September 13th - Programmer's Day (early congratulations)

Friends, tomorrow is Programmer Day! Surely each of us has a familiar programmer. Such a special person, whom everyone asks to repair the computer, printer, telephone, "and what, he is a programmer, means fumbles in computers." So, do not forget to congratulate these familiar and important people tomorrow! But today is Friday, so we decided to congratulate all programmers in advance.

The importance of the work of programmers for the IT world is difficult to overestimate. And not only for him. Thanks to them, we have computers, smartphones, tablets, websites, social networks, instant messengers and even Habr. Now here they are also pumped glasses with watches. Thanks to the programmers, today we have acquired the ability of the demigods, in terms of ancestors. Modern high technology allows us to get all the knowledge of the world, without getting up from the couch. In just a few decades, the development of programming has radically changed the world, making unprecedented, fantastic technologies available. We can now see every corner of the planet on a small device, immediately learn about events happening thousands of kilometers from us. And if everyone has long been accustomed to the capabilities and versatility of computers and mobile gadgets, we still have incredible successes in robotics. Looking at current achievements, you understand that it is time to blow off the dust from the three laws of robotics, we will need them soon.
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Okay, and now the entertainment part. Today we have prepared for you a small video that will be especially appreciated by programmers working in teams, divisions and other departments. We will not describe, see for yourself.



Congratulations! We wish you a reckless code, interesting projects and successful releases! By the way, our CEO Dmitry Grishin also was once a programmer, starting his career as a software developer, working on several jobs while studying at Bauman. Two years later, he took the post of technical director at the new Mail.Ru company, which a few years later grew into the largest IT company in Russia. In connection with the holiday, we asked our programmers to talk about why they chose this profession, and what will happen to programmers in 20 years. Read their stories under the cut.

Zaur Abdulgalimov (@FlashPress), flash programmer at IT Territory:

In fact, I did not choose the profession of a programmer. She herself chose me, leaving no choice. At school I loved math (Tatyana Petrovna, thank you for that). Often, out of love for mathematics, he did various extracurricular tasks, to the detriment of other subjects. My classmates asked me: why do you need this, are you going to become a math professor? To which I replied: I do it simply because I like it. When in school I became acquainted with the programming language TurboPascal, for me the rest of the subjects ceased to exist (except for mathematics, of course). I didn’t have a goal to become a programmer, I programmed, simply because I liked it. And the profession itself has found me.

PS If they ask me why I work as a programmer now, I will answer this way: I get real pleasure when my hands create a whole product from thousands of small pieces.

I think that in 20 years the profession of a programmer will become even more in demand, because computer applications penetrate all levels of modern human life, and in the near future, the quality of software used will determine the quality of human life.

Alexander Nikishin (@WisDooMer), an iOS programmer of My World:

This may seem strange, but I chose the path of a programmer because of Maslow's pyramid. It is this profession that opens up a huge scope for the implementation of the two upper steps of my needs (recognition and self-actualization). Programming for me is a technical form of creativity, the fruits of which can be used by thousands or even millions of people, without even attaching a great deal to this pair. Now I am engaged in mobile development, and here, according to the recent words of Jonathan Ive, communication with the user occurs at the most intimate level, the level of touch and tactile sensations. Understanding this, you treat your work very responsibly, always strive for the best and constantly develop.

It is quite difficult to make predictions for such a long time. For example, if you take the “specialists” in economics from newspapers, look at their past forecasts and compare them with the real picture of the world, I fear we might think that these people are just wasting paper (in fact, no :)). I do not want to be known as such a "specialist" in programming. But, nevertheless, I bet that in 20 years the profession of a programmer will exist, and artificial intelligence will not replace us.

Ilya Kuznetsov (@KIlLXXXVI), programmer of Answers Mail.Ru:

I have always had a craving for mathematical disciplines, it was somehow more comfortable at school and at the university with all sorts of mathematicians and computer scientists. By the penultimate uni course, I only had a couple of years of work as a consultant on various telephones, small-sized equipment, education as an engineer-sold, and the feeling that I was wasting my time and then everything worked out well - one friend advised me to look for happiness in “programmers”, the other one led me through an acquaintance to my first office, where, although “for food”, I managed to feel the hard way about what it means to work with my head, and not with my feet and tongue. It was comfortable: I felt that I bring the benefit, albeit a small one, but still a benefit both for myself and for the office.

Now being a programmer is very fashionable. Many do not even understand what we really do and consider us to be overly clever, sometimes simply brilliant. Sometimes it is really necessary to improvise quite a lot, some new ideas are born every day, and for their realization it is necessary to reinvent the bicycle as usual once again, but this time with a propeller. Industry "boils" industry is looking for. In 20 years these “buzzings” will calm down, everyone will not care what to write: on php or on python - there will be tasks that at most already have ready-made solutions. From the "programmer", if it is still called that, it will require quite a routine work on the "finishing" of very banal pieces of the "program" already thought out and brought to mind. I think it is possible to make a very conditional parallel with plumbers: once they had to improvise a lot so that everything “worked as it should”: different diameters and pipe materials, different types of gaskets, different auxiliary tools - and there were certainly very lively disputes how to do the "right". Now everyone doesn’t care what they put up there: putty, rubber, some kind of Chinese garbage - nobody bothers with this, let the “master” come and make sure that they don’t flow and break next week, and what and how , he will do there - what difference does it make.

Leander Haliullov (@khaliullov), antispam programmer:

I started programming from childhood. After the first acquaintance with the computer, I was very inspired by its capabilities. On the computer, it was possible to solve various problems and not only in mathematics. Back in school, I quickly mastered Basic, C, Pascal, wrote my first programs: Tetris, RendZu. Programming helped me in my studies: automate something, solve a puzzle, pass an exam, write a resident program that itself passes the test. In the third year my hobby became a job, and since then I have been working only in the field of IT for more than 10 years.

In the future, I think, a programmer will be a common profession, like, for example, an accountant or a plumber now, and everyone will be a programmer to one degree or another: how we manage your household budget or fix the tap yourself, and everyone will solve some tasks in life . Perhaps, somehow it will be all simplified with the help of abstraction from programming, and with the help of user-friendly interfaces it will be possible to program anything.

Sergey Prilutsky (@BoogerWooger), Cars project programmer:

Because on my Commodore there was not a single cassette with games, but only the damn basic. Otherwise I would become a game designer.

You can directly put your own, specially shaped thoughts into the code, bypassing input devices, so the programmer's profession will start to disappear, because creating algorithms for devices around a person will become completely natural for most people. Of course, there will be people who can formalize and package complex technical and mathematical problems into a program code, but most of the modern applied tasks of searching and analyzing information due to the many levels of abstraction will be available to anyone without qualification. Mind-driven devices will be more and more complex, which will push the mind to more and more complex forms of thinking, developing it in the same way that human hands evolved in the process of evolution. In general, we are waiting for homo cyberneticus.

Vadim Balashov (@VadimBal), iOS programmer for Mail.Ru Mail:

Profession programmer smoothly flowed into my life. Back in 1998, a computer appeared in my home. At that time, many of my friends already had computers, but they had “Pentiums”, then the first ones. And I had a machine based on the 80386sx processor - "treshechka." For some time I spent playing the good old Kirandia, Speyskvest, the adventures of Larry, Doom and Warcraft II, but all my friends played other games, and I had absolutely no one to discuss with anyone the course of the game, nor the achievements. Somehow a friend came to visit me who signed up for the programming section. He brought on a QBasic floppy and a couple of programs. I did not have access to the Internet at the time, programming books, too. I could not write a single line of code. But I could delete - which I did. Removing one line at a time, I ran the program over and over again and watched what was changing. I figured out why when you delete some lines, the program stops doing something, and when you delete other lines, it stops running at all. The next time, when a friend came to me, I already slightly understood what was happening, and I had some questions. So gradually I started programming on the basic. The following year, Pascal began teaching us in school. A year later, modern computers were put into school and we moved on to Delphi. In the preparatory courses for the university, I met C (then, reading the Hacker magazine, I knew that all the “true programmers” write on it, but I was not familiar with it).

Despite all this, I never thought that I would become a programmer and even went to study at robotics. But after graduation, it turned out that robotics in our country is still tight (we can talk about this separately). Then one day I received an invitation to work at the Mail.Ru Group, I had a hard time interviewing (thanks to Igor M. for still believing in me) and I have been working here for 4 years, changing 3 projects during this time, three platforms and three languages.

I think that the profession of a programmer will not go anywhere in 20 years. Perhaps we will be programming completely different devices (who would have believed 20 years ago, at the time of desktops with Windows 95 and CRT monitors, that every second person will have a “computer” in his pocket?). It is possible that the languages ​​will change a lot, but the essence will not disappear.

Yegor Shubin (@esin), programmer at Allods studio:

It's all pretty trite. Since childhood, he loved computers, mainly because of games. And when computer science started at school, I immediately realized that it was mine. Since then, I have never regretted my decision.

Already, you can create a system that allows you to enter text without a keyboard, only with the help of thought. I really hope that technology will develop in this direction. Plus, wireless technologies and even higher-level languages. And then programmers will sit somewhere at a table in the park, with a cup of tea / coffee, a notebook and a tablet for feedback, and think about the algorithm / architecture. And a program will be created on his working machine.

Igor Glotov (@ sol1tude), programmer of the mobile and flash development group:

I chose this profession in school. As a child I played a lot in Lego and realized that creating is mine, I decided to try. In school days, I fiddled with Linux a lot (Ubuntu, ArchLinux, Gentoo), which are very conducive to programming and learning new things - open vim and write code, complete freedom, everything is accessible and open, then I realized that programming is even cooler than Lego. He began with the study and writing of any nonsense in C, and then entered the university, where he managed to realize his passion for programming to the end. I regret a little that I didn’t study Olympiad programming enough in my time, but I managed to take part in CTF, where I learned a lot and got acquainted with cool guys. Now I am writing under two mobile platforms and every day I study and apply something new. I have never regretted about choosing a profession, you are building systems that a huge number of people use - it is a huge responsibility, but also a feeling of satisfaction when you see the result.

I think that in 20 years nothing will change radically in our profession. Well, except that developers will sit in Oculus'ah and write code brain pulses. :) Technologies will move far, some things will go away (for example, desktop PCs and consumer laptops), some will come (a cloud of wearable devices of different nature, smart houses, etc.), but we, the developers, will still good old keyboard, IDE and console to write code and debug it. Probably, even virtualization will be developed much more strongly, it is necessary to emulate all these devices.

Oleg Larionov (@Bloof), Odnoklassniki junior programmer:

So far, I am a junior programmer at Odnoklassniki, still studying at the master's program in St. Petersburg NRU ITMO. I chose this profession for several reasons. First, like many others, he spent a lot of time at the computer. Loved to play. HoMM 3, CS 1.5, WC III, that's all. Also in grade 9, I discovered the Internet and Debian. Mastering them was extremely exciting. :) Secondly, an informatics teacher interested me in programming olympiad problems. Now, almost any new programming language I study, solving problems on acmp.ru and acm.timus.ru.

It seems to me that in 20 years programmers will be even more in demand. I do not think that during these 20 years all possible programs will be written, that programmers will not be needed. It is also unlikely that all people will suddenly give up on computers, or they will start writing software themselves. On the contrary, there will appear more various devices, robots, quantum computers, and for all of them you will need to write firmware and software. And who will do it if not us?

Daniil Popov (@ int02h), IT Territory programmer:

Honestly, when I wrote my first program on programming courses in the 8th grade, I didn’t think much about whether this could be my profession. I was just interested in the fact that I give the computer commands, and he performs them exactly. I, a schoolboy, it caused a wild delight. On the other hand, I was always wondering how the software works from the inside. Therefore, when I hacked the first game, I realized that I want to do programming. Then they gave me the first tablet, and I immediately began to figure out how to write a program for it. Over time, some tasks began to appear that it was extremely tiring to perform manually, and then programming came to my rescue again. Automating routine human labor is really cool. Summing up, I can only say that programming for me is not a profession, but rather a hobby that I do not only during working hours. And when you get a salary for a hobby, it becomes doubly more pleasant.

I think that nothing will happen to the programmer's profession in the next 20 years. There will be new technologies, new platforms, new devices, so the industry will always need people who create software. The need for programmers will probably disappear when they create real artificial intelligence, which will be able to write their own programs.

Maxim Pestun (@RenovatioNova), programmer at Allods studio:

The profession of a programmer is very interesting because of the following factors:
- every day you create and learn something new, so that the brain is always in good shape;
- almost all the people around who are not familiar with writing code do not understand what exactly programmers are doing, which gives the profession the effects of secrecy and exclusivity;
- many people think that programmers are such smart people who can do everything: install Windows, break a bank, learn the secrets of the state.

All of these factors, but mainly the first, influenced my choice of profession.

Now programming is becoming increasingly popular. This is facilitated by numerous communities, conferences, competitions. Therefore, in about 20 years, primitive code will be able to write almost everything. But a new problem will arise: the knowledge about the old code and the old technologies, on which all the new wealth of humanity will be based, will be almost forgotten. And there will be a profession of archeology programmers who know what MASM is, know how to understand C code, view files in ANSI encoding, and much more, which now seems mundane.

Valery Bykov (@vozbu), lead programmer for Target Mail.Ru:

Because computers as a child attracted, and being able to force them to do something that you invented yourself was fascinating. Since then, I clearly knew that I wanted to do programming, and then, when I was studying at the university, I realized that the main thing was computers, not science.

Fundamental changes in 20 years, I do not see. Yes, there will be new languages, different frameworks, it will become easier to do many things. Libraries of machine learning, computer vision will be developed, schoolchildren will be able to distribute pattern recognition on the knee for the phone (and even now, probably, they can). But with the advent of new opportunities, new, more ambitious tasks will appear. The need to invent efficient algorithms and use all hardware capabilities of hardware will not go anywhere.

Evgeny Loikov (@Bot_A_Nick), senior programmer at Allods studio:

Initially, it was necessary to justify in front of parents for spending a lot of time at the computer, then it turned into a hobby that became a profession and a hobby.

If any Judas does not write a full-fledged artificial intelligence that replaces us all, then nothing fundamentally should change. Of noteworthy:
- come up with a programming language for cats;
- announce support for the laws of robotics in the standard C ++ 34;
- terabytes of memory will give to the surrender of the store, while the person who removed the excess variable will still consider himself the savior of mankind;
- A term denoting "oppression of a person using another programming language" will appear;
- they will release the standard of a completely new programming language, which will allow not to write code at all, and at the same time to get the finished product. , , , — 42 , , .

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