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Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

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Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#271

Post by dancek »

zackmorris wrote: post #257
cheez wrote: post #2

As someone who hires programmers, no. It is difficult to hire good people. The only way I can successfully hire low-cost programmers is by building a system/machine for creating and releasing software that does not require a high level of intelligence/creativity. The only people that can make high margins in programming-heavy industries are those who can do this or some sort of defensible moat. As a programmer myself…

I am still basically an entry-level developer even though I've been doing it for 30 years (20 for money). The way I see this playing out is, something like behavior-driven development (BDD) where the business folks describe the functionality they desire, and programmers write up the backend logic. Then as AI progresses to AGI, a higher and higher percentage of that backend code will be generated by machine learning.…

I really love your storytelling even if I'm not sure I believe one whit! You should try your hand at writing books/blog posts/short stories if you haven't already.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#272

Post by ljm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25
shantanubala wrote: post #9

I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you. Some of the smartest people I know work in other domains: biology, chemistry, and even physics. They are sometimes baffled by tasks that seem trivial to me, and I'm under no impression that I'm more intelligent than them. I simply spec…

> I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you. Good programmers I know also overestimate the skill needed to earn high salary in this job. You don't have to go up the learning curve much; these days, you just learn yourself JS a little bit and go for a webdev job, making shit cod…

> these days, you just learn yourself JS a little bit and go for a webdev job, making shit code and still earning more than most people in a given country.

With these jobs in particular, what I see is that the definition of seniority has shifted to 'knowing the latest tech'.

So a junior dev who's just got to grips with React has become a React Developer, and they are now relatively senior in that field. The experience isn't transferable to other parts of the software stack though, it's too heavily tied up in the browser. So they end up as a super-specialised frontend dev.

It'll pay pretty well until the tech becomes obsolete, unless that kind of person enjoys maintaining legacy code.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#273

Post by hellofunk »

People look at these huge salaries but often forget the living costs around them. I interviewed two years ago for a company in the Bay Area, was offered a 180K position. I was excited and it was very tempting. After I did the math, I realized the money I have left over each month was higher where I was at, which was not California. I decided not to upend my life for less financially rewarding circumstances. There might have been other benefits, like being a part of the tech culture there, etc, but just wasn't for me.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#274

Post by tracker1 »

nostrademons wrote: post #147
convolvatron wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'll just leave this here https://books.google.com/books/about/Distributed_Databases.h...

MongoDB didn't become a public company through innovations in fundamental distributed database technology or even through good engineering. They became a public company because once Javascript became adequate for building client software, there was a strong incentive to build MVPs using the same data structures from client to server to DB, and once you build an MVP that gets adoption there's a strong incentive not to…

But on the flip side of that slow movement, you wind up with things like Oracle... for good or bad.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#275

Post by sgustard »

driverdan wrote: post #156
angarg12 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's put it another way: we are looking at the top 1% of software engineers. Is it surprising that they have incomes in the 1% range? For comparison, in Amazon, Senior and above engineers count for ~20% of the total, and those are the ones pulling +300k regularly. So only the top 20% of one of the top companies are getting such compensation. And to follow the article, this won't last forever. Whenever the next stock…

> we are looking at the top 1% of software engineers Working for a big company that pays well does not mean you're at the top 1% of software engineers. It means you're willing to do what it takes to secure that job and maintain it, including moving somewhere many don't want to live.

"willing to do what it takes to secure that job and maintain it"

Some (most?) of that is innate ability and intelligence. Sure, there are well-paying jobs that are unpleasant. But for many others the company literally gets to choose 1 out of 100 candidates.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#276

Post by darepublic »

I often think this (we are in a bubble) and feel a mild sense of dread. It is time consuming and difficult still to make top notch websites, but I don't think it will always be that way. Eventually we will be able to churn them out like little plastic toys from China, thanks in part to all this nice functional composable programming :)

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#277

Post by dmd »

hopler wrote: post #239
zrobotics wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and the games industry may be the clearest example of this. In 1985 the developers had to actually ship a finished game, there wasn't the opportunity to release a half-finished product and update it later. Compare to Fallout 76, which was very clearly unfinished at launch. Edit:typo

Games in 1985 shipped with bugs baked in that people were just stuck with. Civilization had a broken Gandhi, and still shipped 4 different bugfix versions.

Neither Civilization nor Windows existed in 1985.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#278

Post by zrobotics »

hopler wrote: post #239
zrobotics wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and the games industry may be the clearest example of this. In 1985 the developers had to actually ship a finished game, there wasn't the opportunity to release a half-finished product and update it later. Compare to Fallout 76, which was very clearly unfinished at launch. Edit:typo

Games in 1985 shipped with bugs baked in that people were just stuck with. Civilization had a broken Gandhi, and still shipped 4 different bugfix versions.

No game (or any large software project) is ever bug-free, but the standards were higher than they are now. Fallout 76 was literally unplayable on launch-a fairly early mainline quest was broken, so it wasn't possible to reach the endgame. Was civ unbeatable on release? Sure, ghandi was bugged, but that was entertaining enough they kept the bug in the sequels.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#279

Post by ychen306 »

leoc wrote: post #74
specialp wrote: post #44

This has been contemplated for many years and the price has gone almost nowhere but up. In the early to mid 2000's it was thought that most work would go to much cheaper India, and put highly compensated on shore workers out of jobs. It was tried to some extent, and failed. Then it was thought that lots of people would then fill the demand by going to university for CS and other related fields and saturate the market…

CS has been through a couple of salary busts in the US previously though, no? One in the '80s when all the then-new CS programs started to release graduates into the market, then another after the dot-com bubble; or have I been misinformed?

I wouldn't label the dot-com bubble as a CS bubble.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#280

Post by antt »

gcb0 wrote: post #171
spamizbad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nah, that's like wondering why is this ice block sitting on a hot plate and still solid. The answer is: because it just got put there, and it'll melt in a moment. So too, will end high salaries, as most low-hanging fruits get eaten by software, made by mass-produced cohort of programmers. Our industry has its share of cycles, but this, in my view, is largely wishful thinking on the part of people. Nothing wrong wit…

your whole point is extremely backwards! software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software" today supports of browsers! not to mention that every corporation with a software team also had usability and QA teams. Software quality and resiliency was much better than today. Then in the 90s it took a dive because online made "fi…

In 1985 you target one machine with one thread and one level of memory.

Today I'm working on systems with memory latencies from l0 cache all the way to tape storage. And it's getting worse.

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