The Future of Software Development Is Software Developers

Summary

I’ve been a computer programmer all-told for 43 years. That’s more than half the entire history of electronic programmable computers. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of things change. But I’ve also seen some things stay pretty much exactly the same. I’ve lived through several cycles of technology that, at the time, was hailed as the “end of computer programmers”. WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop editors like Visual Basic and Delphi were going to end the need for programmers. Wizards and macros in Microsoft Office were going to end the need for programmers. Executable UML was going to end the need for programmers. No-Code and Low-Code platforms were going to end the need for programmers. And now, Large Language Models are, I read on a daily basis, going to end the need for programmers. These cycles are nothing new. In the 1970s and 1980s, 4GLs and 5GLs were touted as the end of programmers. And before them, 3GLs like Fortran and COBOL. And before them, compilers like A-0 were going to end the need for programmers who instructed computers in binary by literally punching holes in cards. But it goes back even further, if we consider the earliest (classified) beginning of electronic programmable computers. The first of them, COLOSSUS, was programmed by physically rewiring it. Perhaps the engineers who worked on that machine sneered at the people working on the first stored-program computers for not being “real programmers”. In every cycle, the predictions have turned out to be very, very wrong. The end result hasn’t been fewer programmers, but more programs and more programmers. It’s a $1.5 trillion-a-year example of Jevons Paradox. And here we are again, in another cycle. “But this time it’s different, Jason!” Yes, it certainly is. Different in scale to previous cycles. I don’t recall seeing the claims about Visual Basic or Executable UML on the covers of national newspapers. I don’t recall seeing entire economies betting on 4GLs. And there’s another important distinction: in previ...