Questions like those are why I often feel as if software engineers often tend to over estimate their impact on a society.
Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
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Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#12None of the things you listed are something more software can affect.
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#13yc request for startups covers this
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#14Most important problems are not software problems. Software is just another tool like a hammer. Get well off with software job, then go do real, meaningful work.
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#15Why aren't investment dollars going towards more important problems?
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#16Why aren't investment dollars going towards more important problems?
This. Software devs are just fancy laborers. Laborers have no power. We have to go where the market is or we/our families starve.
If you want to solve these kinds of problems you can 1. Do it yourself, and get funding to do so and 2. Get investors to invest in it. But why would they? Solving useful social problems rarely gets you hockystick growth.
The government essentially has to incentivize it with funding/grants IMHO. Otherwise it does not move quick enough.
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#17Developers aren't gods, we mostly don't have knowledge or skills to solve the problems we listed. In all companies (except for companies which sell software or software-related services, such as Microsoft, Google etc.) developers are merely tools used by the domain experts who know how to actually solve problems in that specific domain. We as developers are mostly not different from e.g. accountants or facility manag…
"git gud!" Seriously, level up. Developers aren't gods, agreed--but they can be wizards. I'm way, way different from an accountant, sorry. I actively seek problems where the code is the most important player, not the...whatever you said, domain expert? Whatever that means. I'm not the tool, the code is the tool, and it very much can solve big, important problems.
Could you then help us all and write the code that acts like a superconductor?
How about the code that creates free food?
I got it, the code the cures cancer, you must already be on that one?
I do believe you can write the code that solves global warming while you are at it!
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#18Who is going to pay for it? There you go.
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#19Because the issues you mention are fundamentally problems of resource allocation. More specifically, allocating human labor towards potentially intractable problems in the absence of convincingly enticing incentives.
Maybe withhold making normative claims until you have some perspective.
Re: Why aren't SW developers working on more important problems?
#20How much are you paying?