Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987) • Hacker News Board

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#21

Post by joelbluminator » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:31 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #16

nickysielicki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can write solid C, ring 0/EL3 doesn't scare you off, or you can figure out how to cram 10 pounds of hard realtime code into a 5 pound microcontroller... yeah, you'll go far. Come out having done the minimum, knowing Python and Javascript, well... there's an awful lot of competition for most of those positions if you're just a basic coder, not skilled at using those to accomplish interesting real world tasks…

"Past performance is not a predictor of future results". The gravy train might keep going for as much as another decade but, as more and more people are flooding into web development every year, at some point demand is going to be saturated and then ...

There are also way more web jobs than embedded though, but you're right that another .com bubble will be bad for web devs (especially juniors, the seniors should do fine).

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#22

Post by dole » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #18

timonoko wrote: post #10

This was the time of the Turbo-button. Programs were made for 4.77 MHz IBM PC, so you had to slowdown the 30 MHz by default. The Turbo speed was mostly useless, and so it seemed to be the ultimate end of computer development. Achually for 10 years nothing exciting happened. Until maybe 1992 when you could install your very own Unix.

I always wondered why the desktop revolution didn't really take off until the 90s after seeing that the Mac was released in the early 80s.

Windows for Workgroups/NT.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#23

Post by johnswas » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

The thing I learned is that if there is "bad news" about anything you have invest more in it.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#24

Post by tyingq » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

anonu wrote: post #13

Was this the actual feeling at the time? Or just one reporters perspective, spun into a story. I feel like the ad for $7.95 prime rib is probably a more relevant data point from the past than this article. Edit: Gourmet House: https://www.bismarckcafe.com/blogs/260/remembering-gourmet-h...

Still $8.99 in Vegas :)

https://www.fremontcasino.com/whats-new/offers/tony-romas-pr...

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#25

Post by gpspake » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

ChicagoDave wrote: post #9

Not one hour of college after graduating high school in 1982 and I’ve been working in IT non-stop. Calculus? Physics? Ridiculous.

Academia's gotta keep a tight grip on that knowledge. Can't possibly be successful without the gatekeepers.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#26

Post by nostrademons » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

anonu wrote: post #13

Was this the actual feeling at the time? Or just one reporters perspective, spun into a story. I feel like the ad for $7.95 prime rib is probably a more relevant data point from the past than this article. Edit: Gourmet House: https://www.bismarckcafe.com/blogs/260/remembering-gourmet-h...

Entered college in 2001 just as the dot-com bubble was bursting. Freshman year graduating seniors were still pretty optimistic. Sophomore year I declared as a physics major, despite having worked at a dot-com and enjoying programming for fun, as a bunch of family friends started floating "Why would you go into software when all the jobs are being outsourced to India anyway?" Junior year I knew that I liked programming more than physics, but saying I wanted to go into software was still a dicey conversation to bring up. Senior year Facebook & YouTube came out, I switched to a CS major, and I started getting more "Oh, that's a lucrative career, you'll do fine" from older people.

For an older perspective, my father-in-law was an EE in Silicon Valley through the 80s and 90s. He said that the period from 1989-1994 were dark days - the job market was stagnant, nobody was really getting rich, housing prices in Silicon Valley were going down. If people were saying it in 1987 they were a little prescient, but there was definitely a mood in the early 90s that PCs were a fad that was over and the Next Big Thing would be some other form of tech.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#27

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:42 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #18

timonoko wrote: post #10

This was the time of the Turbo-button. Programs were made for 4.77 MHz IBM PC, so you had to slowdown the 30 MHz by default. The Turbo speed was mostly useless, and so it seemed to be the ultimate end of computer development. Achually for 10 years nothing exciting happened. Until maybe 1992 when you could install your very own Unix.

I always wondered why the desktop revolution didn't really take off until the 90s after seeing that the Mac was released in the early 80s.

Cheap IBM PC clones running pirated videogames on Windows sparked the "real" boom of PCs in homes. Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake etc.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#28

Post by kristopolous » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

I wish this were the case now. The field has eternal Septembered.

Tools no longer empower, they constrict and patronize developers, setting up ceremonial barriers that are merely performative while restricting and shepherding users away from creativity independence and ownership into proscriptive systems.

The other disciplines actually take systems of qualifications seriously. Doctors, mechanical and civil engineers, lawyers, this is how they avoid crackpots, frauds and other Dunning Kruger claims.

We do no such thing. This damage control tech is the way of bumper laning everything while simultaneously kneecapping the serious practitioners.

Computer programming is trashed by the flood, nothing positive is coming of this. Like the Luddites who stood at the Dawn of the March of Intellect, the destination we are coursed for we ride to on waves of destruction. There's better ways possible.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#29

Post by IncRnd » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:45 AM UTC

anonu wrote: post #13

Was this the actual feeling at the time? Or just one reporters perspective, spun into a story. I feel like the ad for $7.95 prime rib is probably a more relevant data point from the past than this article. Edit: Gourmet House: https://www.bismarckcafe.com/blogs/260/remembering-gourmet-h...

I don't recall this being the feeling of people who I knew at the time. However, I have to admit, the quality of the writing in this article was much higher than I tend to see in today's news blurbs of similar length.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#30

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

timonoko wrote: post #10

This was the time of the Turbo-button. Programs were made for 4.77 MHz IBM PC, so you had to slowdown the 30 MHz by default. The Turbo speed was mostly useless, and so it seemed to be the ultimate end of computer development. Achually for 10 years nothing exciting happened. Until maybe 1992 when you could install your very own Unix.

> Achually for 10 years nothing exciting happened. Until maybe 1992 when you could install your very own Unix.

What was happening in the span 1982-1992 was that everything imaginable was coming out as a peripheral for the IBM PC. It wasn't just stuff like disks and printers and graphics cards. Month after month you'd see something new, and realize "Yeah, I guess you could do that as a computer peripheral", but it would be something that you never dreamed of that way before.

And all that stuff enabled a ton of software. It was an explosion of new capabilities.