Someday, Writing Code Could Be As Common As Farming Or Factory Work http://t.co/iysOdDMI
Now, I’d want to take issue with the assumption that factory work or farming is that common as a career/employment these days – certainly not farming – but I think the point was rather that “Someday, writing code could require as few skills as farming or factory work”.
Currently writing code is a combination of highly technical skills, attention to detail and a need for creativity in solving the problem and writing the code. Although I am a software product manager, I do not write code because it seems incredibly complex.
Just like editing! Â Both require a combination of creative and technical skills now.
Roy Bahat, president of gaming media company IGN Entertainment, writes that coding is:
Like farming was in the 17th century, factory work during the industrial revolution, construction during the Great Depression, and manufacturing after World War II….Code may one day be a basic workplace expectation – like emailing, or “proficient in Word.â€Â Young people are also willing to learn: coding now has a brand. The kid who writes an iPhone or Android app, these days, gets the girl (or boy!).
That reminds me of my long held opinion that video production is rapidly becoming “another form of literacy“. If coding can, why not video?
3 replies on “Someday, Writing Code Could Be As Common as Farming or Factory Work”
“Someday, writing code could require as few skills as farming or factory workâ€
Does he think farming doesn’t require skills? Try planting a sustainable vegetable patch and growing your own food.
Every trade requires some form of skill, there will always be people that “shine” in their chosen field or profession and many of the really creative and successful ones weren’t hampered by a set of rules embedded into them at a university or a film school.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge” Albert Einstein
“Does he think farming doesn’t require skills? Try planting a sustainable vegetable patch and growing your own food.”
Amen to that. I worked on a farm just for the summer and it was a big eye opener. I have a lot more respect for farmers after that. Problem is that techies’ ideas of nutrition nowadays means drinking six cans of a day. Either that or they think all the food they eat automatically grows out of the roofs of the massive cloud data centers.
I don’t buy it. Coding is not at all like operating a tool, it is building a tool. How many people build complex macros in Excel vs people who simply use it? I’d bet the ratio is a lot like that of programmers to users of computers in general. Most people don’t have a head (or interest in developing a head) for programming, and in general it should become less necessary in general computing than more. That is certainly the trend since the dawn of the desktop. We’ve gone from having to program to even use a computer at all in the late 70s to iPads where not even the filesystem is exposed to the user.
Stringing together a workflow in Automator or even writing a shell script is one thing (and even that is something only a small percentage of users will attempt), but writing Objective-C or Java or Python or whatever is and will remain a specialized activity. The barrier to entry for video literacy is much lower than the barrier to computer programming. John Siracusa has discussed this very topic on his last few podcasts, and I agree with him.
http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/47
http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/48