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The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

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Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#41

Post by vinceguidry »

king_magic wrote: post #37
vinceguidry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frameworks will eventually turn most jobs we do now into low-skill office jobs. Maybe not WordPress 6.0, but WordPress 10.0 certainly will be easy enough for just about anybody to use. We won't call them programmers, but they'll be doing all the jobs we used to do, if we're lucky enough to have moved up. Just how like tasks that used to be done by doctors are now done by nurses, and tasks that used to be done by lawy…

No, they won't. Frameworks often introduce new layers of complexity and abstract away important details to the point where either entirely new frameworks are eventually needed, or you need an army of "framework specialists" who understand the subtleties of particular frameworks - and who end up needing to re-specialize on shiny new frameworks when old ones are discarded in an endless cycle of framework insanity. In m…

25 years is the blink of an eye.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#42

Post by osdiab »

alistairSH wrote: post #30
talltimtom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Even highly trained software engineers can barely get security correct. What makes this journalist think somebody with a few years of high school programming can do any better?” Why would they have to be better? You just made very point here. Some high schooler with a boot camp can do just as well as many “highly trained software engineers”.

But would they do just as well? The state of data protection and security in the industry may seem abysmal because of several well publicized breaches, but in some of those cases (Equifax comes to mind), it was a lack of experts that caused the problem.

I think what he’s saying is that the industry’s still working despite the fact that such experts are generally not present, and that this can continue.

Separately, I think that people consistently haven’t actually penalized most companies for security breaches, anyway. Big brands get hacked, everybody collectively moans for a week, and then they go back to using the exact same products. People publically get mad, but they don’t vote with their wallets, revealing how they really feel about security.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#45

Post by [deleted] »

galfarragem wrote: post #29
everdev wrote: post #18

Blue collar jobs aren't low paying due to lack of skill or value, it's due to excess supply. In the bay area we have plumbers who charge $150/hr, the same rate I charge for coding, due to a low supply of plumbers. The catch is that plumbing and other trades haven't changed much in the last 100 years. Coding is changing constantly. Therefore the supply of coders who can professionally use the latest technology is alwa…

'Blue collar jobs aren't low paying due to lack of skill or value, it's due to excess supply.' When told to children, this sentence can save lives. By the other hand, the anachronic maxim, "who knows more, earns more" is poisonous.

[deleted]

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#46

Post by Im_Unlucky »

I really think the comparison here is apt. Although a more direct comparison would be that coding is a trade. Something that can be self-taught or learned through apprenticeship. Something that doesn't require a degree. Something that can be done for a company or as a freelance gig. Something that pays well relatively speaking.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#47

Post by yowlingcat »

marsrover wrote: post #3

Always the journalists coming up with these ideas.

I'm going to go on a rant, as I know this is an old piece. But, I feel like it's really sad to see the devolution on journalism quality as it has become digitized. Yes, it's always been easier to do an incendiary, low quality hatchet job on a tough subject that you don't know anything about than to do a well researched long-form think piece. But, it seems that all I see more and more of (exacerbated by social media) is low information fluff pieces that make grand, controversial assertions.

The problem is, there's no cultural penalty for being wrong, so there's no skin in the game from the authors. Right now, there's little stop the market from being saturated with trash. I had a lot of problems with the Gawker media properties, but I liked how cutting they could be, and how their snark could (at their best) act as a natural check against the cancerous growth of smarmy clickbait. Company ending lawsuit aside, they also did a fantastic job at capitalizing on their snark. Of course, even they had their biases and blind spots, but nowadays, I feel as if we really don't have too much.

One of my bosses at a former company used to quip "I love HBR articles. They usually follow the formula of a 2x2 identity matrix of the form of 'You're probably thinking A. Here's why B, which you weren't thinking about, is true while A is wrong.'" But it's really sadly true, and we don't do a great job of exercising the sociolinguistic tools to critique poor choices of A or B. I don't know whether this is a chicken or the egg situation that comes as a result of the factory oriented American education system, but it makes me pretty sad and disappointed.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#48

Post by buttscicles »

Aeolun wrote: post #24

While I agree with the assessment that it might be the new blue collar job, I don’t think it’ll ever be understood very well by people without formal education, either through experience or study.

What about formal education is teaching it so well then?

And what do you mean by "it"? Coding, software development, computer science?

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding (2017)

#49

Post by king_magic »

vinceguidry wrote: post #41
king_magic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they won't. Frameworks often introduce new layers of complexity and abstract away important details to the point where either entirely new frameworks are eventually needed, or you need an army of "framework specialists" who understand the subtleties of particular frameworks - and who end up needing to re-specialize on shiny new frameworks when old ones are discarded in an endless cycle of framework insanity. In m…

25 years is the blink of an eye.

My point is: frameworks (when they work) simply unlock the next level of complex problems for general "tackle-ability", and those problems require hard engineering to solve. We certainly haven't run out of complex computing/software engineering problems to tackle yet, and I simply do not see that slowing down.
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