[ddkto]

Simon Wardley would like a word…in his model this is the natural order of things. As technology matures and standardized and a new generation of tools is built on top of new abstractions, and the details of that tech no longer need to be understood in order to use it.

Subjects and skills that were requisite basics a generation* ago, become advanced, under the hood topics for specialists. The next generation of people need different skills in the day to day.

This post is a great account of what that feels like from the inside, from the perspective of the newer generation learning these (now) ‘advanced’ topics.

(Funnily enough, I don’t (yet) see anyone commenting "real men write assembler" - a skill that has long ago moved from required by all developers to super-specialized and not particularly useful to most people.)

*I am using the word generation in the broadest sense as it relates to cycles of technology

[dahfizz]

Whether or not this state of affairs is "natural", I do not think it is "good".

Civil engineers still need to understand calculus and how to analyze structural integrity even though they can rely on modern computer modeling to do the heavy lifting.

All engineers are expected to have some requisite level of knowledge and skill. Only in software do we accept engineers having the absolute bare minimum knowledge and skill to complete their specific job.

Not that we shouldn't use modern tools, but having a generation of developers unable to do anything outside their chosen layer of abstraction is a sad state of affairs.

[IanCal]

> Only in software do we accept engineers having the absolute bare minimum knowledge and skill to complete their specific job.

You can require that your frontend engineer absolutely must have good assembly knowledge but you'll pay more for them and fall behind your competitors. You can require that your DBA knows how to centre text with CSS, but you'll pay more for them and fall behind your competitors. You can require that the people managing the data centre understand the internals of the transformer architecture or that the data scientists fine tuning it understand the power requirements and layout of the nodes and how that applies to the specific data centre, you'll just pay more for someone who understands both.

Everyone requires the bare minimum knowledge to accomplish their job that's pretty much the definition of "require" and "minimum", limited by your definition of someones job.

"software" is such a ludicrously broad topic that you may as well bemoan that the person who specifies the complex mix of your concrete doesn't understand how the HVAC system works because it's all "physical stuff".

> but having a generation of developers unable to do anything outside their chosen layer of abstraction is a sad state of affairs.

Whether it's sad depends if they're better in their narrower field, surely. It's great if we can have a system where the genius at mixing concrete to the required specs doesn't need to know the airflow requirements of the highrise because someone else does, compared to requiring a large group of people who all know everything.

[ddkto]

Yeah, the flip side of there being 'less skilled' developers who operate at a higher level of abstraction is that it is easier to train more of them.

In absolute numbers, there are probably more people today who understand the fundamentals of computer hardware then there were 40 years ago, but it's a much smaller percentage of all the computing professionals.

[vouwfietsman]

> but having a generation of developers unable to do anything outside their chosen layer of abstraction is a sad state of affairs.

This is the normal state of affairs, and is really the only reason we can build meaningful software systems. Software is much too complicated, to understand even one layer of abstraction can be a multi decade journey. The important thing though, is that when the abstractions are leaky (which they always are), the leakiness follows a good learning curve. This is not true for cloud though.

[bognition]

Where do you draw the line? Should a civil engineer also be an expert on material science?

Likewise how much must a software engineer understand about how hardware works before they able to do a good job?

At some point in time there is diminishing returns for someone to be truly “full stack”.

[galleywest200]

> All engineers are expected to have some requisite level of knowledge and skill. Only in software do we accept engineers having the absolute bare minimum knowledge and skill to complete their specific job.

Most software engineers just produce websites and nothing that impacts the safety of other humans. Other types of engineers have to ensure people do not die.

[makerdiety]

> All engineers are expected to have some requisite level of knowledge and skill. Only in software do we accept engineers having the absolute bare minimum knowledge and skill to complete their specific job.

If that was true, then there would be opportunities for entry into professional software engineering careers. Because the only opportunities there are for software engineering jobs are opportunities for "senior" software engineers. Which entails much more than the absolute bare minimum knowledge and skill.

So there's some inconsistency going on within the mindset of people who measure competence and fitness in engineering, in the broadest sense of the concept of engineering.

Maybe engineering itself, then, isn't even remotely the noble profession it is widely believed to be? Maybe engineers and even scientists aren't that really intelligent? Or intelligent at all? Maybe science and mathematics should be abandoned in favor of more promising pursuits?

[salawat]

Engineering as applied to software is completely watered down in practice compared to Professional Engineering as implemented by many states.

If a software engineer "signs off" on software design, they have no personal or professional liability in the eyes of the law, or anywhere near the same expectations and professional/ethical oversight that comes with the territory of being a PE.

Until a "Software Engineer" can basically look a company in the face and deny a permit to implement or operate a particular stack/implementation, this will not change.

And yes, I am fully aware that this software engineer would basically become an "approver of valid automated business process implementations". This would also essentially be a social engineering exploitable position for implementing nepotistic dominion over a business jurisdiction. Hence why I'm not sure it is even a desirable path to go down.

[makerdiety]

> Until a "Software Engineer" can basically look a company in the face and deny a permit to implement or operate a particular stack/implementation, this will not change.

The possibility of a business not earning revenue or income as a result of its software development attempt is a form of software authorization that prefers "good" coding over "bad" coding. Whatever the global industrialist landscape decides is good and bad.

And, interestingly, earning income with software development is a much harder hazing ritual than the paths of traditional academia.

[safaaaaajdn]

There are plenty of entry level software roles out there. They are often listed as senior and may not align with your particular definition of entry level, but there are definitely people that are getting those jobs who have limited prior professional experience.

[ddkto]

> Not that we shouldn't use modern tools, but having a generation of developers unable to do anything outside their chosen layer of abstraction is a sad state of affairs.

Funnily enough my day job is writing software for structural engineers (and I am a licensed engineer). Your comments are absolutely on point. One of the most important discussions I have with senior engineers is "how will we train tomorrow’s engineers, now that the computer does so much work?"

40 years ago, the junior engineers were the calculators, using methods like moment distribution, portal frame, etc… today the computer does the calculation using the finite element method. Engineers coming straight out of school are plunged right into higher level work right away - the type of work that junior engineers a couple of generations ago might not have seen for 5-10 years.

My first career development discussion with a senior engineer was "Just work for 10-15 years, then you'll know what you need to be a good engineer."

I have discussed this under the theme of Generation Gap (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gqz2AeqkaQ&t=147s, 2:27 - 8:58), and have a similar conclusion to you: what at first appears as a different generational approaches are actually different facets of a well-rounded, senior technical skill set. Maybe the kids are just learning things in a different order than we did?

Pat Gelsinger et al's discussion of the demise of the tall, thin designer is another interesting perspective (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Avinoam-Kolodny/publica...)

[SomeoneFromCA]

Lots of HN commenters are younger generation folks, and lots of them have poor fundamentals. They will certainly deny the need for wider scope of knowledge, as they do not have it themselves.

[readingnews]

While I mostly agree, I think one thing to keep in mind is that we still need people somewhere who know how to do that. e.g. FAANG might have data center people and sysadmins that know the hardware... we (they? not sure) just need to ensure that in the future, we still have _some_ people that posses that knowledge.

I do not think it is requisite that _all_ developers have that knowledge.

[ddkto]

Yes, absolutely - skills move from mainstream to niche, but are still required! For example, a much smaller proportion of the population knows how to farm today than 100 years ago, but it's still important :)

(And sometimes these mainstream, practical, everyday skills stick around in funny ways: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/linked-lists/)

[JoeAltmaier]

It's a problem either way.

Innovation stalls, improvements take longer to materialize. Machines become obsolete but there's nothing to replace it yet.

Fewer people in fundamental roles is a risk, a danger to our economic chain. We could become quite vulnerable, even crash.

[atmartins]

I disagree. I think it's about pivot time, not having a warmed up stable of skilled workers just in case. Nature never optimizes for that and it shouldn't. We should lazy-load that skillset if and when it's necessary. We have writing to carry knowledge forward. Also, video and other media. People are smart and I'm sure a large cohort could be assembled with the right amount of money in fairly short order. As long as that's cheaper than keeping a battalion ready just in case, then I'd argue it's the "correct" way to approach it.

[MichaelZuo]

What are you doing to help solve this problem?

[salawat]

"What can one do in the face of a relatively shrinking population?" is the more interesting question to me.

As someone whose managed a team before, there is a minimum population of people practically required to sustain a particular corpus of actionable information without suffering severe degradation in terms of said information's application.

Once one ends up below that point; things tend to go the way "from scratch rediscovery required", until such time as the population of people capable of acting on it is restored.

Whether that actually happens is a prioritization decision balancing against everything else that still has to be done.

[JoeAltmaier]

Have three boys! All successful engineers. One even knows hardware and assembler!