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The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

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Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#81

Post by hnlmorg »

I remember being in my early 20s, learning C and Pascal, and having this one kid telling me I was learning dead languages and he’d earn 3 times more than me leaning 4GL as well as himself being 3 times smarter than everyone else too.

The only reason I remember this encounter so clearly was because he got rather annoyed, to the point of being aggressive, when I pointed out that most of the computing landscape was built on C and this wasn’t going to change any time soon.

Multiple decades later, and C-derived languages still rule the world. I do sometimes wonder if his opinion mellowed with time.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#82

Post by ahsteele »

nz wrote: post #69
manoDev wrote: post #55

There are two ways to look at it: - Software engineering is a cost center, they are middlemen between the C-level ideas and a finished product. - Software engineering is about figuring out how to automate a problem, exploring the domain, defining context, tradeoffs, and unlocking new capabilities in the process

Quasi-relevant excerpt from an odd essay (footnotes and references omitted). ``` My own eyes spent countless nights observing, with curiosity and wonder and delight, the responses of a computer, as I commanded it with code, like a sorcerer casting spells. I could not have known, that this obedient machine, this silicon golem, was also, slowly and imperceptibly, enchanting me, and changing how my eyes would see. At th…

Did you write this? Do you have a link to the entire essay? I enjoyed the excerpt.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#83

Post by Bridged7756 »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #48
marginalia_nu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny part is we've already had this exact thing happen with outsourcing. It sure looked like a bargain until you got to such pesky details as correctness and maintainability.

I am starting to think it is a part of the management cycle. They new batch feels confident they can do X so they have to re-learn, while inflicting ridiculous amount of pain the process. Two years ago, one former exec at my place was perfectly happy to throw resources ( his word ) from India at a problem, while unwilling to pay the vendor for the same thing. I voiced my objection once, but after it was dismissed I j…

History truly repeats itself. C-suites will forever be the source of stupid decisions in our profession.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#84

Post by simonw »

ryanmcl wrote: post #70
simonw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think about how the modern world genuinely does run on Excel formulas, many written by amateurs, most without automated tests and with version control based on final_final_v2 suffixes. Somehow civilization continues to function! Makes me a bit less terrified that untested vibe coded slop will sink the economy. It's not that different from how things work already.

[dead]

Congratulations. This is my favorite aspect of this whole thing: LLM tooling that's helping new people break into programming by lowering the friction and learning curve.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#85

Post by pixelsort »

> There is every reason to believe that those who invest in deep understanding will continue to be valuable, regardless of what tools emerge.

I don't take issue with this, except that it's a false comfort when when you consider the demand will naturally ebb and individual workload will naturally escalate. In that light, I find it downright dishonest because the rewards for attaining deep knowledge will continue to evaporate; necessitating AI-assistance.

The reason is it different this time around is because the capabilities of LLMs have incentivized the professional class to betray the institutions that enabled their specializations. I am talking about the amazing minds at Adobe, Figma, and the FAANGS who are bridging agentic reasoners and diffusion models with domain-specific needs of their respective professional users.

Humans are class of beings, and the humans accelerating the advance of AI in creative tools are the reason that things are different this time. We have class traitors among us this time, and they're "just doing their jobs". For most, willful disbelief isn't even a factor. They think they're helping while each PR just brings them closer to unemployment.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#86

Post by simonw »

guitarbill wrote: post #75
simonw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think about how the modern world genuinely does run on Excel formulas, many written by amateurs, most without automated tests and with version control based on final_final_v2 suffixes. Somehow civilization continues to function! Makes me a bit less terrified that untested vibe coded slop will sink the economy. It's not that different from how things work already.

One counter-example is the Horizon IT scandal. Obviously, you didn't say this directly, but "only a few people died/were affected, somehow civilization continues to function" maybe isn't the best argument.

Sure, that scandal was horrific. I don't think the root cause was amateurs with bad spreadsheets.

It was an institutional failure, and the software involved had hundreds of millions of pounds spent on it and was built by supposed professionals.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#87

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

cjfd wrote: post #2

The article talks about 'software development will be democratized' but the current LLM hype is quite the opposite. The LLMs are owned by large companies and are quite impossible to train by any individual, if only because of energy costs. The situation where I am typing my code on my linux machine is much more democratic.

That's a great point but you didn't make your linux machine yourself. A large tech corp made it, and each of its parts. Some of us could probably make their own computers but I don't think I'd be able to make one smaller than the house I live in. There's something to be said about large-scale automation and that's not that it "democratizes" anything. Like you say: quite the opposite.

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#88

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #58

I recently stumbled upon this delightfully titled book from 1982, "Application development without programmers": https://archive.org/details/applicationdevel00mart Which includes this excellent line: > Unfortunately, the winds of change are sometimes irreversible. The continuing drop in cost of computers has now passed the point at which computers have become cheaper than people. The number of programmers available p…

[deleted]

Re: The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers

#90

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

simonw wrote: post #58

I recently stumbled upon this delightfully titled book from 1982, "Application development without programmers": https://archive.org/details/applicationdevel00mart Which includes this excellent line: > Unfortunately, the winds of change are sometimes irreversible. The continuing drop in cost of computers has now passed the point at which computers have become cheaper than people. The number of programmers available p…

They do. Servers, smartphones, most embedded systems, don't need an "operator" as in the past. Your source was probably thinking of that kind of "programmer".
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