“In 6 months, programming will be solved!”
“Coding is dead!”
We’ve been hearing for the last 2 and a half years.
So - if programming is dead, if all the coding jobs are going to be automated away, why would I go all-in on studying Computer Science and Programming? Why would I choose to deeply study the low level, learn C and Zig - why would I think that’s a good idea?
Let me tell you a story or two:
The year is 1985, and you are going for radiation therapy. The device that is going to apply said radiation to your localized cancer is controlled by a PDP-11 assembly language program. There is a silent race condition in the software. The radiation machine applies 250x the radiation than normal. You die a painful death a few weeks/months later.
This is not theoretical.
The Therac-25 killed at least 6 people because of a programming error.
Or, more recently, the year is 2019, and you are on a Boeing 737 MAX (I was actually on one of the planes like a week before they were all grounded) - and you are shitting your pants because a programming error has already taken two planes out of the sky, killing 346 people.
Sorry to say, this kind of thing is going to become even more commonplace in the coming (already here) dystopia. Programming is not just “CRUD web apps” as so many seem to think it is.
It is hubris to think that what programmers do is something that doesn’t require a human touch point of someone that is incredibly skilled and experienced to oversee the potential edge cases that could literally end the lives of people. And, if you don’t care about that (it seems certain CEOs do not) well, then your shareholder value will be greatly impacted and you won’t get your bonus at the end of the year - a fate worse than death for certain people.
When a bunch of code is pushed to production, on a hope and a prayer, with people claiming to read it - Who is responsible?
When nobody knows what the code does anymore - or never did - who will maintain it?
Why am I going all in?
Probably because in the very near future, there will be an absolute excess of gigs to clean up the clanker written code that was supposed to “replace everyone”.
This isn’t new - we tried outsourcing programming jobs to other places (if you know, you know), and the quality suffered drastically.
We thought that C or compilers would displace programming, it only made demand for programmers larger.
We thought that COBOL would replace programmers because execs could just “write business logic” - and look how well that one worked.
Interestingly, it seems that “AI” causes people to atrophy their thinking skills to the point which is detrimental. In the very near future, we will need people that can actually think.
Programming is thinking - and I feel that that is in the shortest supply that it ever has been as we usher in this new Idiocracy.
As always, God bless, and until next time.
If you enjoyed this post, consider Supporting my work, Checking out my book, Working with me, or sending me an Email to tell me what you think.