This sounds like an echo of the fears of programming jobs going away 10, or was it 20 or maybe 30 years ago.

The more important question is what do we mean by programming? If it's a mechanical process of reducing a specification to a series of instructions (what used to be called "coding") then compilers and software productivity tools are just as much of a threat.

Rather than focusing on the mechanics of programming we should be focusing on understanding how to solve problems and, at a deeper level understanding the contexts and thus what it means to solve a problem. It sounds as if programming is being treated as just another skill one can be trained for rather than a skill that is part of becoming educated and thus capable of doing far more.

If anything it is the lack of understanding of systems, databases, information representation, ambiguity, cognitive psychology etc Êand how to apply these skills completely independent of using the computing devices themselves that is the limiting factor. We should welcome those who want to help implement solutions so that we can put more effort into applying our understanding.

As I keep pointing out our focus on the network itself and the mechanics of programming blinds us to the real problem which is understanding how to take advantage of the opportunities. We worry about broadband as if it means more web channels and show no awareness of the cost of our failure to use connectivity as basic infrastructure.

Sure we have web sites that allow me to renew my driver’s license but the system behind it doesn’t tell me when I reapply that I need to get a new photo – instead I have to hope the email notice sent a few days later comes through all the spam. Why did the notice of expiration itself come through paper mail? Why did I not get a reminder till I tried to rent a car in the middle of the weekend only to have Hertz tell me that my license had expired? Because the systems behind the screen are still the same old mechanical systems, I was unable to do anything about it till I came back on Monday. The email is so easily lost is because we are stuck with a model of email based on the most na•ve combination of the postal model and the telephone model.

This is just one trivial example out many millions. I finally did get the license and a new bitmap (AKA photo) but if I want to renew my passport I need another bitmap just because those bits are treated as a license photo and not a passport photo. And on and on.

We lack the skills to even recognize that these are addressable, even if not fully solvable, problems. Instead we worry about more jobs – to use Faulhaber ’s example, we treating programming not much differently like the Chinese treated shovelers building dams.

If students don’t see programming as the next fount of jobs the tragedy is not the narrow loss of jobs and practitioners. What we lose are the unanticipated benefits that come with understanding how to work with abstractions. ÊAs long as we focus on just jobs and training we are denying our selves the benefits of an educated population.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 11:49
To: ip@v2.listbox.com
Subject: [IP] The vanishing American computer programmer

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: RE: [IP] The vanishing American computer programmer

From:ÊÊÊ "Joe Pistritto" <jcp@jcphome.com>

Date:ÊÊÊ Sat, July 14, 2007 8:06 pm

To:ÊÊÊÊÊ dave@farber.net

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ ip@v2.listbox.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Josh, thanks for being persistent and sending this along.

As someone who has a son just starting the CS program at UC Davis this fall

(and who was a hiring manager at Oracle and knows all about the "rigged ad"

way of avoiding hiring an American for an H-1B's job...) I'm hoping for no

expansion of H-1Bs anytime soon...

Ê -jcp-

PS: but there is a point there.ÊÊ The "image" of the computer programming

industry in high schools is that there will be no jobs in the industry in 10

years.Ê Its not a surprise that high school students don't choose CS as a

career.Ê Only 1 or 2 of the students in my son's AP Computer Science classes

had any intention of pursuing the field even when they got good scores in

the classes.ÊÊ This is a group of students the industry *shouldn't* be

losing, but is.Ê Anyone who has any association with higher education has

seen the enormous drop-off in entering students in CS programs. (not that

they weren't probably a bit too high before).Ê There's a little bit of a

recent upturn, but the field has lost a great deal of its attractiveness

over the last 10 years.

-------------------------------------------

Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now

RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/