Lol. Even among those less stupid, most didn’t hire junior developers for the last three years, to hedge their bets.
Well, it’s three years later, AI didn’t solve shit, and we are facing an entire missing cohort of senior developers.
We’ve seen this before - back when web frameworks “made all of us obsolete” back in 2003.-
Here’s what comes next:
Everyone who needs a senior developer gets to start bidding up the prices of the missing senior developers. Since there simply aren’t enough to go around, the “find out” phase will be punctuated.
Losing bidders get to pay 4x rates for 1/3 the output from consulting companies.
Cheers!
Source: I was made obsolete by web frameworks so hard that I entered a delusion where working with web frameworks just let us produce bigger buggier websites even faster - and where the demand for web developers skyrocketed and I made some seriously respectable money while helping train up junior developers to help address the severe shortage.
It’s by design very verbose and “English”-like, like instead of x=y*z it would go “MULTIPLY y BY z GIVING x”, the idea was that it would read almost like natural language, so that non-tech staff could understand it.
It’s very common. Every few years there is some no-code platform claiming no developers are needed anymore in any sector, not just web dev. Invariably these only work if you stay on the narrow path and of course the customer asks something outside of the easy path after the first demo so a lot of work by devs are needed to make of happen.
AI is just one more like that, but with hype on steroids.
And very old. Part of the sales pitch for the COmmon Business-Protected Language was that anyone could learn to code in almost plain English.
Also, the stuff they wind up making is the kind of stuff that people with no coding experience make. Cooking up an ugly website with terrible performance and security isn’t much harder than making an ugly presentation with lots of WordArt. But it never was, either.
Between COBOL and LLM-enhanced “low code” we had other stuff, like that infamous product from MS that produced terrible HTML. At this point I can’t even recall what it was called. The SharePoint editor maybe?
Even SQL was originally called SEQUEL, Structured English QUEry Language. They got sued for the name and changed it to SQL. It was also pitched to retrieve data with plain language.
the kind of stuff that people with no coding experience make
The first complete program I ever wrote was in Basic. It took an input number and rounded it to the 10s or 100s digit. I had learned just enough to get it running. It was using strings and a bunch of if statements, so it didn’t work for more than 3 digit numbers. I didn’t learn about modulo operations until later.
In all honesty, I’m still pretty proud of it, I was in 4th or 5th grade after all 😂. I’ve now been programming for 20+ years.
I’m not really into writing interactive fiction; I just tried it a little since it seemed neat. It turns out that I’m not great at coming up with things to write about, which makes it hard to actually write. Inform 7 makes some decisions that complicate using it with a programming background; I’m considering trying to write my own language for similar purposes (but different paradigms).
Ruby on Rails was probably the peak of the hype wave. It had a tutorial that any manager could follow to build a simple data driven website in minutes.
Damn, sounds like a a good time to start a consulting firm.
Yeah. I did it for one do the previous go-rounds of this pattern. It was lucrative, but it also meant I was constantly soothing the egos of assholes.
Assholes make great customers, because everyone else is charging them 4x to 12x the going rate, as well.
But eventually there’s been enough money to pay off my student loans and car loans and I just wanted my daily work to be with intelligent compassionate people, instead.
I was self-employed for around 7 years and finally came to the conclusion that I’m just not a very good businessman. When you’re self employed, you’re running the business more than coding, or doing the things that you’re actually passionate about, and I didn’t enjoy it. Not to mention that sometimes I’d work 15-17 hours per day, 7 days per week, for weeks on end, just to be pretty poor. Plus health insurance is a fucking nightmare without some massive corporation subsidizing it. Maybe that part is better now with the ACA and insurance market website, but idk, because I finally gave up and got a job right around the time that the ACA kicked in. Idk, part of me thinks that I could hire a business manager to do the business parts, and I could just architect solutions, but the more realistic part of me thinks they’d probably steal all of my profits while I was trying to solve coding problems.
Not sure what web framework “made you obsolete” in 2003. I don’t even think jQuery existed then let alone anything you could accurately call a framework
Edit: just looked it up, first jQuery release was 2006 so I’m not sure what you’re smoking but I want some
Yeah, I didn’t do backend stuff for a while so maybe I somehow missed those being called frameworks. Sounds like they were though. And it’s nice of you to say I’m young lol
Lol. Even among those less stupid, most didn’t hire junior developers for the last three years, to hedge their bets.
Well, it’s three years later, AI didn’t solve shit, and we are facing an entire missing cohort of senior developers.
We’ve seen this before - back when web frameworks “made all of us obsolete” back in 2003.-
Here’s what comes next:
Everyone who needs a senior developer gets to start bidding up the prices of the missing senior developers. Since there simply aren’t enough to go around, the “find out” phase will be punctuated.
Losing bidders get to pay 4x rates for 1/3 the output from consulting companies.
Cheers!
Source: I was made obsolete by web frameworks so hard that I entered a delusion where working with web frameworks just let us produce bigger buggier websites even faster - and where the demand for web developers skyrocketed and I made some seriously respectable money while helping train up junior developers to help address the severe shortage.
Wait, people really thought web frameworks would replace Devs? Which frameworks? 😂
People thought COBOL would let managers write code.
What.
It’s by design very verbose and “English”-like, like instead of x=y*z it would go “MULTIPLY y BY z GIVING x”, the idea was that it would read almost like natural language, so that non-tech staff could understand it.
It’s very common. Every few years there is some no-code platform claiming no developers are needed anymore in any sector, not just web dev. Invariably these only work if you stay on the narrow path and of course the customer asks something outside of the easy path after the first demo so a lot of work by devs are needed to make of happen.
AI is just one more like that, but with hype on steroids.
And very old. Part of the sales pitch for the COmmon Business-Protected Language was that anyone could learn to code in almost plain English.
Also, the stuff they wind up making is the kind of stuff that people with no coding experience make. Cooking up an ugly website with terrible performance and security isn’t much harder than making an ugly presentation with lots of WordArt. But it never was, either.
Between COBOL and LLM-enhanced “low code” we had other stuff, like that infamous product from MS that produced terrible HTML. At this point I can’t even recall what it was called. The SharePoint editor maybe?
Even SQL was originally called SEQUEL, Structured English QUEry Language. They got sued for the name and changed it to SQL. It was also pitched to retrieve data with plain language.
Microsoft Frontpage?
The first complete program I ever wrote was in Basic. It took an input number and rounded it to the 10s or 100s digit. I had learned just enough to get it running. It was using strings and a bunch of if statements, so it didn’t work for more than 3 digit numbers. I didn’t learn about modulo operations until later.
In all honesty, I’m still pretty proud of it, I was in 4th or 5th grade after all 😂. I’ve now been programming for 20+ years.
Even natural-language languages like Inform 7 require a little programming knowledge for when it hates you.
Hey, about out to an interactive fiction dude/dudette!
I programmed in TADS many years ago, but I want to learn and use inform, because I want a Z-code game like my timeless heroes at Infocom.
I’m not really into writing interactive fiction; I just tried it a little since it seemed neat. It turns out that I’m not great at coming up with things to write about, which makes it hard to actually write. Inform 7 makes some decisions that complicate using it with a programming background; I’m considering trying to write my own language for similar purposes (but different paradigms).
Ruby on Rails was probably the peak of the hype wave. It had a tutorial that any manager could follow to build a simple data driven website in minutes.
Is that a “framework”? Anyhow it was first released a year after you claimed this all happened.
No chance you have IRL friends.
Ruby was the really hot one.
.Net accomplished very similar outcomes and caused a lesser version of the same hyperbole, a few years earlier.
Yes, both are called frameworks.
Of course, I’m going from an old person’s memory, so who knows or cares? You can learn from my experiences, or not.
If you check my post history, you’ll see plenty of evidence that I am, as claimed, a cranky old software developer.
I don’t see why anyone would want to pretend to be me. It’s not that much fun.
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Damn, sounds like a a good time to start a consulting firm. I wish I was a decent businessman, I’d love to own my own consulting company.
Yeah. I did it for one do the previous go-rounds of this pattern. It was lucrative, but it also meant I was constantly soothing the egos of assholes.
Assholes make great customers, because everyone else is charging them 4x to 12x the going rate, as well.
But eventually there’s been enough money to pay off my student loans and car loans and I just wanted my daily work to be with intelligent compassionate people, instead.
I was self-employed for around 7 years and finally came to the conclusion that I’m just not a very good businessman. When you’re self employed, you’re running the business more than coding, or doing the things that you’re actually passionate about, and I didn’t enjoy it. Not to mention that sometimes I’d work 15-17 hours per day, 7 days per week, for weeks on end, just to be pretty poor. Plus health insurance is a fucking nightmare without some massive corporation subsidizing it. Maybe that part is better now with the ACA and insurance market website, but idk, because I finally gave up and got a job right around the time that the ACA kicked in. Idk, part of me thinks that I could hire a business manager to do the business parts, and I could just architect solutions, but the more realistic part of me thinks they’d probably steal all of my profits while I was trying to solve coding problems.
Not sure what web framework “made you obsolete” in 2003. I don’t even think jQuery existed then let alone anything you could accurately call a framework
Edit: just looked it up, first jQuery release was 2006 so I’m not sure what you’re smoking but I want some
I’m assuming he means backend frameworks, like Ruby on Rails, Codeigniter, CakePHP, etc. That fits the timeframe, I think?
I’m placing my bet on Wordpress
Yes, also WordPress. I was told there would be no more developer jobs after WordPress became mainstream.
Yes. Those and ASP.Net was going to solve all our problems and put us all out of work too.
Mmm, cake…
Wow. I forget that there are babies on the Internet, now.
There were back-end web frameworks as early as the 1990s. The Internet started long before JavaScript existed.
God I feel old, now. Fuck. Lol.
Yeah, I didn’t do backend stuff for a while so maybe I somehow missed those being called frameworks. Sounds like they were though. And it’s nice of you to say I’m young lol
Oh sure. And yeah, the term tends to be used for front end now.
Lol. You’re welcome!