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Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

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Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#141

Post by pinephoneguy »

mrtksn wrote: post #17

I think it ends with everyone becoming a developer. Making machines do things will never end. However, the tools for making machines do things is evolving very quickly. The general art of being a developer will continue to get specialized and at some point specialists at any field would be expected to be able to program their machines. Very few people are learning how to run their servers and much more are moving int…

I have more hope in education improvement than tooling improvement. There's that famous study where it was found most people can't communicate the difference between xor and or. If you can't do that then you can't read/write specs even for yourself.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#142

Post by strken »

joe5150 wrote: post #125
strken wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about what you're allowed to do, it's about what professionals in a field need to do to get to the top. I've been programming since I was 8. I've been drawing since I was 29. I will probably never reach the same percentile of drawing ability that I have with programming ability. That's okay for me because I enjoy it anyway, but from the perspective of training people to do their best work, starting younger c…

people don’t generally tend to feel this way about training to work in medicine or hvac or law. or even language, really. obviously children learn how to use language, but training for a professional job as a teacher or a translator (or whatever) doesn’t start at age 8.

Kids learn how to read, write, and speak at least one language. Kids who learn two or more presumably turn into better translators. Potential lawyers have access to debate clubs and are trained in public speaking. I know one HVAC technician, and he's been working on cars and bikes with his dad since early childhood. Even doctors get taught biology.

I pretty firmly believe nearly anyone can learn to contribute in any area given enough time, but there's a lot of time between 0 and 18, and it's prime learning time when brain plasticity is high and responsibilities are low.

Is it really that controversial to say childhood shapes a kid's future?

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#143

Post by jltsiren »

TameAntelope wrote: post #10

Is this actually true? Are CEOs lamenting their engineering labor costs like this? I feel like by now the cost of engineering labor has demonstrated its value over and over again, to the point where most CEOs accept the cost of engineering is more or less a shared expense across competition, and not really something to be reduced.

The value of an engineer depends on the business. When software engineers are scarce, their compensation increases until the market has priced out sufficiently many potential employers. Those employers will then decide that they are better off not hiring a (good) software engineer than hiring one at the market rate, because the engineer does not create enough value to justify their cost.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#144

Post by mrtksn »

CydeWeys wrote: post #63
tupac_speedrap wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is not touching a programming language until college a bad thing? Some people just want to make a living out of software engineering and then go home and they aren't sweating over Web 4.0 or whatever we are on now.

18 is awfully old to start learning something for the first time. Imagine saying the same thing about math, reading, or history. It's harder to pick things up when you're older, and it leaves fewer people capable of it. See also: learning human languages.

18 or any age is alright. In college we had a class coded IS100, which stands for "Information Systems 100". It was so basic that unlike the other 1st year courses that were coded 101, this one was coded with 100. In this class people will be learning how to operate a mouse, close a computer, navigate to a website etc.

Extremely basic stuff that was completely new to kids that grew up in a poor family that couldn't afford buy them a computer. This is in a country where college education is free or close to free, you just need to score high to get into a college and as a result many smart students who later become engineers learned using a computer there.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#145

Post by Apocryphon »

strken wrote: post #142
joe5150 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people don’t generally tend to feel this way about training to work in medicine or hvac or law. or even language, really. obviously children learn how to use language, but training for a professional job as a teacher or a translator (or whatever) doesn’t start at age 8.

Kids learn how to read, write, and speak at least one language. Kids who learn two or more presumably turn into better translators. Potential lawyers have access to debate clubs and are trained in public speaking. I know one HVAC technician, and he's been working on cars and bikes with his dad since early childhood. Even doctors get taught biology. I pretty firmly believe nearly anyone can learn to contribute in any…

No, the controversial statement in question was the claim that "18 is awfully old to start learning something for the first time" wrt programming.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#146

Post by hackerfromthefu »

nostromo wrote: post #25
commandlinefan wrote: post #14

Lawyers and doctors have always enjoyed “good times” and there’s no reason to think they’ll stop. Why not programmers, too?

Lawyers and doctors in the US effectively have union-style control on the supply of lawyers and doctors, via the Bar Association and AMA. Developers have no such labor association. We also have headwinds like H1-Bs, that push down our wages.

Developer burnout or attrition for various reasons is a real thing.

If salaries drop, even more programmers will leave the industry, so its a natural balancing effect.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#147

Post by pinephoneguy »

Kaze404 wrote: post #76
CydeWeys wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18 is awfully old to start learning something for the first time. Imagine saying the same thing about math, reading, or history. It's harder to pick things up when you're older, and it leaves fewer people capable of it. See also: learning human languages.

This is the saddest thing I've read on this website. I hope for your own sake you allow yourself to learn new things in the future.

Of course we try new things. The things you learn as a child get internalized very differently than the things you learn as an adult though.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#148

Post by lanstin »

mrtksn wrote: post #17

I think it ends with everyone becoming a developer. Making machines do things will never end. However, the tools for making machines do things is evolving very quickly. The general art of being a developer will continue to get specialized and at some point specialists at any field would be expected to be able to program their machines. Very few people are learning how to run their servers and much more are moving int…

Re: cloud stuff, sure I do less management of physical machines, but because I understand how stuff actually works, when I worked at an AWS shop, I was the go-to person for debugging and fixing problems with compute or network. And because I can write understandable code, I was able to move the infrastructure from point and click to repeatable terraform deploys that actually have a chance to fulfill the promise of cheap and scalable infrastructure (rather than rebuilding "every CPU is sacred" but in the cloud). Clear thinking, applying the power of "make the computer do it" and knowing how stuff works is always going to be super-useful, as everything turns into software.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#149

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mrtksn wrote: post #17

I think it ends with everyone becoming a developer. Making machines do things will never end. However, the tools for making machines do things is evolving very quickly. The general art of being a developer will continue to get specialized and at some point specialists at any field would be expected to be able to program their machines. Very few people are learning how to run their servers and much more are moving int…

In a few thousand years, programming will be a forgotten profession and only program archeologists will remain to scavenge code from the past into uses for the present. At least that’s what Verner Vinge wrote in one of his science fiction books.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#150

Post by bedobi »

Apocryphon wrote: post #129
bedobi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is disputing the economy has boom and bust cycles. But despite the great depression, two world wars, the cold war, the dot com bubble, the 08 crash, insane environmental destruction, climate change etc etc the economy is growing, the global population is growing, and rather than more and more people fighting over less and less resources, pretty much everyone everywhere is healthier and more prosp…

We have been living at the sufferance of zero interest rate policies for the last dozen years. It's hard to say what happens when the music starts slowing down. It just sounds like an extremely hubristic statement, mocking the very fates themselves, to claim that unlimited economic growth will continue indefinitely, that this era of cheap capital will continue indefinitely, and there wouldn't even be one economic dow…

Literally no one is saying there can't or won't be downturns or hiccups - eg, two world wars definitely qualify as both. But even they couldn't stop the overwhelming, hundreds-year long global trend towards simultaneously increasing population AND prosperity. (which, btw, definitely did not have zero interest rates) But hey, don't take my word for it, see for yourself at eg https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
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