And who's going to create these magical "point-and-drool" applications? Programmers
Yes, maybe a hundred thousand people will be involved in this business, displacing the millions who do the custom coding today.
Economies of scale will come to programming - it doesn't surprise me that the/. audience is in denial about this, as this board tends to be rather arrogant and pleased with itself, but its going to happen.
The point is that faster processors does not create the required intelligence to DESIGN solutions to computing problems.
And my point is that the people who will use the paint-by-drool tools to pump out most business logic will not be the people who call themselves programmers today. It will be lower skill and lower pay. Note that I am talking about average business problems (today solved by high priced, high skill programmers). Obviously hotshots will occupy part of the market, but that part will shrink.
The fact is, automatic detection of malicious code and intrusions is hard (as in NP).
P/NP has little impact on what types of programs people write. 'P' programs often hide huge performance costs in constants, and personally I wrote the distinction off long ago as an academic curiosity.
The tools/methods generate too many false positives to not have a human in the loop.
People will continue to be in the loop somewhere - most likely tuning the heuristics, but I contend that there will be far fewer of them.
When were programmers involved with interface design?It doesn't automatically allow you to generate readable code
Why most the code be readable? Can you read the code spit out by a compiler? If it runs fast enough to make business sense, people will gladly treat it as a black box.
CPU performance is _great_ for more polygons and faster DBs, but explain to me again how CPU performance is going to create heuristics that rid me of my job?
More powerful CPUs make it possible to run algorithms that are not practical currently. Genetic programming, dynamic programming, and other methods for automatic optimization that require vast processing and memory requirements today will be exceedingly cheap by 2015.
Its just like general-purpose assembler programming - in 2002, you either write a compiler that creates everyone's assembler/machine code for them, or you are out of a job. The automatically generated code from a compiler is good enough to make the hand-generated assembler code impractical and costly.
You will always have programers and network engineers and security engineers and under water basket weavers. Dont be so paranoid.
I appear to be misconstrued. I am not saying that no one will be programming - I am saying that the number of people who will make their living doing it in the US will decrease. I think the trends are already in place - programming is already moving overseas. On the technology side, garbage collected , OO languages are killing off other technologies for mainstream business use - its no stretch to think that point and drool tools for construction software written in such languages will be next.
I'm sorry, but I think you're in denial. Think about the decline in the art of assembly programming. Twenty years ago almost everyone did some of it, now you'd be hard pressed to get an assembler "hello world" out of 95% of the programmers out there.
Think about how Moore's law works - by 2015 computers will be easily, effortlessly capable of running languages dumber than VB far faster than the fastest assembler is run on today's fastest machines. Of course the programs themselves will become more complex, but I suspect that the performance of dumb languages will be good enough for businesses who want to drastically reduce programmer wage costs.
Sure hand-made code will always have its panache, just like hand-made cars do. How many manufacturers still make cars by hand?
Database design will most definitely be point and drool. I will say that with certainty.
Network administration will be largely automated - heck you can almost do this now, so in fifteen years its a no-brainer. Added to which, the complexity of network tasks will force automation. Look at viruses and security - its almost impossible to keep up with individual virii and individual security breaches. In the next ten years we will have to build heuristic methods that can automatically detect intrusions and threats against protected resources. You just won't be able to keep a network up otherwise. Of course someone will have to write this code too, but with industry consolidation it will likely be a fifty person job at most.
I agree with you and don't believe Katz's Utopian notion of the vibrant global citizen. More likely we'll be seeing a world where the middle class is solidly mollified by an international community that values security and observation, and a captive audience of consumers.
I don't see any reason why the unwashed masses who sit and drool in front of the TV now won't be sitting and drooling in front of the web.
Programmers have so far been insulated from most layoffs and foreign competition. This state of grace will probably erode by 2015.
Get ready to see your programming job get exported to India and China. Drop your mythical notions that all people in these countries know how to do is customer support.
On top of that, get ready to be "Moore's law'd'" out of most other programming jobs you might be thinking of taking - by 2015 computers will be fast enough that point-and-drool paint-by-numbers tools will be available to rapidly and idiotically autogenerate most of the code you write today with no discernable performance loss.
That said, middle class tech jobs will pay the bills nicely through 2010, after that I wouldn't get into programming for all of the tea in China, it will be a sucker's racket akin to the auto industry.
Thank you for once again pointing out the idiotic bias of the editors of this site. Its not only dishonest, its an insult to the rest of us who like our reporting somewhat unvarnished (which should be everyone who graduated from high school).
Unfortunately as the linux industry comes down from its 2001 high, sites like this are devolving into raw, unreasoned advocacy. check out comp.os.os2.advocacy circa about 1996 to see where/. is heading.
If memory serves me correct, the application (which is quite old) sits directly on hardware, no OS in between. Correct me if I am wrong on this, as this may be true for an older version of Sabre.
The Sabre system is maybe the more interesting case study - how engineers kept an ancient and likely antiquated system up and running in the face of massive industry/technological change.
The problem I see is that the majority of the people he seems to be going for are really a niche market.
The real problem is that you won't concede that computing is developing niche markets. Something I would have though linux users would have been able to appreciate implicitly.
The logic is quite simple - Jobs understood that Apple was going to get creamed competing head-to-head with MS. There is no doubt of that. So he moved Apple into a new market - stylish, highly integrated hardware and software that aim to extend the computing experience outside of the OS.
As a result, Apple is making out just fine. Financially they are sound. They have great products and are creating an appealing product vision with their retail outlets (which admittedly are a loss leader).
They've found a way to survive against MS. Whats the problem??
i think what katz was getting at in a round about way is that you have to appeal to the middle of the market, a la politics. the person who wins elections nationwide is not the person who is a way right republican or a way left democrat. its the person who can appeal to the moderates and centrists.
Thats because only one person can win the election. The Mac is a product in a diverse market - Apple makes money, has a load of cash in the bank, and has loyal users. What are they missing?
They have in fact succeeded by not going after the middle of the market, where they would have been creamed.
So I'm to understand from this article that if Apple didn't focus on design, they'd have more than 4.5% market share?
I don't think its a stretch to for Jobs to concede that MS won the operating system war - thats why he is trying to fight the total user experience war - something MS can't do unless it wants to start making boxes.
I think Jobs is an egomaniac, but he's also driven by some very appealing ideas about consumer computing, and I'd take his strategy over Katz's punditry any day of the week.
So it looks like BeOS is going to be lost forever -- the modern day equivalent of being bulldozed into a pit, burned, and buried under concrete.
You're talking about someone's private property. Its theirs to sell or destroy as they see fit. You're talking like you were swindled out of something you had rights against.
Playstation2, Gamecube and XBox. And if you don't think that so-called "poor" people are out buying these, think again. Most vice-oriented consumption (and yes, video games are essentially a vice) comes out of the pockets of the poor. Do you think its the citizens of Atherton that are paying for all of those WWF pay-per-views???
Really, anyone who has grown up in a depressed or impoverished area (as I did) will tell you that the beer and cigarettes are never lacking in these areas, and most of them are set up pretty well for home entertainment and other ways to dither away your tax dollars.
In many ways these people live more comfortably than royalty did a century ago. Its time we quit calling them "poor" and started calling them "less wealthy".
require Microsoft (and other software companies) to make abandonware revert to free-use by anyone.
This is inane. Are you claiming that with the release of XP, Windows ME should be free??
The rest of your comments are just ill-conceived anti-market pap. Employing rules as you describe them would wipe out the commercial software business as we know it in ten years.
No one has clearly told me where the divide is. Is it people on welfare? Well they all have cable TV, so clearly they are just picking a noninteractive diversion over and interactive one.
Politicos come up with props like this precisely because they know no one will ever pick the scab off and determine what they mean - its treated as self evident. Now that its treated as a given that the divide exists, it can be used as leverage in government spending bills.
In any case, this begs an entirely other different question - why do we care if people have computers at home??? Do we concern ourselves with a "TV divide"? How about an "SUV divide"? Home computers, particularly those connected to the net, are primarily used for entertainment, and you know what I'm talking about.
I think what you're talking about is one or the other dying off. Well lets look at the options in this regard. You could make the argument that the "Linus" of the BSD world, Jordan Hubbard, is working on Darwin now, and that FreeBSD will suffer as a result. Also, the next FreeBSD major release date has more or less been set to "...err, we'll let you know sometime in 2003".
So as much as I loathe to feed the trolls, there is some strong evidence to suggest that the BSD community is losing interest, motivation, or both. Its hard to deny that they are slowing down.
So I'd say Linux is the quite obvious choice, but note that this community is also being splintered as people move on to other interesting technologies as they linux hype wanes. I suspect OSX will capture some of this audience, particularly those linux users who have given up on desktop linux (you know, those people who don't describe themselves as "gluttons for punishment"). XP and Win2k will also get some users, now that they are bridging the stability divide (and once people realize most of the tools they love on linux are in cygwin).
Guess we'll have to wait and see.
Why was this article posted???
on
Apache 2.0 vs. IIS
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Its obvious the interviewer in the original article has no clue, his arguments are baseless, even the/. editors knew so much when they posted it. So the question is, why??
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, maybe a hundred thousand people will be involved in this business, displacing the millions who do the custom coding today.
Economies of scale will come to programming - it doesn't surprise me that the /. audience is in denial about this, as this board tends to be rather arrogant and pleased with itself, but its going to happen.
And my point is that the people who will use the paint-by-drool tools to pump out most business logic will not be the people who call themselves programmers today. It will be lower skill and lower pay. Note that I am talking about average business problems (today solved by high priced, high skill programmers). Obviously hotshots will occupy part of the market, but that part will shrink.
P/NP has little impact on what types of programs people write. 'P' programs often hide huge performance costs in constants, and personally I wrote the distinction off long ago as an academic curiosity.
The tools/methods generate too many false positives to not have a human in the loop.
People will continue to be in the loop somewhere - most likely tuning the heuristics, but I contend that there will be far fewer of them.
When were programmers involved with interface design?It doesn't automatically allow you to generate readable code
Why most the code be readable? Can you read the code spit out by a compiler? If it runs fast enough to make business sense, people will gladly treat it as a black box.
More powerful CPUs make it possible to run algorithms that are not practical currently. Genetic programming, dynamic programming, and other methods for automatic optimization that require vast processing and memory requirements today will be exceedingly cheap by 2015.
Its just like general-purpose assembler programming - in 2002, you either write a compiler that creates everyone's assembler/machine code for them, or you are out of a job. The automatically generated code from a compiler is good enough to make the hand-generated assembler code impractical and costly.
I appear to be misconstrued. I am not saying that no one will be programming - I am saying that the number of people who will make their living doing it in the US will decrease. I think the trends are already in place - programming is already moving overseas. On the technology side, garbage collected , OO languages are killing off other technologies for mainstream business use - its no stretch to think that point and drool tools for construction software written in such languages will be next.
Microsoft, Apple, or the linux team - in any case there aren't more than 3000 jobs in total in this group by 2015.
That is because I am not making a reference to software. I am making a reference to the standard definition of CPU performance.
The kinds of tools you're talking about, smart, extreme-CASE tools, 4+GLs, etc., are years and years away
Thats why I said 2015.
Think about how Moore's law works - by 2015 computers will be easily, effortlessly capable of running languages dumber than VB far faster than the fastest assembler is run on today's fastest machines. Of course the programs themselves will become more complex, but I suspect that the performance of dumb languages will be good enough for businesses who want to drastically reduce programmer wage costs.
Sure hand-made code will always have its panache, just like hand-made cars do. How many manufacturers still make cars by hand?
Network administration will be largely automated - heck you can almost do this now, so in fifteen years its a no-brainer. Added to which, the complexity of network tasks will force automation. Look at viruses and security - its almost impossible to keep up with individual virii and individual security breaches. In the next ten years we will have to build heuristic methods that can automatically detect intrusions and threats against protected resources. You just won't be able to keep a network up otherwise. Of course someone will have to write this code too, but with industry consolidation it will likely be a fifty person job at most.
The last twenty people making a living programming in the US.
I don't see any reason why the unwashed masses who sit and drool in front of the TV now won't be sitting and drooling in front of the web.
Get ready to see your programming job get exported to India and China. Drop your mythical notions that all people in these countries know how to do is customer support.
On top of that, get ready to be "Moore's law'd'" out of most other programming jobs you might be thinking of taking - by 2015 computers will be fast enough that point-and-drool paint-by-numbers tools will be available to rapidly and idiotically autogenerate most of the code you write today with no discernable performance loss.
That said, middle class tech jobs will pay the bills nicely through 2010, after that I wouldn't get into programming for all of the tea in China, it will be a sucker's racket akin to the auto industry.
On what planet? Netscape is sitting around 8% of the browser market.
RealAudio is closed
And so is the software MS used to kill it. Your point??
Haven't you heard of Apache
He said servers on Windows and he was right.
Unfortunately as the linux industry comes down from its 2001 high, sites like this are devolving into raw, unreasoned advocacy. check out comp.os.os2.advocacy circa about 1996 to see where /. is heading.
The Sabre system is maybe the more interesting case study - how engineers kept an ancient and likely antiquated system up and running in the face of massive industry/technological change.
The real problem is that you won't concede that computing is developing niche markets. Something I would have though linux users would have been able to appreciate implicitly.
The logic is quite simple - Jobs understood that Apple was going to get creamed competing head-to-head with MS. There is no doubt of that. So he moved Apple into a new market - stylish, highly integrated hardware and software that aim to extend the computing experience outside of the OS.
As a result, Apple is making out just fine. Financially they are sound. They have great products and are creating an appealing product vision with their retail outlets (which admittedly are a loss leader).
They've found a way to survive against MS. Whats the problem??
Thats because only one person can win the election. The Mac is a product in a diverse market - Apple makes money, has a load of cash in the bank, and has loyal users. What are they missing?
They have in fact succeeded by not going after the middle of the market, where they would have been creamed.
I don't think its a stretch to for Jobs to concede that MS won the operating system war - thats why he is trying to fight the total user experience war - something MS can't do unless it wants to start making boxes.
I think Jobs is an egomaniac, but he's also driven by some very appealing ideas about consumer computing, and I'd take his strategy over Katz's punditry any day of the week.
You're talking about someone's private property. Its theirs to sell or destroy as they see fit. You're talking like you were swindled out of something you had rights against.
Please explain further.
Really, anyone who has grown up in a depressed or impoverished area (as I did) will tell you that the beer and cigarettes are never lacking in these areas, and most of them are set up pretty well for home entertainment and other ways to dither away your tax dollars.
In many ways these people live more comfortably than royalty did a century ago. Its time we quit calling them "poor" and started calling them "less wealthy".
This is inane. Are you claiming that with the release of XP, Windows ME should be free??
The rest of your comments are just ill-conceived anti-market pap. Employing rules as you describe them would wipe out the commercial software business as we know it in ten years.
Politicos come up with props like this precisely because they know no one will ever pick the scab off and determine what they mean - its treated as self evident. Now that its treated as a given that the divide exists, it can be used as leverage in government spending bills.
In any case, this begs an entirely other different question - why do we care if people have computers at home??? Do we concern ourselves with a "TV divide"? How about an "SUV divide"? Home computers, particularly those connected to the net, are primarily used for entertainment, and you know what I'm talking about.
So as much as I loathe to feed the trolls, there is some strong evidence to suggest that the BSD community is losing interest, motivation, or both. Its hard to deny that they are slowing down.
So I'd say Linux is the quite obvious choice, but note that this community is also being splintered as people move on to other interesting technologies as they linux hype wanes. I suspect OSX will capture some of this audience, particularly those linux users who have given up on desktop linux (you know, those people who don't describe themselves as "gluttons for punishment"). XP and Win2k will also get some users, now that they are bridging the stability divide (and once people realize most of the tools they love on linux are in cygwin).
Guess we'll have to wait and see.
Its obvious the interviewer in the original article has no clue, his arguments are baseless, even the /. editors knew so much when they posted it. So the question is, why??