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Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

economist.com

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Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#11

Post by buscoquadnary »

They'd all start trying to find their way into project management or design or something.

Being able to code is an important part of being a software developer but being able to code makes you no more of a software developer than learning newton's laws of motions makes you a mechanical engineer.

There are edge cases, debugging, scalability, one off errors integration, backups, etc. We tried this with VB and Acces and thedailywtf.com is rife with stories of trying to undo that mess decades later, we are going to run into the same problem with the new iteration of no code the difference this time is that we are paying per month to use it rather than just having an unsecured server in the basement running all the business critical functions.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#12

Post by baash05 »

"If a programming language doesn't change how you think, it's not worth learning." ~I forget who

I always find it funny when people say things like this for our trade. I'd never imagine the likes would be said for Copy Writing or Sales, or Plumbing. Like James from the bookkeeping team decided to start rewiring the light fixtures last week. Spacing out the lights a few feet further apart, and using higher watt LED's saved the company X.

I never hear Elite Plumber or Elite Dentist. (Though I'm sure they exist)

We are no more Elite than any other profession. But we are professionals, and we do train.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#13

Post by dmitrygr »

kitrose wrote: post #6
dmitrygr wrote: post #4

Not everyone can play in the NBA. Not everyone can safely drive a car. Not everyone can architect and write good code. Yes, you can spend a LOT of time and get kinda good-ish at basketball, but you'll never make it to the NBA. You lack the biological talent (height, speed). Sure, you can work very hard and take serious driving classes, but you'll never win an F1 race even if given a chance. You lack the biological ta…

Aren’t they bad examples? There’s a distinction between an extremely rare occurrence of biological factors like being 7 feet tall in order to succeed, and that of needing a decent education in order to think critically.

Some people just cannot wrap their head around pointers. Some just do not get recursion no matter what. I used to teach CS, and tutor in CS. It is as rare as being 7 feet tall, sadly. And without understanding indirection and recursion, the most you'll ever do is ...well..not much...

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#14

Post by dmitrygr »

codingdave wrote: post #8
dmitrygr wrote: post #4

Not everyone can play in the NBA. Not everyone can safely drive a car. Not everyone can architect and write good code. Yes, you can spend a LOT of time and get kinda good-ish at basketball, but you'll never make it to the NBA. You lack the biological talent (height, speed). Sure, you can work very hard and take serious driving classes, but you'll never win an F1 race even if given a chance. You lack the biological ta…

Not everyone can be a successful novelist, but we all can read and write. It is OK to have basic literacy, and the educational system is quickly adopting coding as part of basic literacy. That, in turn is making more and more people good enough to do basic coding, even if they will never do it as a professional career. Just like people play basketball in their drive. Just like they drive their cars around town.

I absolutely support everyone learning it. But for most it will be as annoying and ungratifying as calculus is to them in school. Tedious, and they'll never get good enough to get a job where they use it.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#15

Post by conductr »

mrkentutbabi wrote: post #3

Why not? The problem is people can’t. I’m all for people learning how to code but majority of people can’t. That’s the reality. I taught coding in college and bootcamps.

It’s not even that binary. I can code about anything I’d want to, but I’m also aware of lower level code that I just simply will never have the desire to learn. It really is over my head and probably always will be.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#16

Post by pasquinelli »

dmitrygr wrote: post #4

Not everyone can play in the NBA. Not everyone can safely drive a car. Not everyone can architect and write good code. Yes, you can spend a LOT of time and get kinda good-ish at basketball, but you'll never make it to the NBA. You lack the biological talent (height, speed). Sure, you can work very hard and take serious driving classes, but you'll never win an F1 race even if given a chance. You lack the biological ta…

well, you made me (try) to read the article to confirm you didn't get it, but i can only see two paragraphs. still, it seems that was enough to see it isn't about making software that others will pay for, but about avoiding paying a pro to make software when a novice can sling something good enough together.

someone with another job doesn't need to make software someone will pay money for. their real job is how they make a living. but they can write software to do their job better or easier.

code isn't basketball, it's duck tape. people other than duck tape specialists can make use of it.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#17

Post by Retric »

mrkentutbabi wrote: post #3

Why not? The problem is people can’t. I’m all for people learning how to code but majority of people can’t. That’s the reality. I taught coding in college and bootcamps.

IMO it depends on how long your willing to spend teaching people. Most young students can eventually get basic programs working in logo style systems given enough time. Make coding a core part of public education and I think we could see 80+% of people get reasonable competency by high school graduation.

Collages and especially boot camps on the other hand expect people to pick things up much more quickly, and I think that works because students often have most of the skills they need rather than it being enough time to actually teach people the relevant skills. It’s almost more a filtering process than education.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#18

Post by dmitrygr »

pasquinelli wrote: post #16
dmitrygr wrote: post #4

Not everyone can play in the NBA. Not everyone can safely drive a car. Not everyone can architect and write good code. Yes, you can spend a LOT of time and get kinda good-ish at basketball, but you'll never make it to the NBA. You lack the biological talent (height, speed). Sure, you can work very hard and take serious driving classes, but you'll never win an F1 race even if given a chance. You lack the biological ta…

well, you made me (try) to read the article to confirm you didn't get it, but i can only see two paragraphs. still, it seems that was enough to see it isn't about making software that others will pay for, but about avoiding paying a pro to make software when a novice can sling something good enough together. someone with another job doesn't need to make software someone will pay money for. their real job is how they…

> code isn't basketball, it's duck tape.

And this viewpoint is why the slack app uses 6GB of ram, and we consider 8GB a minimum amount to browse the web...

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#19

Post by abakker »

shakna wrote: post #10

Well, this makes me feel old. It's no revolution, but a reversion. It was the norm, not that long ago, that anyone could do minor programming. The era of Lotus Notes and the like. You would still hire a programmer for the big stuff, but office workers would build little scripts, or look under the covers when something goes wrong.

A lot of us office workers still do. I prefer to keep scripts little and just use OTT software as much as possible. Often, scripting is not possible to avoid.

Re: Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation

#20

Post by baash05 »

decremental wrote: post #5

What an ego shattering revelation it would be if it turned out just about everyone can be good at coding. Being able to code is what qualifies us to know everything about everything!

See it's not really ego. I'd say most people could be good at coding. But most people could be good electricians, and plumbers and mechanics, and carpenters, and ... well and heaps of other things.

It's that it all takes training, and time in. It all takes reading and learning new things.

It's not a question of could they be good. It's a question of, do they want to. I don't think most people want to be good at it.

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