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Quite an interesting post and metaphor. I'm sure that someone is going to complain and say you've got it all wrong, but I think you've found a useful way of thinking about programming at the macro level. I started programming as a "chemist" and have more recently moved over to programming as a "biologist". I wonder what "sociologist" programmers will (or do) develop with?

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Agree. I'm surprised this article hasn't been more popular or at least prompted more dicussion.

The point about moving away from doing everything from scratch to outsourcing via APIs is interesting from a business perspective as well as programming.

There a number of startups appearing that are nothing more than a mashup of existing technologies that can be harnessed via API.

I propose that the sociologist programs API's... all they need is GAE or twitter or twilio or facebook. Mashups. Slice and dice. Mix and match. No need to understand the low level algorithm stuff because it's all taken care of in the frameworks.

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