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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?

#531

Post by LeifCarrotson »

simonh wrote: post #487
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual farmer could do it and could fill a milk pail for his family's needs for the day, but he couldn't fill a tanker truck for Krogers. He could walk the fields and sow seed by the fistful from a bag over his shoulders, but he couldn't drill 30 acres per hour like he could with a modern tractor and planter. Technology in agriculture is a force multiplier that has allowed the fraction of the population emplo…

>If Y22k hit John Deere's DRM this spring, some 50% of fields would lay fallow, and we'd have 50% less food in the fall....it would be devastating. I actually doubt it, those aren't the only tractors in the world, or even the US. It would be annoying, and expensive, but hardly the end of the world. Also consider that the fact these things are automated makes us less susceptible to other forms of supply chain disrupti…

John Deere has 53% of the US tractor market and 60% of the combine market. They're not the only tractors in the US, true, just most of them.

The machines are run late into the night, 7 days a week, during the narrow window of weather appropriate for planting and harvesting seasons. Prices would skyrocket, which would reduce demand, and yes, consumption would change, and yes, food would be imported...but at the margins, millions would starve.

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

#532

Post by moron4hire »

schwartzworld wrote: post #286
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…

> Every single one of them (all professionals, like I said) were adamant that they would leave any position that managed them no better than a burger-flipper. Such entitled garbage. Restaurants manage people much more tightly, and often with very abusive practices and wage theft added in. Stand-up is nothing compared to having an underpaid alcoholic yell at you because you leaned against the wall 2/3 of the way throu…

No, I've literally had software jobs like that. I've actually had restaurant jobs that were better than some of my worst software jobs.

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

#533

Post by Apocryphon »

baq wrote: post #427
Apocryphon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

it absolutely isn't in the context. you start to learn maths in kindergarten. you don't start to program computers there, usually. there are very good reasons not to do that (screen time!), but it will make learning to program easier later in life.

Learning to program early makes later programming easier is an uncontroversial, anodyne statement. Saying that 18 is too late to start learning is, because that is discounting everyone who learns at that age or later.

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

#534

Post by JohnBooty »

8note wrote: post #221
hackerfromthefu wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems perhaps an idealistic take on how effective the layers of abstraction are. To examine just one of the examples >> these days it's just a form you hav to fill and express some rules about accessing the resources in "plain English". I'm of the opinion getting the cloud to run your systems effectively, and without blowing a large hole in your budget, may be a little harder than it seems from that sentence.

as far as expressing things in plain english goes, id think of the various voiceboxes. i can get the computer to turn my lights on and off using plain english, along with some other things

Those are simple states - binary on/off states for the lights, etc.

It falls apart fast when you start trying to explain actual engineering stuff in plain English: iterations, complex nested conditional logic, error handling, massaging and sanitizing data, etc.

You could describe each of those steps in English, but what have you gained at that point? You've still had to express all of the same exact complexity, but you've done it in a language that is far more clunky than a programming language designed for the task.

It's like trying to tell a musician how to play one of Beethoven's symphonies using English instead of sheet music. Even if you could, why? You've expressed the the same exact thing, but in language that is orders of magnitude clunkier.

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

#535

Post by JohnBooty »

300bps wrote: post #515
JohnBooty wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are exceptions to the rule. I know good engineers who started quite late in life. But in general, I don't see a deluge of kids eager to become developers. Still seems very niche just like it always has been.

I know good engineers who started quite late in life. My experience matches yours exactly. Almost all of the good engineers that started late in life in my experience are just plain extremely smart and would excel at anything they did. One friend that comes to mind wrote his PhD thesis in chemical engineering and then switched to being a software engineer. He is too motivated and too smart to fail at it even though h…

Yeah: the vast majority of software engineering work is far from rocket science, and any reasonably intelligent (upper 50%? upper 25%? upper 10%?) person can do it.

To me the real test is mentality. The spark. You have to enjoy it enough to do it for 2,000+ hours a year. That seems rare.

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

#536

Post by analyte123 »

simonh wrote: post #487
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual farmer could do it and could fill a milk pail for his family's needs for the day, but he couldn't fill a tanker truck for Krogers. He could walk the fields and sow seed by the fistful from a bag over his shoulders, but he couldn't drill 30 acres per hour like he could with a modern tractor and planter. Technology in agriculture is a force multiplier that has allowed the fraction of the population emplo…

>If Y22k hit John Deere's DRM this spring, some 50% of fields would lay fallow, and we'd have 50% less food in the fall....it would be devastating. I actually doubt it, those aren't the only tractors in the world, or even the US. It would be annoying, and expensive, but hardly the end of the world. Also consider that the fact these things are automated makes us less susceptible to other forms of supply chain disrupti…

Crops have to be harvested in a fairly narrow window. You can't just let the crop sit there for a month while you wait for other people to finish using their tractors.

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

#537

Post by SteveMoody73 »

rixed wrote: post #461
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…

Not only are devs micromanaged by any figure of authority with not much tech knowledge and sometime not even business knowledge and freshly landed from a different industry, if not from school, but devs are also happy to be, quite frankly, considered as mere children. Other skilled professions do not either communicate with memes, have slides and swings in the office (as seen in some Google offices), etc. If part of…

I've always worked in small companies and been responsible for getting the work done, as a solo developer in a lot of cases here was nobody to blame if things went wrong. In a larger company now but it's still a smaller place, have the same attitude to work even now.

Maybe it's this environment has made me a more serious person than some of the other developers I know. Don't use memes in conversations with collegues and certainly have no interest in toys and games in the office.

Would love to not be responsible and not treat work as a fun place but don't see how that's possible if you care about your job and the work that you produce.

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

#538

Post by lytefm »

simonh wrote: post #432
lytefm wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tri…

Yes, exactly. Arntz et al [2019] also put this into a much more reasonable perspective that „We'll lose our jobs due to Software and AI“:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334386191_Digitaliz...

They also conclude that only 9% of all US jobs are actually at risk due to automation, using a much more reasonable approch that Frey and Osbourne [2017] who conlude 47% of the population with a risk > 70%:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00401...

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

#539

Post by BlargMcLarg »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #492
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 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. 100%. It is completely absurd to watch. This sort of subordinate attitude pulls us all down. I think the issue boils down to: * new devs are not going to rock the boat * lots of people see software dev as as way to be successful within existing cor…

>new devs are not going to rock the boat

I've done this as a new dev. In the end a few new devs aren't going to change things against stubborn old talent and a large swat of new devs passively standing by, until the proof is there. But that's the exact problem: these systems are so large, you need people to be willing to risk extrapolating a PoC or be willing to invest until the proof is there right in front of their eyes. With how risk-averse most companies are, the odds of this happening are miniscule. Unless you wish to invest your own time, effort and risk (which I don't think should be the answer, despite how often it is given).

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

#540

Post by blindmute »

jghn wrote: post #484
sealthedeal wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best standup habits we had was just posting quickly in a slack channel at a certain time saying, "no update", or "blocked", it was low touch. I have always thought that a standup is just a way of being micro managed. If an engineer is blocked, why would they not just figure out how to get unblocked? Isnt that their job?

The part of standup identifying blockers is to figure out when someone doesn't realize their blocked and/or they're spinning their tires a bit. If someone is blocked they should reach out immediately. Instead, standups provide the team the ability to identify roadblocks the developer might not realize. Perhaps you're working on something and I've been down that path before, and know your solution won't work for reaso…

Has this ever actually happened though?
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