There are no "clean" programmers

With the advent of Ruby on Rails, the level of technical knowledge required to create web applications has gone down. Are knowledge and experience becoming less critical?

I think Ruby on Rails has greatly lowered the bar in terms of “what you need to run a web application.” Some see this as a negative side. In the spirit of, “Oh, the barbarians at the gates” or “Well, now all these unwashed savages will pour into our wonderful programming community.” I have heard it more than once. Many scolded Visual Basic for what, that it opened the doors for so-called "not clean" programmers. I think all this is bullshit.

There is no such thing as a “clean” programmer, and it seems to me that the magic of the Ruby on Rails community is that it attracts people from very different spheres, attracts people who are not programmers in the first place. I often notice how the best ideas come from non-programmers, people who bring with them a completely different view of things.
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In essence, being a newcomer is a very important stage. Being a beginner, you ask about everything in the world. When I first started working with Ruby, I asked a variety of questions. It was spinning in my head, “Why is there no such thing? Why is it so hard? And this is stupid, we have to change it. ”Beginners approach everything with such simplicity that they simply do not notice that it is impossible to do this or that thing in an amicable way. They just take and make.

If I knew at the very beginning how much effort I would need to put in order to actually create Rails, I probably would never have started. And I started because I saw a small problem, which, like me, a newcomer, seemed to be able to be solved simply enough. Therefore, I think that supporting the influx of new people, new blood, fresh blood into our community is very important. Also, I think it's great to give more people the opportunity to create their own applications. Protectionism is generally not a good idea. Keep your ranks "clean", consisting only of carefully trained programmers who can write programs only ... No, this should not be so. We absolutely need the most diverse programmers. Some of these programmers will be new, and they won't know everything, and they will write crappy programs . But you know what? Most often the shitty program solves the problem . You don't need perfect programs all the time. There are so many problems in the world that a small group of flawless programmers, professionals in their field, simply cannot solve them all - they (professionals) are simply not enough. Thus, we need programmers of various levels to solve problems appearing in the world.

How much easier can programming become in general?

Well, this question can be viewed from different angles. On the one hand, we can definitely make some things easier. It seems to me that I certainly made web development much easier with Rails. But there is a natural physical limit: from a certain point, programming is just one solution or another. How should the program work? What should happen if you press that button? All these decisions, ultimately, is the basis of programming, and there is no way to change this. That’s why I think it’s an impossible dream to have such a new magical environment, where someone who knows nothing about programming will be able to create the most wonderful program in the world just by dragging a few things to the right place. Not. This will definitely not happen, because in order to create the most wonderful program in the world, you need to take care of a thousand different trifles and make a thousand different decisions. And just for writing this thousand solutions and need a programming language.

Thus, there is a lower limit to how simple programming can be. All the decisions that make up the program must be coded in some way, and I don’t know a better way to do this than with a great programming language. So, I do not really believe that at some point we can all create amazing applications. Of course there will be a certain class of applications, for example, accounting software, which can be quite simply tweaked if desired. But if you need complete freedom of expression in the creation of modern web applications, you need the same expressive tool. And this tool is a programming language. It won't be any easier.