[ehnto]

From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce.

I've always worked at agencies so I get exposure to a great deal of projects, and I do partly see what they are saying. More and more parts of orgs are becoming intertwined with software, and they're becoming better at software, requiring you as a developer to organize and connect all the loose bits and pieces everyone else has made to achieve tasks. That takes communication and collaboration even if you're the only developer.

Half my days are spent getting access to SaaS accounts, figuring out who's in charge of what, finding out if certain things are still in use or not. A task like "automate a monthly sales report" becomes a journey of discovery, where you don't have access to anything, and nothing lives where you expect it to.

A single piece of functional software, built from the ground up, is not usually what I find in a new project anymore. More often it's a hodgepodge of SaaS that's opaque and hard to reason about in whole, but each part made sense at the time.

[biddit]

Good lord I think you just helped me understand why I have come to hate this line of work (web development) 20 years in.

I see now that much of my ability to accomplish a task/feature/project is now out of my control - I'm now so highly dependent on 3rd parties and spend the day sorting out stuff to glue together rather than actual creative work.

[sleepybrett]

> From that light, I think the article's point is that rules of the environment have changed so much that the archetype of the lone-programmer is becoming obsolete in the workforce.

Tell that to millions of small-medium businesses, if their needs can't be met by squarespace (and anything other than a brochure really can't) They reach out in their network for what could be looked at as a 'computer/internet handyman'. Will they get the highest quality solution? Maybe not... but they also don't have the budget for that.

[ehnto]

Right, there are definitely lots of very normal software projects going on. But it is worth noting that this is a new way that software is being managed and it will be up to some developers to work within it.

I don't agree with the article by the way, I don't see SaaS/cloud computing eating software at all levels.

[hundreddaysoff]

No longer program for a living but even 20 years ago that kind of stuff was 80% of my daily job as a LAMP web programmer. I wrote as little code as possible, and only to glue stuff together. The challenge was to understand the pieces to fit together and even just remember how to access all the accounts required. In that light, I'm not seeing much has changed in the past few decades.

[p0nce]

Climate is getting warmer so we need humans that can stand higher temperatures.