Well ...

Post #61,138 by drewk 11/5/02 9:10:34 AM Reply	Well ... I'm reminded of a favorite quote from a couple of years ago: "E-business" won't be mainstream until you can drop the "e" and just call it "business". Right now I'm a web programmer. Defined as I program applications for delivery through a web browser, served by a web server. The logic and structure of it is essentially stateless client-server. There is no inherrent "webness" to what I do. So I prefer my official title: programmer. It's a quirk of this young industry that people (mainly HR and PHBs) think there's a difference between a "programmer" and a "web programmer". If we decided tomorrow to redo our intra/extranet as an installable program that happens to use the internet for communication, I'd still be one of the ones doing it. Now that that's out of the way ... My industry is nowhere near automating people out of work yet. System installation and configuration is nearing full automation. System administration is starting down that road, but is nowhere near as far along as Microsoft would like us to believe. But programming can't be automated until we've solved the problem of natural language recognition. You'd have to be able to state a business problem in plain english and the tool converts that into code. So if we're talking about real-estate, that problem domain may be "solved" within another five years. But general programming will be around for a while. === Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say "we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way." -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=38978\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #61,160 by dshellman 11/5/02 12:39:23 PM Reply	Re: Well ... Actually, I have to somewhat disagree with this: It's a quirk of this young industry that people (mainly HR and PHBs) think there's a difference between a "programmer" and a "web programmer". If we decided tomorrow to redo our intra/extranet as an installable program that happens to use the internet for communication, I'd still be one of the ones doing it. If we were to assume that that programmer had some formal education in programming (computer science, math, EE, etc.), then you might be closer to the truth. My experience has shown that many programmers (and non-programmers, especially) coming from the client/server world stumble quite a bit with the web. That doesn't mean that web programming is inherently (sp?) than client/server or any other distributed (or non-distributed) model. What it means is that there are plenty of gotchas, and a paradigm of looking at how things work. When I see a client/server programmer (that usually isn't that experienced with programming) start coding for the web, they make all sorts of mistakes (such as over-using session objects, organizing pages incorrectly, organizing forms improperly, etc.). The same would go for doing the reverse. If you took a web programmer and threw him/her at a CORBA project, many mistakes will be made. And that's assuming some training. Given enough training, and that may not be a problem...but, then, if you've got special training, you're more than a general purpose programmer (or a web-specific or RPC-specific programmer). With better and better tools, though, those mistakes lessen (and possibly go away). That type of development becomes commoditized (meaning that new college graduates can do it for a lot less money). Web development is certainly headed that way. Of course, there will always be the "more difficult" types of things to do, which will require a more experienced individual, but as the maturation of the "subindustry" grows, the need for those types of individuals lessens. I can read the writing on the wall for what I do...and, hence, I'm working to move beyond it. I've already become too expensive as a simple programmer. For most things, somewhat that's a lot cheaper can do it just as well (or, at least, good enough and fast enough). I'm not going to compete on speed (there's no way to really use that in an interview, and I don't want to work that way), and if my specialized knowledge isn't needed, I'm not (and I don't believe in hording it, so it's easier to work myself out of a job). Dan
Post #61,162 by drewk 11/5/02 12:53:02 PM Reply	I think we've leapfrogged the technology If we were to assume that that programmer had some formal education in programming (computer science, math, EE, etc.), then you might be closer to the truth ... With better and better tools, though, those mistakes lessen (and possibly go away). That type of development becomes commoditized (meaning that new college graduates can do it for a lot less money). I agree with the problem, but think the cause is that our expectations have outpaced the technology. Because of the immaturity of the tools, a good programmer still must have some theoretical background beyond their specific toolset. Eventually the tools will be mature enough to allow specialization, by automating the "generic programming" aspect. But until the tools reach that point, a good programmer will still probably have to know more about programming than about a specific problem domain. === Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say "we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way." -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=38978\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #61,168 by dshellman 11/5/02 1:11:33 PM Reply	Agreed
Post #61,243 by ben_tilly 11/5/02 6:49:25 PM Reply	And this differs from any other pair of technologies..how? Take any technology. I maintain that programmers who are only familiar with that will make characteristic mistakes when asked to perform with any other technology. How many, how big, and what they are depends on the pair of technologies. That there will be some is inevitable. Cheers, Ben "Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it\ufffds probably a fly." - [link\|http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html\|Walter Mead]
Post #61,329 by dshellman 11/6/02 9:40:09 AM Reply	Riding the waves I completely agree. My point wasn't to make web development and other distributed development models special (I was merely following the example given). What that means, though, is that for a particular type of technology (whether that's web development, client/server, enterprise integration, etc.) it takes time for the tools to reach a point where inexperienced to non-programmers are able to produce applications quickly and with somewhat acceptable quality (obviously, this is somewhat debatable, hence the acceptable quality). Until tools reach that parity, experienced developers with the technology will be in high demand (assuming the technology is in high demand). From a developer's perspective (a highly skilled one, that is), sticking with a particular technology until it's been "tooled" out isn't necessarily a good idea. Of course, there are some examples for and against this: COBOL, which everyone claimed was dead, is still fairly big (even after the spike in 1998-9); though C (not C++) development has tapered off over the years (being replaced mostly by C++/C#/Java), though still has a fairly large niche (Linux, Unix, drivers, etc.); VB and Delphi relegated PowerBuilder (and to some extent Visual C++) to niche-sized markets; and, of course, even Office, with VBA, macros, Access, etc., has made programmers out of power users. None of this is new, of course. I guess my point is that, for the past 20 years or so, there have been waves of technologies which have required experienced developers, admins, etc. to scratch a business itch. Those that have ridden those waves have done well (financially), but when they've ridden them too long or too much, it makes it harder to jump onto the next wave (and demand for them has gone down). Dan

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