Oh man, I remember when everyone looked down on web programmers and PHP monkeys. Hah. (I also did my much of my early programming on a trs-80, but mine was an obsolete tandy model 100 that I brought to school in the mid-90s, mostly to automate the 'guess and check' rote math homework.)
It used to be that there was a strong hierarchy. I know in the '90s and the first half of the '00s, you had the "real programmers" - the embedded and systems programmers... then the sysadmins, then your web programmers, then your web "designers" - with respect scaling in the obvious direction.
But, I think, this has shifted, especially in the HN world, where VC is very influential. The web programmers are now the 'serious programmers' - the valuable commodities, with designers also being fairly important. My people, the sysadmins are largely considered surplus population, and what you would have called 'real programmers' are now irrelevant old fogies that sometimes have interesting things to say.
(the question that looms in my mind is this: Will the construction of online CRUD apps be automated the same way that the construction of native CRUD apps were automated in the '90s? Will we have 'visual FoxPro' for the web? I mean, my stepfather, a long time user of such programs has shown me some of the rudimentary dot-net stuff... but it's not all the way there, as far as I can see, when it comes to whipping up a webapp as simply and easily as it whips up a native app.)
>This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio.
See, I've always thought of HN as a site more focused on the business side than the technical side. I mean, we do have some interesting technical articles, but ycombinator is about making money, and a lot of that is raising money. (my impression is that being young and goodlooking is an important part of raising money right now, but what do I know? I have yet to seriously attempt raising money.)
From the business perspective? learning how to, you know, use computers is pretty important and interesting.
>conversely, I don't think it's a bad thing that people who are less talented and less capable give up, and find something else they are better at and have more fun doing.
See, I kindof disagree. Sortof. in a way. You see, I think using computers is a bit like literacy. We all can't be Shakespeare, but even if you only get to 'spot is on the rug' well, you are way better off than otherwise.
Personally, I think that really basic programming should be taught in schools the way reading and writing is. Sure, most people aren't very good, but we put a hell of a lot of effort into getting folks to the 'spot is on the rug' level, and I think that most people would be better off if they, say, knew how to make a loop and an 'if' statement in basic.
I mean, certainly, most people can't be specialist programmers. But look at those CRUD app creators in the '90s, like FoxPro. Your ability to understand business processes was just as important, if not more important than your programming ability. We have the ability to make simple programming languages. We have the compute power to be able to run extremely inefficient code at reasonable speeds. Knowing just a little can help a whole lot.
IMO we've already seen the automation of web-CRUD. It used to be a lot of work to set up even a simple CRUD app on the web, now a brain-dead simple CRUD app is 15 minutes in skilled hands.
This differs from Visual FoxPro substantially. Our jobs are being automated, but instead of automating into the hands of an army of lay users, it's automating into the hands of a few skilled practitioners.
The productivity of the modern web programmer is at least an order of magnitude beyond where we were 10 years ago. What used to take a veritable army of CS majors takes 3 people and a fridge full of Red Bull.
Our tools and processes are getting better every day. So far "stuff that needs to be done" seems to be outpacing "increasing efficiency per programmer", but I doubt that will hold true forever.
>IMO we've already seen the automation of web-CRUD. It used to be a lot of work to set up even a simple CRUD app on the web, now a brain-dead simple CRUD app is 15 minutes in skilled hands.
hm. so what tools would a skilled developer use to, say, write a simple invoicing system in 15 minutes?
Oh man, I remember when everyone looked down on web programmers and PHP monkeys. Hah. (I also did my much of my early programming on a trs-80, but mine was an obsolete tandy model 100 that I brought to school in the mid-90s, mostly to automate the 'guess and check' rote math homework.)
It used to be that there was a strong hierarchy. I know in the '90s and the first half of the '00s, you had the "real programmers" - the embedded and systems programmers... then the sysadmins, then your web programmers, then your web "designers" - with respect scaling in the obvious direction.
But, I think, this has shifted, especially in the HN world, where VC is very influential. The web programmers are now the 'serious programmers' - the valuable commodities, with designers also being fairly important. My people, the sysadmins are largely considered surplus population, and what you would have called 'real programmers' are now irrelevant old fogies that sometimes have interesting things to say.
(the question that looms in my mind is this: Will the construction of online CRUD apps be automated the same way that the construction of native CRUD apps were automated in the '90s? Will we have 'visual FoxPro' for the web? I mean, my stepfather, a long time user of such programs has shown me some of the rudimentary dot-net stuff... but it's not all the way there, as far as I can see, when it comes to whipping up a webapp as simply and easily as it whips up a native app.)
>This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio.
See, I've always thought of HN as a site more focused on the business side than the technical side. I mean, we do have some interesting technical articles, but ycombinator is about making money, and a lot of that is raising money. (my impression is that being young and goodlooking is an important part of raising money right now, but what do I know? I have yet to seriously attempt raising money.)
From the business perspective? learning how to, you know, use computers is pretty important and interesting.
>conversely, I don't think it's a bad thing that people who are less talented and less capable give up, and find something else they are better at and have more fun doing.
See, I kindof disagree. Sortof. in a way. You see, I think using computers is a bit like literacy. We all can't be Shakespeare, but even if you only get to 'spot is on the rug' well, you are way better off than otherwise.
Personally, I think that really basic programming should be taught in schools the way reading and writing is. Sure, most people aren't very good, but we put a hell of a lot of effort into getting folks to the 'spot is on the rug' level, and I think that most people would be better off if they, say, knew how to make a loop and an 'if' statement in basic.
I mean, certainly, most people can't be specialist programmers. But look at those CRUD app creators in the '90s, like FoxPro. Your ability to understand business processes was just as important, if not more important than your programming ability. We have the ability to make simple programming languages. We have the compute power to be able to run extremely inefficient code at reasonable speeds. Knowing just a little can help a whole lot.