Computer Programmers
This is an update of my article at:

Computer Programmers for Not Yet Techies

The real news on this subject is the gradual erosion of
the position of computer programmers as the kings of IT.

They are still the ones who tell computers what do to,
but it is no longer seen as the pinnacle of the field. I've
read that in some places even the term "programmer"
is now seen as at least slightly insulting. No, you want to
be a "developer."

This is a bigger picture version of programming. You don't
just write line after line of code, you organize the entire
piece of software. You assemble code from pre-written
libraries. In object oriented languages such as C++ and
Java, you plug in the "object" -- which is a blackbox of
code -- that performs the function you need, such as
finding a number's square root or alphabeticizing by
customer last name.

Computer programming is one of those skills that is
difficult enough that only a relatively small percentage
of the population can learn to do it well -- but not so
difficult that only rare geniuses can do it. It falls in
between driving a car and writing a science fiction bestseller.

So computer programmers tend to feel far smarter
than average -- which they are -- but at the same
time underestimate the number of people out of the
six billion total alive in the world today who can also
program well given the training.

Even if only 1% of people can be good programmers,
that's still 10,000,000 potential good programmers
in India alone. Even after you adjust for the ones who
are too young, too old, too uneducated, of the wrong
caste etc, that still leaves a lot of Indians who can do
much the same work as the average US coder.

Such smart people who are professionally familiar with
the capabilities of computers and networks should
have have been so surprised to find so much basic
computer coding work being sent to India, China
and other countries.

But it has turned into a political controversy, a way
for John Kerry to attack President Bush.
I've talked enough about outsourcing in other blog
entries. I'll just say here that if he is elected, John
Kerry will not stop outsourcing. I don't care how
many speeches he gives. The poverty in India is
too deep.

Go to eLance, the site which is a go between for
people to hire freelancers for temporary projects.
You'll find individual Indians and Indian companies
bidding on all kinds of work from web design to
writing web site content.

According to Charles Simonyi, computer programming
is on the verge of what he called "mechanization."He
doesn't define that term, so I am assume he means
that the donkey work of coding line by line will
become largely automated and developers will
simply design the interface between the flow and
processing of data and the hardware.

Making computers do the programming has been a
vision for decades, beginning with "Computer Aided
Software Engineering (CASE) which I believe goes
back at least to the 1980s, but has yet to put masses of
programmers out of work, as originally promised.

Still, there is no reason why computers will not someday
be able to write their own code on the fly. You'll tell
them what you want: "Download the first page of every
Brittney Spears site on the Internet." -- and it will
do that without needing detailed instructions.

However, it seems that from a security standpoint
we'll still need someone capable of looking at
uncompiled code and understanding its
implications.Just so we are sure that those black
boxes are doing only what we want them to.
- posted by RickStooker @ 1:54 PM