Times are great for programmers now. How does it end? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by josevalerio » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 5:41 AM UTC

HillRat wrote: post #75

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 think this tends to overestimate the amount of time folks who aren't developers want to spend developing. Most spreadsheets, even of the complex variety, exist as steps in a chain of human decisions -- they basically replace notepaper and calculators. (Spreadsheets that act as inputs to software chains are usually created by developers.) Having previously been involved in architecting and building enterprise low-co…

Couldn’t agree more with your second paragraph. A phrase that’s been drilled into me in the past year is “undifferentiated heavy lifting that’s not core to your business”.

The things you listed just don’t matter from the business point of view. They don’t care how the app works, who runs it, what cloud provider is hosting it, what tools were used to build it, only that it works when it needs to and they will happily pay the bill so their employees can focus on making the company money doing what they are good at. Zack Kanter from Stedi talks a lot about this.

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

#162

Post by bee_rider » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 5:42 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #133

JohnBooty wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect layers of abstraction to continue to build up and programming to become something like using spreadsheets to do your actual task. But in general, people have been saying this for 50+ years. It hasn't happened yet for (at least) two reasons. 1. Increased demands on programmers have increased at least as quickly as their productivity has skyrocketed. 2. Non-trivial systems will require some non-trivial e…

Something that I think about, is that we live in the greatest tech driven economy in the history of humanity, and it grows at a rate of about 2% per year. What I don't believe is that every programming activity contributes equally to that growth. By "activity" I loosely mean anything from a solo programmer to a large software business. Some are assets to the economy, others are liabilities, yet they pay the same sala…

Could also be that much of the work is zero-sum. For example ads to some extent just shift consumers from one company to another without actually creating anything (although, some might cause new demand). The stock market is exists to allocate resources more efficiently, but some of the shorter-term stuff looks more like pouring a ton of math and software work into coming up with better gambling strategies...

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

#163

Post by VMtest » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 5:51 AM UTC

shiryel wrote: post #82

ses1984 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers don’t have to go to expensive law school or medical school. Programmers don’t have to pass the bar. Programmers don’t have to work 80+ hours a week for years in residency. Programmers don’t have to work face to face with infected people and put themselves in harm’s way. Times are, imo, much better for programmers than doctors or lawyers right now.

That makes me think, doctors and lawyers have intensive training to minimize risk for other persons, each day our field has more impact on other's life, I wonder if we are heading to something similar...

> have intensive training to minimize risk for other persons > I wonder if we are heading to something similar...

We can't, unless there is like one standard CPU architecture, operating system etc for server, desktop, mobile phone with minimal updates....

how much to study and memorize, and about the zero-days..

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

#164

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #49

osrec wrote: post #27

I actually think high quality programmers will always be in high demand. Poor programmers will get found out sooner, as the general population becomes more technical.

When will they become more technical though? My kids are far less technical than I was, and their friends as well. Try as I might, they simply aren’t interested. Is some other part of the population experiencing some kind of technical advancement amongst their kids? I don’t see it.

I think there was a generational sweet spot.

That is the first generation where computers were affordable enough to be 'personal computers' and in the home.

Before then kids weren't able to be exposed to computing early enough, and after then games became shrink-wrapped so kids didn't have to become technically minded to get their games running.

Children growing up with a computer at home were doing all

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

#165

Post by HideousKojima » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 6:02 AM UTC

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 weren't doing too hot about a decade ago, especially entry level. Part of the problem is that just about every university wants a law school. Revenue is similar to a med school, but with far lower costs to operate, it's basically free money.

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

#166

Post by mslate » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 6:08 AM UTC

vparikh wrote: post #128

All it takes is two things: 1. The investor bubble to bust - and I think this will happen due to the soon to be rising interest rates making capital much more difficult too secure. 2. One of the big employers dumps devs into the market - say one of the FAANG companies has a sever downturn and lays of thousands of devs. Don't think it can happen - Facebook and Google are just a few regulations away from mass lay offs…

#2 already happened in 2020 with Uber & Lyft significantly cutting their engineering workforce (but not fully like a bankruptcy might entail).

I remember feeling concern about the local SF job market at the time, it was totally unfounded.

The demand for software engineers that can ship product is very deep.

FAANG engineers might not like the non-FAANG offers they might get at smaller firms, but they are solid jobs & you can easily retire on the timeframe set by the previous generation's yardstick (62-70 y/o).

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

#167

Post by irrational » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 6:11 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #114

twblalock wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been predicting that outsourcing would lower US salaries and take US jobs for over 20 years and it hasn't happened. Nothing is different now.

> Nothing is different now. 1. Venture capital is making major investments in India, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. At a scale never before seen. 2. Offices will never happen again. Now employees could be in Antarctica for all you're concerned -- as long as they're on a relatively friendly time zone with the rest of their team, it'll work. This time is different.

From the USA, there aren’t very many friendly time zones. Both Europe and India are absolutely terrible time zone wise. I absolutely hate having very early and very late meetings (i.e., anything before 9 and after 5 Pacific time). Central and South America on the other hand…

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

#168

Post by JohnBooty » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 6:20 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #133

JohnBooty wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect layers of abstraction to continue to build up and programming to become something like using spreadsheets to do your actual task. But in general, people have been saying this for 50+ years. It hasn't happened yet for (at least) two reasons. 1. Increased demands on programmers have increased at least as quickly as their productivity has skyrocketed. 2. Non-trivial systems will require some non-trivial e…

Something that I think about, is that we live in the greatest tech driven economy in the history of humanity, and it grows at a rate of about 2% per year. What I don't believe is that every programming activity contributes equally to that growth. By "activity" I loosely mean anything from a solo programmer to a large software business. Some are assets to the economy, others are liabilities, yet they pay the same sala…

It's hard to say, because so much of the work of keeping a company running is so far removed from income generation or anything else.

Does cleaning the company toilets contribute to the company's growth? I mean, not really, but on the other hand if nobody ever does it then it becomes an impediment.

A lot of programming work is like that.

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

#169

Post by donatj » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 6:36 AM UTC

> No code / Low code

> People have been trying this for decades and it never really worked out. I can’t think of a single product that was able to get to any meaningful degree of success running on top of some low code platform.

Every. Single. Squarespace. Website.

You probably interacted with several today without even knowing it. They’re everywhere.

No code solutions have almost entirely killed the need for developers of shopping carts for small businesses. That was my bread and butter in the mid aughts.

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

#170

Post by goldenshale » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 6:36 AM UTC

If you look at the data, software jobs are growing far faster than new graduates in computer science. A quick google search just found well over 250,000 open positions in the US, with about 50,000 new graduates per year. I'd bet we have decades more of high demand and high salaries for people with CS degrees. I wouldn't be surprised if low-code tools get good enough to power many websites though, so I wouldn't be quite as bullish on code-camp graduates seeing the same growth in salaries.