in the subject to push through the combination of logic and tedium that makes up introductory computer science.