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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?

#401

Post by jjeaff »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #318
fbonetti wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that makes it a bubble is that the supply is artificially constrained by local zoning laws. Eventually people will be fed up with the situation and they'll vote for a government that'll allow more development, at which point housing prices will plummet.

This is one of those bits of common wisdom that falls into the "it's more complicated than that" territory. Zoning laws are a contributing factor, but they are far from the only factor -- and it's a stretch to say that they're the deciding factor. Zoning is an issue. Rent control is an issue. Basic supply and demand is a huge issue that arguably outstrips regulatory roadblocks. Regional geography is also much more of…

All those other reasons you mentioned are contingent on zoning. Allow highrise apartments anywhere in the Bay area and just watch how fast the buildings go up and the rent goes down.

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

#402

Post by pjmlp »

makapuf wrote: post #399
pjmlp wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Itaninum only lost because Intel did the mistake to allow AMD to design x86 chips.

That would mean itanium could have won only by a monopoly and that with open competition, backwards compatibility won.

Itaninum also had an emulation mode, while not perfect, they could eventually improved it.

Backwards compatible didn't matter in the mobile world, or for those screaming for ARM laptops.

Sometimes we can't just have nice things.

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

#403

Post by sedachv »

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.…

> But in 5 years we'll start to see automated solutions that record all of the inputs, outputs and logs of these containers and reverse engineer the internal logic into something that looks more like a spreadsheet or lisp.

And that Lisp code will look something like: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.lisp/4nwskBo...

(Unfortunately, Lisp neither makes you smarter, nor a better programmer, which seems to be a very profound, ego-wounding disappointment for a lot of people who try to dabble in Lisp programming).

Now programming-by-spreadsheets, on the other hand, is a real thing, that is almost as old as Lisp, and is called "decision tables." It was a fad that peaked in the mid-1970s. There were several software packages that would translate decision tables to COBOL code, and other packages that would interpret the tables directly. I think decision tables are still interesting for several reasons: they are a good way to do requirements analysis for complex rules; the problem of compiling a decision table to an optimum sequence of conditional statements is interesting to think about and has some interesting algorithmic solutions; and lookup table dispatching can be a good way to simplify and/or speed up certain kinds of code.

What is not interesting at all is the use case of decision tables for "business rules." A few of the 1970s software packages survive in one form of another, and I have not heard anything good about them. And the problem is very simple: the "business folks" generally do not know what they actually want. They have some vague ideas that turn out to be either inconsistent, or underspecified in terms of the "inputs," or in terms of the "outputs," or have "outputs" that on second thought they did not really want, and they (the "business folks") never think about the interactions that several "business processes" of the same "business rule" might have if they take place at the same time, much less the interactions of different "business rules," etc.

AI cannot solve the problem of people not knowing what they want or are talking about. Machine learning on wrong outcomes and faulty assumptions is only going to dumb systems and people down (IMO this is already obvious from the widespread use of recommendation systems).

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

#404

Post by walshemj »

username90 wrote: post #342
walshemj wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just seems to be reporting the wage levels in Sweden which is one thing unions do price discovery for workers - run surveys. I suspect your posting in bad faith here and in the usa SAG minimum rates doesn't effect the higher rates that successful actors get.

The problem is that the numbers that gets published by unions in Sweden are taken as law by employers. You don't really know what unions are like if you haven't heard your employer say "We can't give you a bigger raise due to our collective agreement". And since basically all other employers follow the same guidelines you can't get competing offers for significantly more. There is a reason why salaries are very flat…

Well they probably shouldn't make it public :-)

Not all union models have sector bargaining and it certainly doesn't work for professional unions - and I am not saying that European unions really get the needs of m&P members and need to change.

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

#405

Post by ummonk »

criddell wrote: post #379
ummonk wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Programmers are everywhere, but a programmer that also knows chemistry or biology or economics or art history or just about anything stands out. Really? I have a physics degree with some experience in rocket science, but my most valuable skillset (measured by how much pay I can fetch for it) is plain old software engineering. I don't think I'd be able to leverage my area of specialization to exceed or even match wha…

You don't think your broader education and experience makes you a better software developer (that encompasses programming, writing, and working with other people)?

That's a good point. Not going through the standard CS track and straight into software engineering has probably given me broader experience and skills (both soft and hard) that I wouldn't have developed as well otherwise.

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

#406

Post by conterio »

The answer to this question is easy. It's all about supply and demand. The demand for programmers is ever increasing with the way we are advancing as a world. So the demand is extremely high for good developers. This will continue to be the case going forward as become of a digital world. I suppose most of the workforce in 50 years will need at least a basic programming skill set like reading and writing. The ice block isn't freezing anytime soon, it's outside in the snow, in Antarctica.

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

#407

Post by therealdrag0 »

zanny wrote: post #160
TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

End user tasks might be able to be automated into dumb programming jobs, but companies have tried for decades to down-source their programming and it always falls flat on its face. Even if you have library support to hand hold your budget coders, even if you use a lot of them, even if you give them all the time in the world, they will produce more complicated, less coherent, less stable, buggier, and harder to modify…

> and it always falls flat on its face. How so? What about outsourcing in general? Where I work wanted to save money, and now we have 4x as many engineers in India. Most of them suck, and we have to shepherd and correct their mistakes, but business is viewing it as a success. They are creating features at a higher rate than we were before. Every other large company also has teams in 2nd world countries because they're cheap. At some point this labor will be both cheaper and qualitatively comparable to US talent.
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