[green_lunch]

It's because programming has evolved. More business owners are also already tech savvy because they grew up with a computer, Ipad, and phone.

In the beginning, programming was more fun. No oversight, bosses that don't really know what you are doing, programming at one point in time was treated like magic.

You glue together other pieces of code because in most cases, because the wheel has already been invented. This really was the dream of open source and with all of the free software and libraries out there, it's becoming a reality.

It's also going to drastically reduce the wage of a programmer over time. Most businesses don't need to hire an engineer to create a complicated library. They can hire someone with much less skill to use an already existing library to get what they need done.

Since the skills to get the job done will decrease, the supply of potential developers will increase and wages will decrease.

[bryondowd]

I suspect that the jobs are just changing, without a significant impact on wages, at least for the average Joe. Consider this analogy:

If everybody has to re-invent the wheel, you have to put all your resources toward getting someone to invent the wheel for you, so you can compete with all the other businesses using wheels.

Once everybody can re-use an existing wheel, you can aim higher, and put the same amount of resources toward getting someone to combine existing wheels and other parts to make something much more efficient and tailored to your business. And you need to do this to compete, because it's what everyone else is doing now, and a simple wheel just wont cut it.

So yes, someone with the skills required to invent the wheel becomes less in demand, but I would argue that someone who can turn existing parts into a working and customized whole requires just as much, if different, skills, with a roughly equal supply and demand ratio, thus able to demand a similar wage.

My argument that it requires as much skill stems from what others have pointed out. There may be a tool for everything, but it takes a lot of experience and ability to find an acceptable tool for each task amid a sea of tools of varying use, quality, documentation, etc. And it is rare that you can get maximum business efficiency from something cold off the shelf, without someone skilled modifying, configuring, tweaking, combining, etc.

[geophile]

If only there were wheels available. I like wheels, and I know what to do with them. I trust that they will work as specified. The problem is that with software nowadays, the components available are far more complex, and the true costs of using them are not obvious at the beginning of the process. More like Takata airbags.

[bryondowd]

Heheh, fair enough. I was intending my analogy to refer to high level tools in general. But yes, this illustrates my point, that there is and will continue to be a demand for highly skilled engineers who can identify and dismiss the Takata airbags and locate the parts that best match their employer's business.

Particularly outside startup world. Established businesses in competitive fields are constantly trying to maintain or gain their edge, and don't have time to build from scratch.

[fapjacks]

This isn't showing to be true despite proliferation over the last twenty years. Most kids don't want anything to do with programming because to most kids, it's a lot like doing math all day. Even as programmers become more enabled to solve more problems, the pace of problems being created is far outstripping the human race's ability to create (or inspire, whatever) programmers to solve those problems. I am willing to put a paycheck on a bet that no sane, knowledgeable person will ever be able to say that "we have enough programmers in the world".

[sklogic]

Just wait for all the boring parts of programming to be automated. Then it is likely thay we'll have enough or more than enough programmers.

[fapjacks]

When the "boring" parts of programming can be automated, so can the "fun" parts, and AI will have "taken our jobs" just like they did down at the toothpaste factory. I'm not concerned about that. When it happens, that's fine by me. I have other skills to fall back on.

[sklogic]

It won't happen all at once. There will be a long process of elimination of more and more layers, leaving more and more developers available for the work on the less automatable (more fuzzy and chaotic) side of spectrum. It will take years. At the end all of them will go home and do something else, of course.