[himinlomax]

> ...and I'll wager that the vast majority (90%-ish?) of the working-age and almost-working-age population in your country is both unqualified to write software professionally and is not interested in spending 2-4 years of their life to study CS or SE

You left out the most salient point here, most people are entirely unable to write software even if their life depended on it. Just like I doubt I'd be able to write a symphony in 4 years even with a ticking time bomb strapped to my skull.

[railsgirls112]

Eh, maybe at a senior dev 10x level. I'd wager that a large segment of the population is totally capable of writing relatively non complex code, given the training/resources that many software devs have (university, internships, online bootcamps, time for side projects). Just like I bet you could write a symphony in 4 years- It probably wouldn't be Mozart, but good enough to meet whatever time bomb requirements.

[datavirtue]

I have never seen any non-complicated code in business. There are droves of people working overtime to complicate nearly every corner of software and systems to unmaintainable levels. The developers, the good ones, simply try to fulfill requirements and mitigate the mess the best they can in the time allowed while learning enough new material each day to scare anyone.

A developers' core skill is not getting overwhelmed after being blindsided by new shit from every angle on a constant basis.

We have 30% of out team just dealing with auto-reported vulnerabilities in our code base. No choice. Getting an "exception" takes an architect about a week for a vuln that has no material impact and which can't be mitigated with a simple library update. Tip of the ice berg.

This is at an excellent tech focused company (relatively great place to work).

[himinlomax]

Poor programmers are worse than no programmer for most if not all projects.