Ask HN: Are We Seriously Done? I mean, look at the state of the SW industry. Startups and everything. You know? That's it. I've seen more than 20 YRs of it. I'm still current but for what? Where does it lead? I'm no oldschooler. There was an ideal of future - 10 years ago maybe? Let's reflect the state that led us to ... What? We don't even know now. Where do we head now? Current gens (Gen Z) have no idea. Do we? |
This may sound elitist, but it is just the contrary. We are systematically raising the bar to those who wish to join our industry. As a result, a mass of (apparently) highly skilled workers, some of those eager to explore the frontiers of human knowledge, is now responsible for the conduction of less exciting chores.
__Provided we make sure that those with no academic degrees can be offered dignified work conditions__, that must go.
You don't have an Electrical Engineer do you home's wiring.
You don't have a Mechanical Engineer fix your car's fuel injection system.
You don't have a Civil Engineer lay bricks on a construction site.
Is that the sole reason those industries seem extremely mature in comparison to the software industry? Honestly, I don't know, but it is certainly an indicator. The artifacts they produce, and their body of knowledge, is so reliable and powerful that everyone could attend a six-month course on it and make a decent living afterwards.
In general, the quote "history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme" speaks to me on this. Modern programming languages and OSes are slightly nicer, but at the end of the day, your odds of hitting a bug while using a program are about the same as they were in the 70s. Management still often has no clue. Etc. Nothing new under the sun.
Thats the maximum "I don't care about details" you can archive and it happens a lot since around 3 years. The older deveopers even talk about "enlighment" and "superior knowledge" to get more young people to their side (it is kinda religious, seriously...)
And there is not re-thinking happening in their heads (fortunately in the heads of the people in charge). All people (including me) who are not a member of this new religion are often excluded from meetings where they discuss the development (or should we say library management?) of new software projects (their current project is failing completely at the moment because those evil details were ignored, popcorn is ready). Critizism is answered with "you're not modern, go away!".
The most "extreme" are not the youngest but the older ones (mostly the 1970s) in their "modern" team.
I'm kinda Gen Z (mid 1993) and I'm seriously concered about this develpoment. I need to understand things in detail and I want to know when and why I need a library especially when you work with critical software as we do. New, modern and fancy often means imature and not battle-tested. New Programming languages don't necessarily solve problems. And writing something on your own is not always wrong, at least when you have good reasons and (most important) the qualification to do it. (remember, in the context of shipping critical software).