Will programmers become redundant? 8

[Ladyhawk]

-- The "Industry" thread with a better subject.

A friend of mine told me that he reckoned in 10 years time there won't be a need for programmers because there will be templates that any joe bloggs can use to create the application that they want.

Do other people think this?

Ladyhawk.
** ASP/VB/Java Programmer **

 

[palbano]

Steve Hewitt
>> Whats wrong with that?

It's all good. Take a trip to this site

http://www.chillpill.com

;-)

-pete

 

[bull3t]

char ** seeException()
{
char *value="Microsoft was forced to encorporate Java into their software through legal means.. right? (or is that the alcohol talking?)";

return &value;
}

Programmers will always have jobs, in one form or another.
Believe it or not it's guys like Bill Gates and new programming dogmas like Java that keep re-inventing the wheel which will make sure of it . (I am not an idiot, I know those 2 examples are not related.. seeException()

So don't you guys worry. If you are smart you will always find a way.

 

[dilettante]

Ahh... but the point is that these high-level tools make creating simple solutions a non-professional activity.

This is much like the manner in which word processors and dektop publishing tools have allowed people to create various sorts of good-quality documents without being typists or typesetters. This reduces word processing to the status of "basic office skill" rather than a specialized activity. But the tool doesn't guarantee quality. I get WP documents every day that are a mess, usually at the fundamental level of hard-returns ending each line of text.

If you want to really cry about the future just look at the forums here that support what I call "accessible" technologies. These are generally (but not entirely) Microsoft technologies that are cheap or free, and easy to get basic results with. Sure there are people making a serious effort with these tools and asking/answering in the forums. But you get a lot of scary questions (and scary answers) in there too because of a high ratio of non-programmers trying to program.

I don't mean that as any sort of condemnation, it's just an assessment of where we are. As the tools become more accessible and more powerful in what they can accomplish, we'll naturally need fewer programmers to do these particular things. Just as a lot of things once done in Cobol or RPG or something by programmers can now be done by a regular office worker in Crystal Reports or Access with a week or two of training. A lot more in the way of computer literacy is expected of an office worker today, making the additional training requirement relatively small compared to what it took to get similar results in past decades.

Look at what a person can do with a modern digital camcorder and a PC in terms of video production now. Compare it to getting the same results in the 1970s. Buying these modern tools and learning to use them doesn't make you a professional videographer, any more than buying a nice camera makes one a professional photographer.

But somebody has to design and produce the software tools. And the more professional tools require a lot more knowledge and experience to select among them and to use them properly. These are still needed in order to solve problems with more exotic requirements. This is where today's programmers are.

The big problem I see is that many employers don't get the distinction. Sheesh, even a lot of workers can't seem to distinguish between Java and Javascript.

 

[palbano]

Now that is just not right.

How does someone that is so far off the beam get all those stars? I guess the same way some of our politicians get elected. Unless I totally misunderstand dilettante’s points I have to completely disagree and point out some actual historical facts. The story about ”accessible” technologies and their impact sounds so reasonable.

But programmers using these so called “accessible” technologies were not responsible for deciding to store dates in fields that would not support years beyond 1999. The industry produced millions of lines of lousy code by people that should probably not have been writing code in the first place long before these so called “accessible” technologies existed.

If you want to look you will see the same quality of posts and scary answers in Tek-Tips forums for C, C++, Java and web development working in Linux and Unix as you will using Microsoft products. Many of these “scary” people are matriculating at U.S. schools!

I have seen Unix C and assembler code written 15 years ago that was some of the worst I’ve ever seen that was done by professional programmers working in fortune 500 companies.


-pete

 

[dilettante]

I'm as embarrassed by the stars as you are outraged. ;-)

Maybe they were for the cooking analogy, maybe for swearing off TGML. Hard to know.

Just in case you misunderstood me, I wasn't bashing Microsoft. If anything they've accomplished some marvelous successes.

I think the differences between coders in prior decades and now though are more differences in volume rather than in kind. Way fewer people were producing a significantly smaller number of programs each in the past. The computing resources just weren't there for people to create throw-away solutions as they do now.

But I'm not saying old farts are/were better than young bucks at all. I'm saying the bar has risen since 1970, and few seem to appreciate this besides educators and economic planners in places like India and China.

...Who much to my chagrin are doing a great job at eating my lunch. This may get the whole thread stripped off the site, but I have to wonder sometimes how much assistance in Tek-Tips is playing right into the whole thing.

 

[palbano]

outraged is a bit strong ;-) Just a mild concern that people lacking historical facts and perspective might spread misinformation. Oh wait... that already happened... it's called the Internet

>> more differences in volume rather than in kind.

absolutily

>> how much assistance in Tek-Tips is playing right into the whole thing.

You mean by helping unqualified people to keep thier postions by providing them with solutions? Interesting point but i suspect it's a drop in the bucket of the software development quagmire. ;-)


-pete

 

[dwarfthrower]

>>I have to wonder sometimes how much assistance in Tek-Tips is playing right into the whole thing.

Excellent Point. Those who understand and appreciate the nuance of this should begin to make a stand. Tek-Tips is a great site, and the last thing I'd want to see it become is a place where people continually post questions along the lines of:
hlp pls URGENT!!!!
i put a <table> tag in my page and it doesnt work

Now I'm a firm believer in that, while it's perfectly OK to be ignorant (we all are in one way or another), it's not OK to be stupid. If people are going to try and use sites like tek-tips (and as a consequence us) as their on-call coding coach. We should only answer questions that:
a) deserve an answer,
b) are the result of an effort to understand the problem, and
c) are not easily solved by looking at the first five results of a Google search.

The site is only what we make it. If we let it become a repository of inane questions and RTFM answers it will. Conversely, if we are proactive in sorting the wheat from the chaff, we will end up with a site that not only provides people with solutions, but teaches people how to become actively involved in arriving at solutions.

 

[palbano]

dwarfthrower

Exactly... look a the logo for Tek-Tips. The link on every post Inappropriate post? If so, Red Flag it! can be used to mark posts from non-professionals.

Now with that said, the definition of &quot;professional&quot; has been the subject of some debate and is not always completely clear nor agreed upon.

-pete

 

[KornGeek]

While I understand the frustration of having unqualified people using tools and calling themselves &quot;programmers&quot;, I'm not overly concerned about it.

It's true that many people who don't know anything about databases or real programming can create an &quot;app&quot; in Access with minimal training. However, I (with moderate database training and extensive programming experience) can create complex systems with clean user interfaces and lots of bells and whistles.

If a company wants a crude tool, they'll build it in house. If they want a lasting system, they'll hire my company.

However, the flip side of this is that if I went job hunting, HR people would see Access experience and not know what level.

The bottom line is that professional grade programmers will be in demand for those who want professional grade software for the forseeable future (as far as I can tell).

 

[Rougy]

A long time ago, I was working for a company that had a &quot;code-generator&quot; that, in theory, would let the users (government employees) write there own programs.

And it did. But they were bad programs. They never included everything the user wanted, the validation process was a scream, and we spent most of our time trying to figure out how to circumvent the program and keep it from doing things we didn't want it to do.

I think that, if anything, programmers will be in even greater demand in the next 10 years, and even more so after that.

-----
The death of dogma is the birth of reason.

 

[Wullie]

Steve Hewitt,

but I work best by having a sample or template and then playing with the code till I get it to work. In mycase I generate the template in FrontPage and the edit the code. Whats wrong with that?

Nothing about you personally but you are probably doing this the hard way.

FP creates crap code, loads of redundant and also IE only tags. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong with this.

When you are creating the code and then editing it to see what it does, you are learning this crap code and not seeing the correct way to do it. You would be better off finding a decent coded site that you can strip apart and see how it works, at least then you know the correct way to do it.

palbano

We actually discussed something similar to this a while back in the web designers forum, you might not remember.

While all languages have useless posts, take the HTML forum and you will see that most of the useless posts come from people using these editors, this is because they have no knowledge of how the code actually works. Then look at the replies, most of the decent repies are from people who can hand code and understand how to correct a problem. (Just how many form tags creating a break in a cell can we put up with?)

HTML is a language that someone can learn the basics to overnight, so attracts a lot of people that think they can create great looking pages, which rarely happens.

This post is in no way directed against people using WYSIWYG editors, a lot of the blame lies at the doors of the browser creators. Afterall, it is these people who are creating a browser (IE especially) that will show a page with incorrect code and it still displays reasonably correct.

If they forced the browser to render only correctly written code and force errors on poor coding, we would see both a lot more errors and also less poorly coded sites.

Hope this helps

Wullie

http://www.necomputers.org.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.whiland.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[sdraper]

KornGeek:
&quot;If a company wants a crude tool, they'll build it in house. If they want a lasting system, they'll hire my company&quot;
I am an inhouse programmer. Does that mean that it is assumed that I can only develop crude tools?
bummer... I suck and I didn't even know it...


Sam

 

[Chopstik]

Well, here is an interesting take on whether human programmers will become redundant in the future or not. I have to admit, I just browsed a little bit through the site and am still debating whether it is for real or not (at the moment, I'm leaning towards it is for real).

For those of us who are Planet of the Apes fans, this is how the future really happened (or will happen)... Maybe Dr. Zaius was right...

http://www.newtechusa.com/PPI/main.asp

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
--Douglas Adams

 

[carp]

I seem to recall reading some years ago how having computers on everybody's desks was going to save lots of time for everybody. Why, we'd be taking three months of vacation every year because now we had so much spare time! And we wouldn't have any paper in our offices anymore! Everything was going to be on our PCs &quot;in the World of Tomorrow&quot;!

Well, so far I haven't seen it. If anything, people seem to be falling farther and farther behind. Of course, part of it is the time spent trying to configure screensavers and sending a joke on its 87th round through the internet. And look around your office/cubicle - I'll bet you're up to your hocks in paper and books.

Our IT staff can't keep up with all of the requirements users and management throw at us. And since the requirements are sometimes so bizarre that we can't believe we've read them correctly, I doubt if templates will ever be created that allow implementing this stuff (unless, of course, drugs become more accepted in the workplace!).

There may well be a continued decline in the number of programmer positions. But I don't think developers/programmers will ever be totally extinct - like cockroaches and ferns we'll adjust and survive. There will always be somebody with money who wants an application to work &quot;just a little differently&quot; - and who's going to do that?

 

[guestgulkan]

I can't really see programmers becoming redundant anytime soon.
Software comapnies are very good at dragging out application development/releases/ and adding yet more 'features' to make the programs even more cumbersome to use ( a self preservation instinct??).

Some examples:
Microsoft word - this peaked in about 1995 with V6.
Word 2002 (aka XP) is just a lod of old rehash.

Look at paintshop pro - each succesive version since version 3 (very good) has been downhill - have you seen version 8 (barf).

I'm sure programmers will be around for some centuries yet.

 

[carp]

Of course they will! Where is the economic impetus to stop producing new software? That is as likely as Ford not coming out with changes to their trucks next year. Are the changes necessary? Of course not - but there's money to be made by doing it!

I have a special place I store predictions from the 1950s about how in 10 years everybody would fly their gyrocopters to work and nobody would commute in cars anymore. I think I would store the &quot;programmers redundant in 10 years&quot; in the same shoe box.

 

[KornGeek]

sdraper,
I apologize. The way I phrased that was incorrect. I was referring to companies that don't keep qualified programmers on staff. If those companies don't mind a crude tool, they will find someone on staff with some technical knowledge and have them throw together any solution that will get the job done for now. If they want a better built solution, they will find a company that does that.

A company that has the foresight to keep programmers on staff for in house projects can choose for each project if it is more cost-efficient to build it in house or use an outside company. Either way, these companies are likely to end up with quality solutions.

The point I was trying to make is that even though many people might be able to build something using the tools, and company that wants a real quality program will turn to a programmer. Similarly, I might be able to perform repairs on my car, but because I'm not skilled in that area, I choose to hire a mechanic to make sure it is done right.

 

[sdraper]

No Sweat! I was being a little sarcastic. Although I gave you a hard time about that statement there is a great deal of truth in what you say. I understand that in a general discussion one must not take things too literally or personally.

Cheers!

Sam

 

[Ladyhawk]

guestgulkan: &quot;Look at paintshop pro - each succesive version since version 3 (very good) has been downhill - have you seen version 8 (barf).&quot;

I oh so totally agree with this statement. They took a version which was simple yet powerful and added unnecessary complexity. If someone wanted to get that complex with an image, they would use Corel.




Ladyhawk.
** ASP/VB/Java Programmer **