[TriLUG] the future of programming (was Piece of History)

Joseph Mack NA3T jmack at wm7d.net
Sun Feb 24 16:11:14 EST 2008


On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Kevin J. wrote:

> Personally, I think the only decent programmers of 
> tomorrow will come from the kids (mostly elsewhere in the 
> world) who grew up using Linux.

This is either an important or irrelevant topic, depending 
who you are. Having started programming in the '60s I count 
myself as a member of only 1 or 2 generations of people that 
will be programmers in this country.

I interviewed Owen Astrachan (CS Duke U) for this 
presentation

http://www.austintek.com/outsourcing/

where he said that no-one expected CS graduates to be 
programmers anymore.

The people with money only want programmers to write 
programs that make them more money (ie we're to help 
streamline business practices). Thus the proliferation of IT 
departments concerned with computerised implementation of 
standard business practices, and not CS departments in 
businesses. The people with money don't know which end of 
the computer to put the oil in and will send the work 
off-shore if that's what it takes to get a better bottom 
line.

There isn't a great demand for good programmers. There has 
always been a demand for great computer people like Turing, 
or von Neuman, the latter's success in computing didn't come 
from his academic skills (which were needed) but from being 
able to talk and shake money out of congress to build one of 
the early computers.

OSDL (where Linus works) is a very competitive place. Even 
very good people aren't good enough and don't last long. You 
have a better chance of getting an appointment at Harvard 
and a better chance of being a rock star than of being one 
of these people.

Some people have made money out of being programmers: Linus 
bought a house on stock options he was given in an early 
IPO. Andreessen of netscape also made his money (AFAIK) out 
of stock options or some sort of equivalent promises. 
Neither made money rather for the worth of their coding, but 
only for their names.

I'm writing this e-mail on pine. How much money have the 
people make who wrote pine? If you're a coder, then you're 
just a fungible assembly line worker. If you've got the 
money, then you're in control. If you don't have ideas, then 
there is no-where to go. The big problems; wars, global 
warming, over population, pollution and loss of habitat for 
our co-inhabitants of the earth, need power from the people 
and someone who sees the problems and who can talk and 
convince people and is prepared to lead, rather than just be 
elected.

So what about good programmers: the people who can figure 
out anything and code it up? Without money or ideas you'll 
just be doing what other people want, which is to code up 
new ideas on making money. What about science or 
engineering: I've looked at jobs on the VLA - they just want 
sysadmins - the convolutions etc have all been worked out by 
academics. A good programmer will get a job but not a lot of 
respect.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!



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