
Are Programmers Headed Toward Another Bursting Bubble? - tebba-lebba
https://medium.com/@TebbaVonMathenstien/are-programmers-headed-toward-another-bursting-bubble-528e30c59a0e
======
tkyjonathan
System Administrators, largely gone.. Only around in old/large companies.
DBAs, largely gone as well.. Its not that those skills are not needed at all,
its just that 80% of them have been automated by the likes of AWS. Now those
remaining 20% that have no one with the expertise to fix them. AWS will also
start leeching away developer jobs with the Lambda marketplace. Why build your
own backend code that consumes from an API when you can buy a lambda that
pushes directly to your own DynamoDB or in a table to your RDS?

However, business users always knew SQL. SQL was designed for non-technical
people. Thats why 2-3 years back, even google brought back SQL to its big data
platforms. Even at my last job, some finance guys had no problem using it.
Also, 'integration engineers' should have been 'data engineers' and while that
is hot right now, people need to remember that its a solved problem as there
have been ETL tools that do that for you for about 20 years (see informatica).

------
karmakaze
> I suspect that the number of jobs for “programmers” in general will only
> continue to grow.

This reminds me of when telephones were becoming so popular that, "At this
rate everyone would have to be a switchboard operator!" Then the dial phone
was invented.

As such, we will want and have more, end-user-programmable abilities. Think of
the advance VisiCalc was, or IFTTT, and many more to come I'm sure. From the
other side is research in non-standard programming environments which is very
exciting (but I'm not holding my breath). Also, applying AI recipes to
different business areas doesn't actually require a lot of classical
programming knowledge, it's much more data-oriented plumbing work.

------
expertentipp
> The creation of websites is being automated by WordPress (and others) today.

Isn't WordPress dead or at least dying by now? Its main use case - blog engine
for desktop browsers - is much less relevant than was years ago.

~~~
reefoctopus
Wordpress is used by more than 1/4 of all websites. Is that dead?

------
bob_theslob646
>The creation of websites is being automated by WordPress (and others) today.

I think whoever wrote this has never heard of JS ... good luck automating
interactive websites.

~~~
designcode
What's JS ?

~~~
taheca
Javascript

------
mikestew
I want to quote a quote from the opening of the article: _" 'Do you think IT
and some lower-level programming jobs are going to go the way of the dodo?
Seems a bit like a massive job bubble that’s gonna burst. It’s my opinion that
one of the only things keeping tech and lower-level computer science-related
jobs “prestigious” and well-paid is ridiculous industry jargon and public
ignorance about computers, which are both going to go away in the next 10
years. […]'"_

Had this been from a time capsule article, such as the "Microsoft (1985)" NYT
article posted recently, I would have believed it had you told me the quote
was from thirty years ago. Because that's how long I've been hearing this same
thing. So something something Betteridge.

I'll admit to only skimming the article, because skimming it didn't tell me
that I'm going to hear something new. It's the same "blah, blah, blah,
automation" with a picture of pin setters in a bowling alley. Well, sure,
their jobs went away because it begged for automation. But here's where the
analogy falls apart: we're not the pin setters, we make the pin setting
machines. Is the gist of the article that once pin setting machines were
invented, with a quick swipe of the hands and a hearty "well done!" we never
need revisit the setting of bowling pins? A visit to a modern bowling will
tell you that's not the case. We still need pin setters, they just work in
code and not with their hands.

Thirty years ago it was all 4GLs and CASE tools. Yeah, the fact that you have
go look those acronyms up ought to tell you something. They just didn't work
out like some thought, and that thought was "you tell the tool what you want,
and it'll write the code for you!". Yeah, not in this century it won't.

I, like many, have lived through a bursting bubble. And you know who suffered?
Those that didn't know their craft. So the HTML jockeys, who got the job
because they could spell HTML and close their tags most of the time, lost
their jobs. But those weren't craftsmen, anymore than my dog knowing the
English language because his butt drops to the floor when I say "sit".

Automation, automation, automation. You know what else aids a task via
automation? CNC machines. Now any idiot can make automotive parts without
knowing a thing about lathes! No, there's far more to it than that, just like
there's far more to making a web site that getting the browser to display
things the way you want. Automation makes jobs easier and less time consuming,
but it does not relieve the user of _knowing what they 're doing_. And that's
the key piece I think missed by articles such as this, and I think that piece
is so key that to ignore it means one is unable to write a quality, thoughtful
article on the subject.

~~~
lostnsantacarla
Couldn't agree more. I suffered through a years worth of embedded C rewrites
in simulink as well, certainly no silver bullet to be found there, to the
chagrin of management

