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Is The Software Industry Dead?
A reader writes:" Ok. So I'm about to graduate and then I come across this story:
Do Software Firms Have Bright Future?
None other than Larry Ellison of Oracle thinks that the best is behind us and that software is a dead industry. What does the rest of slashdot think? Will that shiney new degree be worthless? " I think it's safe to say that it's not dead - but that the times it once had aren't going to return; e.g. tulip blubs sell well, but not like they used to.
Resent studies of the IT companies in Denmarks claims things are getting better. We won't see the unrealistical high payments anymore and companies aren't allowed to go five years without making money.
Generally the IT companies are beginning to look more like every other company. They grow more slowly and more securely than they did in the 90'
Who care what the Oracle guy says anyway. He said to much crap already.... Hey Larry, SHUT UP.
If you want to make a successful business writing software I suggest going after small and home businesses. They often need customized software and can't afford to hire their own programming staff. You could make a decent living I think by developing vertical apps for these users and offering customization services. At least that's what I'm working on. This is a good market to write opensource software in whie still making a living.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
If the software insdustry is dead, this would be quite odd. Perhaps certain portions of the industry are getting saturated, but there apparently still are some developing markets. Now if developing market out there is looking for a summer geek, I have a resume waiting for them...
How is a philosophy degree going to "set you apart" from other cs grads ?
I hope you plan on keeping the coding up during your extra schooling. Otherwise, you will just be a semester behind in experience too.
Because gaming software seems to be at as healthy a level as it has ever been.
Actually, gaming has been hurting for a few years now. Most of the little developers let themselves be bought out rather than go under. And unfortunately it's only a minority of big hit games that make money. People love to say "Look at Grand Theft Auto 3 and Splinter Cell!" but those are the exceptions.
This commentary from eWeek nicely dissects Ellison's troll...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I used to work for a major telco that has outsourced 3-5 thousand IT jobs once done near Tampa, FL to India. Now a friend who works for another telco told me this past week that over a 1000 of their IT jobs are going to India by the end of 2004. And that's just in their division (Atlanta). 1000's more will migrate soon and when the major groups groups (billing, financials, HR software, etc) are outsourced and gone, then the smaller supporting groups will leave too. It'll be REAL quiet on Peachtree Street. All over it's like this and now guess who's bitching loudest that H1B visas will soon be scaled back to the levels prior to the big dot-com bubble?
Did anyone else notice Ellison didn't say software was dead? He said: -- Ellison, known for his outspoken views, was downcast in January as he told Barrons weekly newspaper that high-tech's mind-boggling growth spurt is over -- never to return again. "It's (Silicon Valley) not coming back ... The industry's maturing. The Valley will never be what it was," Ellison said.
--
Essentially, it sounds to me like he's saying we're not going to get another bubble like we had in the 90s. Which seems kind of the prevailing opinion, at least I've not heard anyone said that we're ever goign to return to the growth we had in the 90s.
If you managed to make it through twelve years of primary education and four years of college without learning how to spell 'shiny', just how valuable do you think you're going to be to anyone, degree or not?
> I will agree with you once the free software subculture actually comes out with something that is NOT A CLONE of a commercial product.
TeX? Mosaic? SSH? Rogue?
How frikken many commercial clones of Rogue and Mosaic have we seen?
Some of the most genuinely innovative stuff we've got had its origin in the free software subculture.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Exactly. I used to architect and develop entire frameworks for internal development. Now I write templates for code generation. It's a little distressing at first...it looks like your job's being replaced by a computer...but what's really happening is that all the copy/paste/replace you used to do is being automated. There is still a need for talented designers and architects to develop metadata, design code templates, and write code generation utilities. Even then there is still room for one or two developers to come behind and tweak objects for specific validation rules and work on integration.
The software industry isn't going away, it's just getting smarter. More is being done with less, which means more higher paying jobs for highly skilled positions and fewer for copy/paste codemonkeys.
For another pessimistic point of view, check out May's Harvard Business Review, "IT Doesn't Matter," summary here. (I suggest reading it at a good magazine store with tables and coffee because buying the damn thing is not a sound value proposition.)
The article essentially argues that an in-house IT department is no longer strategic for most companies--that IT has become a commodity. Although I think this is completely absurd at this point, chances are they have a point. In any case, it's interesting reading.
Milo
You know it fits your challenge; you didn't ask for projects under active dev. Troll.
You want one under dev? Emacs.
We've all heard the quote, but it just ain't so
Considering the fact that the number of patent applications has increased every year since the Patent Office was formed (I'm 90% sure of that), it would seem unlikely that anyone at any point of time would have made a statement like that.
Also, it isn't whether new code can be created in the future, but what the utility of the new code will be and the efficacy of new business models which can profit from new software. For instance, can word processing software really improve much over what is already available and if not, why should people continue purchasing new versions of MS Office? (BTW, I don't feel that the software industry is dead, just trying to play devil's advocate)
I really think you've hit the nail on the head here. Even though traditional software like applications and operating systems will become more mature and not require much programming work, the embedded systems will need all the more programmers.
There are quite a lot of devices with embedded systems in them, but this development is in its infancy. Devices getting smaller, their room for batteries becoming less, you need to write more efficient code, which will use less cpu cycles and thus less batteries. It will last longer that way. So all your sitting through algorithm classes will have paid off if you know how to implement an efficient sort, know how hashes work and are able to make an efficient datatype for your system.
I think the embedded systems is an area where there still is a lot of work to be done, so still plenty of jobs for programmers.
It seems logical to me that the next boom will be biotech, although this may be slower, as it is an extremely complex subject matter.
My 0.02 Euro's.
Cheers,
Costyn.
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