[munrocape]

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”[1] I wonder if an influx of get-rich-quick devs will occur if enough of this posts gain traction.

[1] John Steinbeck

[null_ptr]

That influx is already happening and has been happening for a while now, that's why all those 3-month coding boot camps are popping up everywhere, selling shovels in a gold rush.

[sizzle]

Interesting perspective, never thought of that analogy. Will this devalue the jobs we love in the long run?

[JackMorgan]

Consider how the job of creating custom static HTML pages has been devalued. Times gone by people did just that and made crazy money. Now we have to build more advanced systems to make the same kind of money.

The way I see it, we are approaching a time when most useful software has been written and turned into libraries (free or commercial). Those left developing will either be custom developing in areas too uncommon to to turn into commodities, advancing the state of the art through research, or just wiring together another Rails (or insert next easy framework) app out of 20 pre-written components.

Assume that within your lifetime the job market for developers is going to shrink by 75%, how will you be prepared to handle that?

I choose to keep moving, learning more and more to put me far ahead of anything a Code Camp could possibly teach. My plan is to keep learning, always positioning myself as if I was going to be the last developer left alive.

Much like how PG talks about how he could take his easy-to-change code base over "rough terrain" that other companies could not easily traverse, I intend to turn myself into such a developer. I am making myself a very fast learner, used to taking over projects that have been abandoned. I take jobs that teach me new stacks and techniques, so that I can handle any situation the job market puts out. I learn new languages and paradigms.

And I save up my money (~70%) under the assumption that these are the "good years" when money comes easily.

Why? Because assuming things will stay the same or get better is dangerous. It puts your fate even more to a random chaos outside your control. While any number of things could screw me over, at least I've accounted for a few.

[munrocape]

Most likely not. The skills to program can be taught but what I think that these goldrush devs would be lacking would be either the creativity and appreciation for the nuanced aspects of design.

I think the only measurable change would be the amount of clones would increase (like the Flappy Bird / Threes&2048 fads)