"I am a lawyer and a part of my job is to automate my firm's contracts"
Isn't this why we gave them Excel, the most widely used image based programming environment in the world?
My partner was writing an Excel macro yesterday. I told them - you're programming! But they said - no, I'm not - I'm not a programmer; I was just using Excel.
So I said - when you're writing an email, you're writing. But you're not a writer. There are professional writers, specialists in copywriting or fiction writing or journalist, but everyone can write and often does in their jobs.
We need to stop thinking in terms of the magic black terminal screens and walls of indented text when we talk about the democratization of programming. It's already happened - Microsoft Excel is an interactive development environment in the style of Smalltalk and Lisp.
Things like Jupyter notebooks are also improving the situation. Ergonomics of existing languages is a red herring.
Our industry is very young and culturally rooted on anyone-in-their-basement-can-beat-the-establishment. I think that's why it hasn't adopted a more hierarchical and professionalized structure like doctors, architects, civil engineers, and so on.
I think you're placing the cultural cart before the economic horse here. The reason we haven't professionalized is because there's been no need to - demand for devs far outstrips supply. As soon as that tops out, and companies want to discriminate between 'good' and 'bad' developers, I think we'll see professional bodies and regulation become more required and sought after. Basement hackers will go the way of unlicensed doctors and disbarred lawyers.
This will also be accelerated as soon as we start killing people with badly written code, at which points governments will intervene and demand regulation of the industry. It's only a matter of time.
I agree that some professionals are already programming through Excel and Jupyter-like notebooks.
But, apart from seeing people use better tools in a more sophisticated way, I believe basic theory, formal syntax and algorithmic thinking will be a part of the skillset of all future professionals (like formal writing skills or math concepts are now).
I think you're placing the cultural cart before the economic horse here. The reason we haven't professionalized is because there's been no need to - demand for devs far outstrips supply.
That's a good point. Supply-demand is probably a better explanation for the lack of regulation.
This will also be accelerated as soon as we start killing people with badly written code
I wonder if we're running late already. A few political conflicts have already been linked to poorly regulated and thought-out technology.
Isn't this why we gave them Excel, the most widely used image based programming environment in the world?
My partner was writing an Excel macro yesterday. I told them - you're programming! But they said - no, I'm not - I'm not a programmer; I was just using Excel.
So I said - when you're writing an email, you're writing. But you're not a writer. There are professional writers, specialists in copywriting or fiction writing or journalist, but everyone can write and often does in their jobs.
We need to stop thinking in terms of the magic black terminal screens and walls of indented text when we talk about the democratization of programming. It's already happened - Microsoft Excel is an interactive development environment in the style of Smalltalk and Lisp.
Things like Jupyter notebooks are also improving the situation. Ergonomics of existing languages is a red herring.
I think you're placing the cultural cart before the economic horse here. The reason we haven't professionalized is because there's been no need to - demand for devs far outstrips supply. As soon as that tops out, and companies want to discriminate between 'good' and 'bad' developers, I think we'll see professional bodies and regulation become more required and sought after. Basement hackers will go the way of unlicensed doctors and disbarred lawyers.
This will also be accelerated as soon as we start killing people with badly written code, at which points governments will intervene and demand regulation of the industry. It's only a matter of time.
I agree that some professionals are already programming through Excel and Jupyter-like notebooks.
But, apart from seeing people use better tools in a more sophisticated way, I believe basic theory, formal syntax and algorithmic thinking will be a part of the skillset of all future professionals (like formal writing skills or math concepts are now).
That's a good point. Supply-demand is probably a better explanation for the lack of regulation.
I wonder if we're running late already. A few political conflicts have already been linked to poorly regulated and thought-out technology.
Look at nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/...
Or the multiple data leaks as of late (and the consequences they might have).