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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Programming is more akin to engineering than factory working. Languages are getting simpler and more powerful but programs are getting more complex. 15 years ago a typical developper didn't need to worry about multithreading, connectivity or security. It's fundamentally an intellectual job and will remain.

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From my Western European point of view, I see a lot of these intellectual jobs being outsourced to Slovenia, Poland and even the Philippines.

I am advising my kids to have good technical skills but also great people skills.

Outsourcing has its uses, but the majority of programming jobs cannot be oursourced, and with time it will become even less profitable to do.

However, programming any major system today does require extensive knowledge and I dare say a CS degree as well. It's becoming more and more like an engineering discipline, and as such I think we're going to see a shift towards programming being something you need a college degree to perform.

Programming a major system has absolutely no need of a CS degree.

I know and have worked with programmers with and without a CS degree (I'm one of the ones without).

As far as I can tell it's no indicator of programmer skill at all.

The issue is the "maturity" of programming as a complete field. Not only is it a "young" (decades old vs say construction) but it's changing dramatically year over year - whats asked for today is different that 5 years ago... what's acceptable 10 years ago is a deathtrap today.

With that being said, how can colleges REALLY train? I got trained at my local community college a few years back (2008-2010) in VB and Cobol. How fast can most places REALLY respond to a moving target like this?

Also, a degree is no indication of programming skill... but neither is having a job. You can churn out code, hopping from one place to another, and still be a shitty programmer.

That's one of the biggest issues... How can you REALLY tell what someone is going to produce? There are no consistent certification processes and no consistent measure of what makes a good programmer.

Just like building a skyscraper doesn't require a degree. You don't need a degree to lay bricks, pour cement or assemble rebar. But you do if you're the one designing the structure in the first place.

There is a lot of knowledge to be gained by experience, but sometimes it's useful to have knowledge gained from books, and in particular from books you had no interest reading in the first place (which is the real value of a degree: forcing you to go through a process that includes stuff you like and stuff you dislike).

Books are not the sole property of colleges.

But goals for students with paths including a variety of subjects both obviously useful and apparently useless seems to be (in practice).

I occasionally come across situations where those useless subjects suddenly contribute something useful for the problem at hand. I would never have studied them by myself unless forced by the goal of finishing college. At the very least, I would have never studied them to any sufficient depth to make them useful.

It's really not obvious when you're studying. I often use knowledge that seemed useless at my time at university, but it has surprisingly come in handy every now and then.

Amazingly, I can design programs too (you arrogant prick). Comparing yourself to an architect and me to a bricklayer.

Sorry, is mee too dumb-dumb to read bookie wookie?

It's not about being dumb. You're taking it personal when no offence is meant. Understanding the difference cache hierarchies, or how you reach consensus in a system without a central authority, or to what degree various normal forms of data affect you, or being able to design a sound and complete DSL, or a lot of other things. That is what you get from a proper CS degree.

Does that mean that you cannot program of design programs? No, but there are people out there with more education better suited to design, say, a large scale medical system where certain guarantees must be given.

North American (Canada to be exact) here. I'm seeing jobs being outsourced by some of our local shops to places like Armenia and Romania. You can hire very competent developers on the cheap (relative to North America, at least). I expect more of this in the future.

So? It's not like the people in Slovenia, Poland, or the Philippines are less intelligent or less well educated than people from Western Europe.

So? So my kids don't live in a low wage country and will need to differentiate themselves to keep making the big bucks.

They are just as smart, but due to the nature of their economies, they can out compete on cost.

You advised your kids well, but if this study is to believed, intellectual (including programming jobs) are here to stay for a bit longer :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941

The future probably won't be 15 highly educated, highly paid developers working on a simple web app like today. It will be 1 highly educated, highly paid developers guiding 15 lower paid 'blue collar' developers in developing a web app.

I don't really believe in the "blue collar" part but I think engineering may give us a clue. You have a small number of highly educated engineers working on tough problems: aeronautics, complex structural issues, etc. But the average electric or electronic board in a home appliance is not designed by sophisticated engineers, rather by a mid range average university graduate or sometimes even a technician.

But we need the tools to get there. Easy languages, technologies that are immune to basic security risks, and that provide safe ways to do multi-threading easily. Right now we are in the unsustainable position where the tools require skills that too many developers lack. And the result is regular data leaks, corporate systems full of bugs, etc.

A profession can't rely on all of its members to be very smart to deliver quality. But it will be an intellectual profession nevertheless.

That's not the direction it is taking. It will be more like 1 highly paid developer doing everything himself.

When I started working, it took a team of testers, a team of dba, and a team of sysops in addition of the developers to build anything. Nowadays, no only the development team is smaller, but the sysops, dba and testing are the responsibility of those developers too through automated tools. On the client side, there used to be BA and Testers, but nowadays, BA and Testers are often the same persons.

The tshirt from several years ago "I will replace you by a tiny script" has proven quite true. Old job that required qualified people before have been replaced by scripts, not "blue collar" worker. A huge amount a developer entering the market could lower the salaries, but any simplification to the developer role is going to be handled by automated tools, not human.

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