Will programmers get into the "Red Book"?
Dear programmers, please do not execute the messenger, the news is unpleasant. Moreover, it will not be a fait accompli, but only a noticed trend. Yes, and the title of the note was not invented by me. The question of whether the profession of programmers threatens the opportunity to appear in the "Red Book" of endangered human activities was put by your colleague Todd Fast. And he did this at the recently-concluded JavaOne conference sponsored by Sun. The question is a little provocative, as they say now, but the conference participants were not very surprised.
Despite the fact that this article, at first glance, does not quite fit into the collective blog “Intelligent Social Web and Enterprise 2.0”, I decided to post it here. After all, the very question about the fate of programming is largely due to many phenomena that are discussed in this collective blog.
So, for example, in some way the question about the fate of programming as a highly intellectual activity, voiced by Tod Fast, echoes my thoughts expressed in the outline for the picture “The Internet at the Crossing”.
')
In spite of the fact that, in my opinion, such thoughts didn’t really please the habrovian public, they were almost never discussed there. Apparently, because they just got lost in my “pile” of other sketches related to various aspects of the next wave of the Web development. Yes, and in Habré itself, these sketches were presented in brief theses, and not everyone had a desire to read the full texts.
Therefore, I think it will not hurt at first to give the indicated sketches first, and then to tell about what the Sun expert is thinking about this - the author of the above-mentioned report. I will only remind you that there I was speaking mainly about social networking applications, the author considers any applications.
However, since the conversation at the conference was more about web programming, we can assume that the speaker's question was primarily related to this area of ​​activity. At the same time, given the general tendency of computer systems to go “into cloud” ( cloud computing ), the problem does not interfere with considering the broader plan, which I do after the abstract of this report.
Returning to the outline ...
From the folder "Cult of amateurs"
Sketch 20. The social platform revolution uncovered another interesting aspect of the cult of amateur dilemma. As more and more advanced platforms emerged, the requirements for the professionalism of developers of social resources began to decline steadily. Tools for the "baking" of such resources is becoming increasingly simple and accessible. And this, moreover, that the tools are not distinguished by a great variety, as, by the way, the recipe of the services laid in them. Today in Ning, for example, anyone not even familiar with the basics of programming can, literally, build their home-made product in an hour.
Does this mean that in the era of social platforms, professional web builders will be left without work? Yes, that means, unless they start creating truly original resources. Indeed, where do the original social resources come from with a “face not common expression”, if all the innovations are “baked” on the basis of a rather limited set of platforms. And even the problem is that there are not so many good and reliable platforms. The trouble is that according to their functional properties almost all of these platforms are twins. And they naturally produce twins - brothers. And the laws here are almost like genetics: the lack of fresh blood leads to the degeneration of the genus.
From the Wanted Professionals folder
Sketch 25. Undisguised areas where there are so few professional programmers, it seems to me, lie in the field of information-rich social resources and, above all, complex ones. Why do I think that there is no comprehensive information-rich resources? Yes, because we see only separately developing areas related to blogs, forums, video and audio content. We see how almost treading on the ground are the directions associated with the accumulation of links (social bookmarking and social news resources), as well as with developed methods for evaluating information.
If one of the above is included in complex social resources, then he plays a supporting role there. The main thing here is the restoration (FaceBook) and / or the establishment (MySpace) of contacts, as well as their maintenance. In other words, communication comes to the forefront in traditional integrated resources of mass use. Resources focused on diverse and high-quality content have yet to be created, and for this, qualified programmers need nothing less than for “new-fangled technologies” .
Sketch 26. Creating platforms for building information-rich resources is the most interesting task awaiting professional programmers today. There are practically no such platforms now. Therefore, for professional programmers there is no end of work. First of all, this concerns transparent SaaS-platforms compatible with Open Social.
And if I had previously believed that the platforms associated with the creation of information-rich resources should be aimed only at business and professional use, now I can see their other equally interesting applications. For example, with their help, you can create serious resources for book lovers, film fans and the like. Therefore, good and different platforms are simply necessary.
The role of programmers shifts from applications to platforms
Under such a summing headline, T. Fast's report was presented to InfoWorld, although the author himself called it more eloquently: “Applications for the masses are developing the masses: Why engineers are endangered species (for engineers and masses by masses: ) ". An abstract of the article is provided in this section.
The speaker divides all programmers who develop software applications into two groups. He refers to the first those who consider programming as a type of engineering activity and consider themselves to be engineers. It is over the future of these true, from his point of view, professionals and threatened. The very fact of a sharp reduction in the recent years of the number of people willing to study programmers in American universities proves that the danger of the disappearance of the profession has already been realized among the masses.
Fast calls the members of the second group the usual developers (casual developers), who do not even refer to themselves as engineers. They work at the level of php and similar hypertext languages ​​and widely use various types of templates and standard solutions of high enough level in their activities (meaning the frameworks and what we usually call engines, as well as widgets, gadgets and the like mashup'ovskie stuff). Here the author also includes those who now rushed to create applications based on open social platforms like Facebook.
For developers of the first group, programming is a profession forever or for a “very long time”. They are well aware that development is only the beginning of an application’s long life cycle. The toolkit here is quite complex. The output is a product - a product with normal documentation, focused on its subsequent alienation from the creators.
For developers of the second group, programming is the job “for today”. Output products even with a stretch can not be called a product. Programs, as a rule, are not designed for a long life. Normal documentation and some kind of alienation are usually not wanted here. For writing scripts, you can do with Notepad alone.
Everything leads to the fact that the main metric unit that determines the class of the application and the level of professionalism of its developers is not the number of lines of code, but the number of users. In this case, the account is in units (millions of users), which programmers-engineers could not even dream of before.
The general conclusion of both the author and those who are discussing this report is as follows. The future of professional web programmers lies in creating platforms for mainstream developers). Over the next 10-15 years, the squad of professional programmers here will dramatically decrease, but these will be the highest-class specialists. For all other web application developers, the word “programming” will gradually disappear altogether from the lexicon.
Some of my comments on the abstract of the report, as well as additional considerations “on the subject”, can be found in the iTech Bridge blog .
Despite the fact that this article, at first glance, does not quite fit into the collective blog “Intelligent Social Web and Enterprise 2.0”, I decided to post it here. After all, the very question about the fate of programming is largely due to many phenomena that are discussed in this collective blog.
So, for example, in some way the question about the fate of programming as a highly intellectual activity, voiced by Tod Fast, echoes my thoughts expressed in the outline for the picture “The Internet at the Crossing”.
')
In spite of the fact that, in my opinion, such thoughts didn’t really please the habrovian public, they were almost never discussed there. Apparently, because they just got lost in my “pile” of other sketches related to various aspects of the next wave of the Web development. Yes, and in Habré itself, these sketches were presented in brief theses, and not everyone had a desire to read the full texts.
Therefore, I think it will not hurt at first to give the indicated sketches first, and then to tell about what the Sun expert is thinking about this - the author of the above-mentioned report. I will only remind you that there I was speaking mainly about social networking applications, the author considers any applications.
However, since the conversation at the conference was more about web programming, we can assume that the speaker's question was primarily related to this area of ​​activity. At the same time, given the general tendency of computer systems to go “into cloud” ( cloud computing ), the problem does not interfere with considering the broader plan, which I do after the abstract of this report.
Returning to the outline ...
From the folder "Cult of amateurs"
Sketch 20. The social platform revolution uncovered another interesting aspect of the cult of amateur dilemma. As more and more advanced platforms emerged, the requirements for the professionalism of developers of social resources began to decline steadily. Tools for the "baking" of such resources is becoming increasingly simple and accessible. And this, moreover, that the tools are not distinguished by a great variety, as, by the way, the recipe of the services laid in them. Today in Ning, for example, anyone not even familiar with the basics of programming can, literally, build their home-made product in an hour.
Does this mean that in the era of social platforms, professional web builders will be left without work? Yes, that means, unless they start creating truly original resources. Indeed, where do the original social resources come from with a “face not common expression”, if all the innovations are “baked” on the basis of a rather limited set of platforms. And even the problem is that there are not so many good and reliable platforms. The trouble is that according to their functional properties almost all of these platforms are twins. And they naturally produce twins - brothers. And the laws here are almost like genetics: the lack of fresh blood leads to the degeneration of the genus.
From the Wanted Professionals folder
Sketch 25. Undisguised areas where there are so few professional programmers, it seems to me, lie in the field of information-rich social resources and, above all, complex ones. Why do I think that there is no comprehensive information-rich resources? Yes, because we see only separately developing areas related to blogs, forums, video and audio content. We see how almost treading on the ground are the directions associated with the accumulation of links (social bookmarking and social news resources), as well as with developed methods for evaluating information.
If one of the above is included in complex social resources, then he plays a supporting role there. The main thing here is the restoration (FaceBook) and / or the establishment (MySpace) of contacts, as well as their maintenance. In other words, communication comes to the forefront in traditional integrated resources of mass use. Resources focused on diverse and high-quality content have yet to be created, and for this, qualified programmers need nothing less than for “new-fangled technologies” .
Sketch 26. Creating platforms for building information-rich resources is the most interesting task awaiting professional programmers today. There are practically no such platforms now. Therefore, for professional programmers there is no end of work. First of all, this concerns transparent SaaS-platforms compatible with Open Social.
And if I had previously believed that the platforms associated with the creation of information-rich resources should be aimed only at business and professional use, now I can see their other equally interesting applications. For example, with their help, you can create serious resources for book lovers, film fans and the like. Therefore, good and different platforms are simply necessary.
The role of programmers shifts from applications to platforms
Under such a summing headline, T. Fast's report was presented to InfoWorld, although the author himself called it more eloquently: “Applications for the masses are developing the masses: Why engineers are endangered species (for engineers and masses by masses: ) ". An abstract of the article is provided in this section.
The speaker divides all programmers who develop software applications into two groups. He refers to the first those who consider programming as a type of engineering activity and consider themselves to be engineers. It is over the future of these true, from his point of view, professionals and threatened. The very fact of a sharp reduction in the recent years of the number of people willing to study programmers in American universities proves that the danger of the disappearance of the profession has already been realized among the masses.
Fast calls the members of the second group the usual developers (casual developers), who do not even refer to themselves as engineers. They work at the level of php and similar hypertext languages ​​and widely use various types of templates and standard solutions of high enough level in their activities (meaning the frameworks and what we usually call engines, as well as widgets, gadgets and the like mashup'ovskie stuff). Here the author also includes those who now rushed to create applications based on open social platforms like Facebook.
For developers of the first group, programming is a profession forever or for a “very long time”. They are well aware that development is only the beginning of an application’s long life cycle. The toolkit here is quite complex. The output is a product - a product with normal documentation, focused on its subsequent alienation from the creators.
For developers of the second group, programming is the job “for today”. Output products even with a stretch can not be called a product. Programs, as a rule, are not designed for a long life. Normal documentation and some kind of alienation are usually not wanted here. For writing scripts, you can do with Notepad alone.
Everything leads to the fact that the main metric unit that determines the class of the application and the level of professionalism of its developers is not the number of lines of code, but the number of users. In this case, the account is in units (millions of users), which programmers-engineers could not even dream of before.
The general conclusion of both the author and those who are discussing this report is as follows. The future of professional web programmers lies in creating platforms for mainstream developers). Over the next 10-15 years, the squad of professional programmers here will dramatically decrease, but these will be the highest-class specialists. For all other web application developers, the word “programming” will gradually disappear altogether from the lexicon.
Some of my comments on the abstract of the report, as well as additional considerations “on the subject”, can be found in the iTech Bridge blog .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/26060/
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