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Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

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Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#81

Post by dextorious »

michaelochurch wrote: post #80
Nitramp wrote: post #23

Citation missing, but I've read a paper that claimed rather convincingly that you need a certain mindset both to be good at programming and to enjoy programming (unsurprisingly, this comes hand in hand). It's not really problem solving, it's rather a specific kind of structured thinking. It's the attention to detail and the will to think through every aspect of an issue, to find a complete solution. That's also a use…

I don't remember and wasn't able to find it either, but I know which study you're talking about. There was a professor who gave his intro CS students an exam where they were supposed to interpret code. Of course, most of them had no idea what they were reading. The statement "X = X + 1" is (as a mathematical equation) garbage, even though it's legitimate in a conventional CS context (whereby '=' represents assignment…

"""The statement "X = X + 1" is (as a mathematical equation) garbage"""

Actually it could be perfectly valid, depending on the context.

For example, if + denotes the boolean AND and 1 is true, then X = 1.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#82

Post by dextorious »

Stormbringer wrote: post #40
Nitramp wrote: post #23

Citation missing, but I've read a paper that claimed rather convincingly that you need a certain mindset both to be good at programming and to enjoy programming (unsurprisingly, this comes hand in hand). It's not really problem solving, it's rather a specific kind of structured thinking. It's the attention to detail and the will to think through every aspect of an issue, to find a complete solution. That's also a use…

Well, that may be true to an extent. The other day I was working with some code that was adequate for most purposes, but didn't meet my rigorous standards (hence: attention to detail and thinking through every aspect of the issue). So I put on my "old age and treachery" hat, aka my puzzle solving hat, and came up with a better solution one that was: shorter simpler more robust The experienced programmers I know call…

"""The experienced programmers I know call this cheating"""

Call what cheating? You haven't described anything that could even remotely be called cheating.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#83

Post by dextorious »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #71
gmartres wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an exercise... flip the table and think if our industry was going away and you needed to find a job in a completely new industry/job role. Mathematician, without hesitation.

Machinist or high school math teacher.

Male model.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#84

Post by kls »

randomdata wrote: post #79
agscala wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and also I'd like to add something. While it's not really an attractive job to many people, it's also relatively difficult for most people. Farming is different in that it's easy for anyone to do (it's just manual labor). Realistically, you can't expect a large portion of the population to be capable of programming.

> Farming is different in that it's easy for anyone to do (it's just manual labor). I have a small grain farm and also develop software professionally. I find software development is the easier of the two, personally. Problems in software all go back to the rules of computational theory. It's not exactly easy, but the space is fairly limited and can be understood with some effort. Problems in farming are all over the…

I grew up on a citrus farm in Florida, I was the first generation to leave the far after NAFTA due to the fact that we could no longer compete as a family farm. While Farming has a lot of variables that cannot be controlled and is grueling work, I did not find it to be any more mentally difficult than development. There is a lot of science in farming for sure, but one thing about farming that is very different than software development is that only one person needs to do the thinking and can then delegate to less inclined individuals. The structure of the workforce is different in that a single thinker can do the processing for a group, in software there is no such luxury, if I do all the thinking for another developer then I might as well take the 10 minutes to write it down and save the salary of the other developer. That's the big difference, roles can be delegated in some professions, in others they just cant. To some extent they can be in software, you can have a test developer, and a build manager but for the most part each one is working out specific, unique problems in their domain.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#85

Post by oflannabhra »

capkutay wrote: post #14
moocow01 wrote: post #8

I think the shortage of software development skills really has to do with the lack of there being enough people who get impassioned with this kind of stuff. When I step out of my bubble I realize that its really difficult to find cultural-personality fits for what building software requires. Most people are just not like 'us' for better or worse. Most people don't get giddy over implementing a new algorithm or buildi…

"When I step out of my bubble I realize that its really difficult to find cultural-personality fits for what building software requires." I absolutely agree with this statement. When programming, you'll always hit brick walls; times when you're stuck and feel like there's nothing you can do about it. That's when your genuine interest in programming and serious attention to detail must get you past the hurdles. It's n…

Exactly. Learning to program is an exercise in learning how to maintain forward momentum while stumbling. If someone isn't up for some frustration, learning to program is not going to be appealing.

Of course, this also means there is a definite, clear feeling of accomplishment and progress.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#86

Post by kls »

swalsh wrote: post #6
kls wrote: post #2

I think the piece is overly optimistic about the prospects of coding becoming common place. We have dealt with the software crisis since the inception of software and up till now, no one has proposed an even half way plausible plan on how to address it. As such until someone solve the software crisis in a measurable way that can improve the quality and predictability of code. It will remain a craft, as such only the…

This is of course assuming that programming in the future is exactly what programming today is. I find that hard to believe. I'm sure that the edge of the programming will still have a similar feeling. However the vast majority of applications are pretty simple. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the process of creating those applications become dead simple, any person with a high school education can do it, and will…

You still have to solve for the software crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_crisis it is still with us today. It is the major reason that I am not optimistic about it changing in the 10-20 year outlook baring a major shift in how software is assembled. The problem with those VB and access solutions is they inevitably do not scale. I think they are great for empowering people but I have seen the pattern too many times where one of these solutions outlives it's intent and becomes a critical system at a company that then pours far more money into keeping it alive than they ever would have should they have hired a developer in the first place. Some of the best environments I have seen is organizations that encourage business people to solution in access, but once a homegrown solution hits a certain size they hand it off as a prototype to a development team to turn it into a robust solution. Therein lies the issue, the tool that empower people inherently lead to sloppy solutions that further the software crisis, the tools that help manage quality and scalability don't empower the lay person. No one is even remotely close to crossing that chasm. If anything web apps have made the two that much further apart.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#87

Post by dextorious »

noduerme wrote: post #47

63% of Americans aged 18 to 24 couldn't find Iraq on a map after we'd been at war there for three years. So let's discount those people right away. The rest -- the other 37% -- have jobs and at least some kind of education. Most of them aren't interested in solving puzzles; they're interested in making money. That's what comes naturally to them. I'm a mid-level coder. I bill $100-$150/hr. freelance. I specialize in c…

"""63% of Americans aged 18 to 24 couldn't find Iraq on a map after we'd been at war there for three years."""

Yes, but not because they are dumb.

It's because you're NOT really at war with Iraq, and I mean not in the sense that other countries are at war.

What happens is that your central government sends some (paid) troops to fight 10,000 miles away. And they fight some states with minimal arsenals, tiny air-force etc, or tribal/urban guerrillas. Now, besides the families and friends of your troops, this "war" doesn't affect the general population at all. There are no counter-measures or attacks by the enemy in your soil, no adverse effects on economy (except some overspending), etc.

So people in the US, from Idaho to New Orleans, could care less if there is a war happening or not. Even the "support our troops" is mostly a goodwill/political statement, a self-adhesive ribbon for your car, not a matter of life and death.

Now, what happens when two countries go to an actual war, historically, is much more grave: hundreds of thousands (or even millions) die, their cities are bombed, there is compulsory drafting, thousands of refuges, food shortages and a huge toil on the nation's economy. You haven't see any such war, at least since WWII (and even that one you fought with minimum impact, --with the exception of Pearl Harbor--, thanks to the US's convenient distance from Germany/Japan).

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#88

Post by dextorious »

pyoung wrote: post #63
noduerme wrote: post #47

63% of Americans aged 18 to 24 couldn't find Iraq on a map after we'd been at war there for three years. So let's discount those people right away. The rest -- the other 37% -- have jobs and at least some kind of education. Most of them aren't interested in solving puzzles; they're interested in making money. That's what comes naturally to them. I'm a mid-level coder. I bill $100-$150/hr. freelance. I specialize in c…

"63% of Americans aged 18 to 24 couldn't find Iraq on a map after we'd been at war there for three years." This is a little off topic, but this statistic is a bit disingenuous. The stat implies that Americans are dumb because they can't locate a country on a map, despite the fact that we are heavily engaged with that country. However knowledge of foreign policy and of geography are two different domains. A person cou…

"""However knowledge of foreign policy and of geography are two different domains. A person could read an article a day about the Iraq war without ever looking at a map of the mid east."""

Yeah. And I wouldn't trust the foreign policy knowledge of such a person.

A person not interested in checking out for himself the geography of the place of war, and even the culture and history of the enemies, is just an idiot being force-fed news stories.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#89

Post by randomdata »

kls wrote: post #84
randomdata wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Farming is different in that it's easy for anyone to do (it's just manual labor). I have a small grain farm and also develop software professionally. I find software development is the easier of the two, personally. Problems in software all go back to the rules of computational theory. It's not exactly easy, but the space is fairly limited and can be understood with some effort. Problems in farming are all over the…

I grew up on a citrus farm in Florida, I was the first generation to leave the far after NAFTA due to the fact that we could no longer compete as a family farm. While Farming has a lot of variables that cannot be controlled and is grueling work, I did not find it to be any more mentally difficult than development. There is a lot of science in farming for sure, but one thing about farming that is very different than s…

> but one thing about farming that is very different than software development is that only one person needs to do the thinking and can then delegate to less inclined individuals

True, although, technically speaking, that work still exists. The programmer just delegates it to the computer instead of having people do it. There is no reason why you couldn't have an assembly line of humans hand-compiling your programs, if you really wanted to. Once you give them the basic rules, they can set forth and complete any task that you ask of them. It is just repetition at that point.

Farming is quickly going in the same direction. The delegatable jobs are, more and more, being done by machines.

Re: Could Coding Become the Next Mass Profession?

#90

Post by _dps »

noduerme wrote: post #57
Nitramp wrote: post #23

Citation missing, but I've read a paper that claimed rather convincingly that you need a certain mindset both to be good at programming and to enjoy programming (unsurprisingly, this comes hand in hand). It's not really problem solving, it's rather a specific kind of structured thinking. It's the attention to detail and the will to think through every aspect of an issue, to find a complete solution. That's also a use…

The analogy here to law is spot on. My dad and two brothers were lawyers; I grew up in an environment where getting pancakes for breakfast on Sunday required parsing statements made days earlier and finding contradictions between them and the statements being made now. Learning to think that way, however, is not just another skill in an infinite toolbox of possible skills, all of which are equal and each of which you…

Having formally studied law, mathematics, and programming, I find it odd that you could say "the beauty of law is that someone is actually right" especially in comparison to any formal system like programming or mathematics.

The law is not written in a formal language (in the mathematical/philosophical sense), and interpretation/semantics is not derivable from its representation in text; meanings derive from squishy brains responding to the text.

Having said that, I find it to be a very apt analogy; the idea behind "rule of law" is an aspiration that the law should be more like mathematics or programming rather than an ad hoc collection of rulers' decisions.

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