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

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

#431

Post by Damogran6 » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #402

hooby wrote: post #212

Programmers are increasingly needed for *everything*. I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch - can't plow their fields, when the gps-software that drives the tractor isn't working. Apart from that, programming is becoming every other job - as far as domain knowledge is concerned. I've personally experienced (multiple times!) professional ac…

I agree and I don't think many people understand the implications. They complain that AI-driving is not good enough (it's not) but they hardly understand the consequence if it was (millions will need to pivot to something else). I have a much better example: Invisalign -> https://www.invisalign.com This is straight into doctors (orthodontists) territory. To explain the concept, a scanner will scan your jaw and then I…

While the need for Orthodontists is going to go DOWN.

I see the same thing with the cloud. I’ve racked a server or two in my career, run a cable or four to a managed switch, and deployed PCs to desktops…

ALL of that is going away. There’s going to be a small subset of people managing datacenters, rather than populations of people in metro areas managing datacenters for companies of any size. Laptops are deployed pre-configured and they just hook up to the available Wifi…that labor is going away.

Good? Bad? I dunno, it just is…the Buggywhip manufacturers went and did something else.

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

#432

Post by simonh » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

lytefm wrote: post #374

dom96 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans. Wow, this is a very prescient quote. I think we will hear this repeated often in the years to come.

There are two ways to look at it, though: One is to lament how previously specialized professions like taxi drivers become replaced by low-skilled laborers who just need to drive and use an app. The other way is to appreciate how technology augments what humans can do and be more productive. It's not like all accountants got fired when Excel started being a thing: It's that they got way more work done! There is no si…

>There is no sign of a decrease in demand for labour in countries like the US or Germany:

In fact there is growing evidence that increased automation actually increases demand for workers in the economy. It might reduce employment in the actual factory itself, but the remaining jobs there are more skilled and technical, the higher efficiency draws investment and allows companies to scale up, there's a significant trickle-down to the surrounding economy.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2020/06/18/why-deep-...

This makes sense when you look at the history of automation, but it's only recently that the processes that underly the way automation actually stimulates and enhances an economy have been better understood.

There is an argument that AI is different because it will substitute humans more completely, but we are a long, long way off from anything like that. The kinds of automation we have now, in terms of the effects on the economy and employment, are much more like automation over the last century or two than strong AI that renders humans fundamentally obsolete.

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

#433

Post by nathias » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #176

I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…

I have hopes that remote and DAOs will be the tools to do this.

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

#434

Post by bluGill » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #332

Dave3of5 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DSU shouldn't be for non-technical people. They literally should not speak at all during this daily meeting if they are even there. It's for Devs only to make sure they are not blocked and they are communicating what they are working on. In my last company the non-tech people weren't allowed and the DSU was only for engineering. It is not a daily status meeting! If it has turned into this then it should be scrapp…

> It's for Devs only to make sure they are not blocked[..] If in the course of one's work one becomes blocked, would one really wait until the following day's stand-up to tell anyone about this? If so then I think both the worker and the company have bigger issues than whether the stand-up itself is a good use of time. The mind boggles.

> If in the course of one's work one becomes blocked, would one really wait until the following day's stand-up to tell anyone about this?

There is hard block and soft block. Hard block means you have no clue how to continue and so of course you should get help right away. Soft block means you have ideas and are working on it, but - unknown to you - someone else on the team knows exactly how to solve that problem and could solve it for you in a few minutes or you can spend all weeks working out the answer. The soft block is a lot more common - engineers are smart people who can solve complex problems, but we often fail to use the help of someone else who has already solved it. Thus the standup should be able airing problems that you just need to finish typing the solution in. Sometimes someone else will say "I can help you do this faster", others it is just keep working until you get it.

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

#435

Post by Gravityloss » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #272

ggm wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No lawyer, accountant, doctor, engineer, scientist or other professional stands up each day to report *to their peers* on their progress Doctors do something not far removed. It's really important to them to caucus on case management. I think other professions may do the same.

> Doctors do something not far removed. It's really important to them to caucus on case management. Maybe, but it is removed. From my recollection, doctors don't standup each day to report on what they have or have not done and their individual progress, they report on purely on problematic patients that could do with expertise from a different expert, and it's not a daily progress report. If software development fol…

At least here, doctors have a meeting every morning.

It could have actually inspired the daily standup. With the tradition of taking inspiration from surgical teams and everything...

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

#436

Post by simonh » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

hooby wrote: post #212

Programmers are increasingly needed for *everything*. I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch - can't plow their fields, when the gps-software that drives the tractor isn't working. Apart from that, programming is becoming every other job - as far as domain knowledge is concerned. I've personally experienced (multiple times!) professional ac…

>we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch...

They're still perfectly capable of milking their cows the old way, it just doesn't make any sense to do so. I think this is a non-problem.

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

#437

Post by BirAdam » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

It ends the same way it did the last time. A giant tech market crash, more market consolidation, and massive cultural change.

At this point, things move so fast that operating systems are shipped with known bugs, security flaws, and half baked ideas. They are then patched via over-the-net updates. I think this will stop. People will go back to more traditional development paradigms out of necessity. They also won’t completely trash code bases that have been patched to the point of being reliable and somewhat secure just to make a new thing no one wanted.

My only other prediction is that people will eventually be more conservative about picking tech stacks. They will want proven track records.

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

#438

Post by coldtea » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

Dave3of5 wrote: post #282

lelanthran wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. This is actually quite interesting as I was just talking to a few other professionals about this in a social setting. I was the only one in software development. I mentioned how stand-ups work briefl…

The DSU shouldn't be for non-technical people. They literally should not speak at all during this daily meeting if they are even there. It's for Devs only to make sure they are not blocked and they are communicating what they are working on. In my last company the non-tech people weren't allowed and the DSU was only for engineering. It is not a daily status meeting! If it has turned into this then it should be scrapp…

>It's for Devs only to make sure they are not blocked and they are communicating what they are working on

Devs on their own could do that, and do it better, before such BS like DSU was invented...

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

#439

Post by gureddio » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #176

I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…

I totally see your point of view. However in my experience, there is not enough developer competency for this to fully work. I can imagine lots of developers going off task if things worked in this way - there would be too much freedom, and with that temptation, to over engineer and re-engineer

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

#440

Post by bluGill » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #403

logifail wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's for Devs only to make sure they are not blocked[..] If in the course of one's work one becomes blocked, would one really wait until the following day's stand-up to tell anyone about this? If so then I think both the worker and the company have bigger issues than whether the stand-up itself is a good use of time. The mind boggles.

On this same site you can read all day about developers complaining about interruptions. Now a company has big issues if someone puts a task aside to do something else until the following day where they will avoid interrupting someone?

I have come to realize as a senior engineer my job is to be interrupted. I'm equal to any better than any non-entry level engineer (and entry level will advance fast) at typing in implementations, but because I take interruptions from people I can tell them the part they are missing to solve their problem - 5 minutes of conversation with me can turn several weeks of trying to find a solution into 1 day of implementing it. It only takes a few of the above to make me a 10x engineer because I'm helping others avoid false starts in fixing their problems. (and of course when I interrupt someone else they in turn do the same for me - this is a two way street)