Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

Sorry but I have to completely disagree that someday all we will need is just coders. Code is just a way of getting a computer to do something specific. So what should a computer do? Usually a computer should do something identified as valuable. So who figures out what is valuable? Typically everyone else... business people, researchers, administrators, doctors, analysts, etc. Having just a bunch of coders would be essentially worthless in that we will always need people in other roles to figure out how different techniques can be applied in different fields. After that is identified, the coders can then get to work on figuring out how to get a computer to do it.

"Better, because writing code is a creative act which can be done with or without a traditional (antiquated?) office-based job, and can create enormous personal and economic value."

This article emphasizes making, which I think is important. It reminds me of my great-grandfather, who came to the US from Poland and started a clothing manufacturing business (that still exists to this day). I learned to make custom-tailored clothing by being in the business.

There was an opportunity back then for anyone willing to learn to make something and sell it. There simply aren't too many of these kind of opportunities today. Coding is definitely one of them. All I have learned from tailoring- the act of making something from scratch- has helped me as a developer. And vice versa.

"Most academic training is focused on teaching students theory, not practice."

The maker type of entrepreneurship requires a practical, work-based education, and college doesn't always provide for that. You learn to make by doing. It's circular: You learn to make by making. The resources for learning to code are readily available, and anyone willing to start making their own projects can teach themselves.

Another thing school can't teach you is what to make. This is where learning to code comes in: if you have experience with something else, you can code tools for that something else.

Exactly. I think that metalsmithing in the past would be a better analog for programming today. It is difficult, takes years of apprenticeship to do well, but it still provides a valuable service (horseshoes among many other things).

Not everybody back then were smiths though, just like not everyone today will be programmers. Programming definitely has a great impact on society (like smithing did), but if you consider the incredibly important impact that farmers have, they hardly even compare.

Actually law and medicine would be interesting to me if it wasn't for all the hazing rituals and the down right sociopathic evil of the entire justice system. Law and accounting reminded me of learning a codebase when I took a few classes in them at university.

It's an interesting question how much of the population is really capable of becoming productive coders in a professional setting. Certainly we already have a wide class of coders doing things like advanced Excel spreadsheets which require much of the critical thinking required to write general-purpose code, but even there you find that there is a distinct subset of people who really grok it and break through the next level of creative problem-solving ability.

I would argue that unless you can break through that wall where you have the tenacity, will and base knowledge to debug anything that is thrown your way, you will not be employable professionally as a coder because inevitably you will get hung up on something. I'm not sure the obvious outward computer-geek level passion is required, but I certainly think you need a real sense of satisfaction with the problem solving aspect of the job. How much of the population possesses that? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing far less than half.

My prediction instead is that hackers will continue hacking until we achieve artificial intelligence, and then computers themselves will do the heavy lifting and we can all be creative directors. At that point we will have to contend with far more difficult existential issues such as how to structure society and happiness for a species that is evolved from a difficult struggle for survival in a world where automation accounts for every physical need. Maybe philosophy will be the next mass profession.