
No programmers for the future? - briantkim
These days we&#x27;re having so many programmers going for the sexy web and mobile platforms and actually very few people go for the low level or &#x27;hardcore&#x27; semi-conductor stuff. I have only met 3 fellow x86 assembler programmers  and even when I go to stackoverflow.com to ask an intel x86 assembler language question, it may take 3 days for me to get a reply, while for a javascript or python question it takes just 2 minutes. If this is the case then who will create the next Linux? Android? Or what I&#x27;m I getting wrong?
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lovelearning
My feeling is that most such systems programming specialists are too busy
working for their employers in the hardware, OS and embedded industries, to
blog or participate actively in discussion forums. They are members of the
"dark matter developers" group [1].

That said, a github search for assembly language repos and assembly language
code phrases throws up some 270 repos and upwards of 100,000 code files. So I
don't think asm is doing too badly. Your experience is probably only
anecdotal.

May I suggest that you contribute your bit to popularising asm by putting up
some of your projects here on Show HN. There must be other people like me who
have been intimately familiar with asm in the past and felt the thrill of
coding in it, but have lost touch with it and now feel intimidated by its
verbosity.

Some interesting projects may rekindle that interest. For example, recently
there was a "Show HN" of a bare bones assembly language game written by
students for the raspberry pi, and that made me start learning ARM assembly.
Put up something like that, or even something a lot simpler (personally, I'd
be interested in a beginner's tutorial on coding and building a simple console
program for Windows and Linux platforms, using modern x86_64 assembler and
modern tools).

[1]
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen9...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/DarkMatterDevelopersTheUnseen99.aspx)

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chewxy
I'm placing my bet that there will always be people who are interested in
systems programming. They're the Night Watch
([http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/mickens/thenightw...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/mickens/thenightwatch.pdf))

There will always be people who after years of doing high level stuff, get
curious about the low level implementations, start asking questions about how
data is represented in the machines, and then get sucked in and they stay
there.

I'm personally not too worried about the fact that there are fewer systems
programmers, because those who do it in the future, are those who are
interested in it. That will ensure higher quality software in general.

~~~
briantkim
True. So according to your point, today we may have quite a number of Mark
Zuckerbergs but few of Bill Gates or Linus Tovarlds. Or I got it wrong?

~~~
chewxy
I wouldn't put it as such. They're all one-offs.

But consider how fast gcc started supporting x86_64. I am not worried about
the supply of people who do systems programming

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joeclark77
There will always be more "tool users" than "tool builders". I think what
you're really lamenting is that the "tool users" are claiming the same title
and status (aka "programmer"). Perhaps the "tool builders" need a new brand to
set themselves apart. How about _electron whisperer_?

~~~
briantkim
Your point is valid Joe. The tool users dare not claim the same status. A
googler can never claim he's Larry or Sergey

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walterbell
Maybe the systems programmers are on mailing lists instead of web forums?

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seesomesense
You are looking in the wrong places. Try places like edaboard. Just the
microcontroller subforum has over 200,000 posts.

