Comments on: the future of the humble programmer

By: Gregg

Gregg — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:22:46 +0000

Hi Peter, thankfully I have finally produced something that was beneficial to non-programmers! And I’m pretty sure that things are only going to get easier for people to create content and businesses.

By: links for 2009-01-25 « pabloidz

links for 2009-01-25 « pabloidz — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 12:01:23 +0000

[...] the future of the humble programmer Equivalence (tags: programming) Blogroll [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:44:48 +0000

I enjoyed this article Gregg,well I understood what you were saying which for a Luddite reading your blog is something.I think more lay people are exploring computers now.I mean you used to have to pay someone to set up a website for you now it it seems more accessible and at times free.

By: Gregg

Gregg — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:32:51 +0000

Hi Gregory, thanks for the response. I agree with what you are saying, the problem is that many programmers’ jobs are essentially just those menial tasks – in fact many of the people that I can think of work on just these things. That is, apps that read/write information to a database with little algorithmic work or thought. However, at one point in time these tasks required a seasoned developer to complete, but frameworks, libraries, etc have evolved to the point of making such tasks trivial – they even create the architecture for you. It doesn’t seem as if it would be too complex to create an application like twitter.

Sure, there are always going to be applications that are beyond the average Joe – in the same way that serious investigative journalism is beyond an amateur blogger. All the same, the industry is surely going to see a serious contraction at some point due to non-programmers programming. I think this is far from being a bad thing though because, as you say, you would hope that good developers would rather be working on the tasks that consume more than the average amount of brain power.

However, just as tools were created to move the above menial tasks to the realm of the average Joe, can we really be certain that technology will not ensure this is the case for more and more complex tasks? I dunno? We can only wait and see.

By: Gregory Kornblum

Gregory Kornblum — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:58:35 +0000

I would say sure, menial programming tasks performed by junior developers such as data retrieval and insertion applications however there is no way the average joe is going to be able to understand and implement architecture for pretty much anything beyond that.

Where I currently am there was a constant need of building out web forms for data collection so we built an application where the marketing guys can now create these forms through a simple web app.

So now we have non-programmers basically doing tasks that were done by programmers. However can anyone honestly say that the average joe will be able to write the application we built for the average joe? Not very likely and even that application isn’t as complex as kernel, driver and low level socket development.

Some of the easy & mundane workloads will be taken by the average joe and that is a wonderful thing. I know most of us would much rather work on something that requires some serious brain power.

By: Gregg

Gregg — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:14:23 +0000

OK, maybe not elite per say, but we see ourselves as a skill that needs training, with a degree almost always expected.

We should move forward though, I would never want that to stop progress – that would be awful. It’s just going to be important to keep up with technology, whatever that may throw at us. We shouldn’t look back in anger!

By: David

David — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:51:05 +0000

Elite occupation??? Maybe it’s perceived to be elite, but the reality is very different, with code generators, and companies that use India for cheap code monkeys. That’s the future. Sadly.

Programming is doomed, unless of course you need help with NP completeness problems!?

BTW an article you referred to, on joeonsoftware site about Java. Java shouldn’t be taught at Uni. It should be C, and include pointers, just to reduce the number of code monkeys out there, and help us peeps suffering in Scotland. I guess journalists will have similar feelings about the internet?!

Like the blog Gregg.