[xandrius]

It feels that people commenting on this post are forgetting that tools have evolved since the times of punch cards or writing only in pure assembly.

I personally wouldn't have enjoyed being that kind of programmer as it was a tedious and very slow process, where the creativity of the developer was rather low as the complexities of development would not allow for just anyone to be part of it (my own assumption).

Today we have IDEs, autocomplete, quick visual feedback (inspectors, advanced debuggers, etc.) which allow people who enjoy creating and seeing the results of their work as opposed to purely be typing code for someone else.

So, I don't get why people jump straight to thinking that adding yet another efficiency tool would destroy everything. To me it seems to make developing simpler applications something which doesn't require a computer science degree, that's all.

[JohnFen]

> I personally wouldn't have enjoyed being that kind of programmer as it was a tedious and very slow process, where the creativity of the developer was rather low as the complexities of development would not allow for just anyone to be part of it (my own assumption).

I think your assumption is incorrect. I remember programming using punched cards and low-level languages, and the amount of creativity involved was no less than is involved now.

[jimbokun]

That’s like saying Shakespeare couldn’t be productive as a writer because he didn’t have a word processor.

[copperx]

The few people at the rightmost edge of the bell curve shouldn't be used as an example in this case

The average attorney became much more productive after the introduction of the word processor.

[xandrius]

So are you saying that you would rather live in a society where only lucky people could participate in a given field than making it accessible to more people?