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Now might be the best time to learn software development

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Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#111

Post by tonyedgecombe »

bachmeier wrote: post #22
20after4 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now the business of wedding / portrait photographer has become hyper-competitive. Now everyone's cousin is an amateur photographer and every phone has an almost acceptable camera built in. It is much more difficult to have a profitable photography business compared to 20 years ago.

That's good to hear. Back when I got married there were some real jerks in the wedding photography business, and they weren't worried about running out of customers. Here's an actual conversation I had with one of them: Me: "I'm getting married on [date] and I'm looking for a photographer." Them, in the voice of Nick Burns: "We're already filling up for next year. Good luck finding a photographer this year." Me: "I j…

I know a couple of professional photographers and neither of them will do weddings. It seems many of the clients are as bad as the photographers.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#112

Post by socalgal2 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #83
munificent wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That only made the world better, and we got soo many more good photographers. I disagree with the "only" part here. Imagine a distribution curve of photos with shitty photos on the left and masterpieces on the right and the height at the curve is how many photos there are to be seen at that quality. The digital camera transition massively increased the height of the curve at all points. And thanks to things like be…

It affects even the competent photographer. How many times do you see that photographer with all the gear sit in front of a literal statue and fire off a 30 shot burst in 2 seconds? I don’t envy these pro photo editors either today in sports. I wonder how many shots they have to go through per touchdown from all the photographers at the end zone firing a burst until everyone stands up and throws the ball back at the…

don't you just let the AI pick? I'm only half joking. I thought that was a feature added to smartphones a year or two ago?

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#113

Post by ttoinou »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #85
thangalin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people now stand around on dance floors taking photos and videos of themselves instead of getting on dancing and enjoying the music. to the point where clubs put stickers on phones to stop people from doing it. There are other types of dances where dancers are far more interested in the dance than selfies: Lindy Hop, Blues, Balboa, Tango, Waltz, Jive, Zouk, Contra, and West Coast Swing to name a few. Here are video…

That sort of dancing is basically a sport. You have to learn it, you have to get good at it after you learned it, and it is cardio after all. I think op was talking more about what you see in the edm scene these days. Where basically people aren’t there to dance like the old days or sing along like other genres, they are there to see a certain DJ and then they will post clips from the entire set on their instagram st…

Look into contact impro and ecstatic dance : cellphones are forbidden and you can dance however you like it

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#114

Post by FirmwareBurner »

sarchertech wrote: post #76
bluefirebrand wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> World will have lots more of apps, and programmers. This is actually bad for existing programmers though? Do you not see how this devalues your skills?

There are far more programmers now than in 1980, yet the average programmer makes far more (inflation adjusted) now.

How much online shopping could you do from your PC in 1980? How many people had smartphones in 1980?

That's why sw devs salaries went up like crazy in our time and not in 1980.

But what new tech will we have, that will push the SW dev market demand up like internet connected PCs and smartphones did? All I see is stagnation in the near future, just maintaining or rewriting the existing shit that we have, not expanding into new markets.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#115

Post by deanCommie »

bitpush wrote: post #17
psunavy03 wrote: post #14

"Great news, boss! We invented this new tool that allows nontechnical people to write code in English! Now anyone can deploy applications, and we don't have to hire all those expensive developers!" "Wow, show it to me!" "OK here it is. We call it COBOL."

Bravo. This is the exact sentiment I have, but you expressed in a way that I could never have. Most people miss the fact that technical improvements increases the pie in a way that was not possible before. When digital cameras became popular, everybody become a photographer. That only made the world better, and we got soo many more good photographers. Same with YouTube & creativity. And same with coding & LLMs. World…

> That only made the world better, and we got soo many more good photographers. Same with YouTube & creativity.

I think you really missed the point of what these technologies and innovations actually did for society and how it applies to today, underneath the snark.

In the 1970's, if you got gifted a camera, and were willing to put in the work to figure out how to use it, you learned a skill that immediately put you in rare company.

With enough practice of that skill you could be a professional photographer, which would be a good , reliable, well paid job. Now, the barrier of entry is nothing, so it's extremely competitive to be a professional photographer, and even the ones that succeed just scrape by. And you have to stand out on other things than the technical ability to operate a camera.

That's...what's about to happen (if it hasn't already) with software developers.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#116

Post by eru »

adalacelove wrote: post #102
noworriesnate wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But software developers often struggle to use sql and prefer using ORMs or analytical APIs like polars; the people who excel at sql are typically not programmers, they’re data engineers, DBAs, analysts, etc. Maybe a similar bifurcation will arise where there are vibe coders who use LLMs to write everything, and there are real engineers who avoid LLMs. Maybe we’re seeing the beginning of that with the whole bifurcatio…

I'm a developer and: - I hate ORMs, they are the source for a lot of obscure errors behind layers and layers of abstractions. - I prefer analytical APIs for technical reasons, not just the language. Reasons: - I can compose queries, which in turn makes them easier to decompose - It's easier to spot errors - I avoid parsing SQL strings - It's easier to interact with the rest of the code, both functions and objects If…

Well, the problem in ORM is the O. Objection-orientation is just a worse way to organise your data and logic than relational algebra.

It's just a shame that many languages don't support relational algebra well.

We had relations as a datatype and all the relevant operations over them (like join) in a project I was working on. It was great! Very useful for expressing business logic.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#117

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

ruszki wrote: post #108
noworriesnate wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But software developers often struggle to use sql and prefer using ORMs or analytical APIs like polars; the people who excel at sql are typically not programmers, they’re data engineers, DBAs, analysts, etc. Maybe a similar bifurcation will arise where there are vibe coders who use LLMs to write everything, and there are real engineers who avoid LLMs. Maybe we’re seeing the beginning of that with the whole bifurcatio…

What you can achieve with the standard SQL is taught on universities. The whole package. I’ve never met a developer, who struggled with that. When you use ORMs you need to follow SQL’s logic anyway. People use ORMs to avoid painful data conversions. Not to avoid the logic. Data engineers, DBAs, analysts, etc excel in specific databases, not in “SQL”.

Ive worked in BI and data engineering my whole career and I’ve met plenty of programmers who struggled immensely with SQL once it went further than select and group by. And don’t get me started about their database design skills. It’s way too often a disaster hidden behind “it works for the software so good enough”.

Im more surprised by software engineers who do know these things than by the ones who don’t.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#118

Post by everyone »

I learned programming in 2013, I was asking questions on stack overflow constantly while learning, people there were super friendly and supportive and answered my questions. SO was pivotal for me learning so fast.. Ive been a game programmer ever since.. This year I learned web-dev and made my 1st commercial web app. SO is totally dead though, utterly useless these days, but I used chatGPT to fill the same role and it worked great. Its a shame about SO though.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#119

Post by eru »

dredmorbius wrote: post #38
nathanfig wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude made this point while reviewing my blog for me: the mechanization of farms created a whole lot more specialization of roles. The person editing CAD diagrams of next year's combine harvester may not be a farmer strictly speaking, but farming is still where their livelihood comes from.

Strictly speaking, farming is where all our livelihoods come from, in the greatest part. We're all living off the surplus value of food production. (Also of other food, energy, and materials sourcing: fishing, forestry, mining, etc.) This was the insight of the French economist François Quesnay in his Tableau économique , foundation of the Physiocratic school of economics.

You might find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter fascinating.

> Strictly speaking, farming is where all our livelihoods come from, in the greatest part. We're all living off the surplus value of food production.

I don't think farming is special here, because food isn't special. You could make exactly the same argument for water (or even air) instead of food, and all of a sudden all our livelihoods would derive ultimately from the local municipal waterworks.

Whether that's a reductio ad absurdum of the original argument, or a valuable new perspective on the local waterworks is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#120

Post by eru »

lipowitz wrote: post #40
nathanfig wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude made this point while reviewing my blog for me: the mechanization of farms created a whole lot more specialization of roles. The person editing CAD diagrams of next year's combine harvester may not be a farmer strictly speaking, but farming is still where their livelihood comes from.

Removing jobs that could only be performed by those living near the particular fields with those that can be done anywhere makes jobs for the person willing to take the least satisfactory compensation for the most skill and work. Working the summer fields was one of the least desirable jobs but still gave local students with no particular skills a good supplemental income appropriate for whichever region.

Yes, but automating these away means that food becomes cheaper.

We increase the overall total prosperity with that automation.

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