Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.