Discussion on:

We're entering the decade of the developer

In the olden days(2+ years ago) you needed 1) boatload of money(servers, colo fees, admins, load balancers, routers, backup systems, data centers etc you name it) 2)business acumen and 3)your sweat to develop reliable apps for a startup. With cloud computing everything has changed. PaaS such as Heroku and Windows Azure now empowers developers to launch app startups inexpensively since CapEx to start one is so lowered to the extent that the developer now needs to be only business Savvy and put in her/his sweat in to the business. No need for that boat load of money and managing infrastructure. In fact these days if you go to VCs or Angels for funding for your new app startup and ask for servers and data centers, they will pull the rug under your feet and kick your butt out of the door and you wouldn't know what hit you on the way out. One can clearly see now that this is the decade of developers but unfortunately few developers will take advantage of this fact to maximize the opportunity at hand.

...in the same sense as decade of the stoker around... say... 1910

http://sites.google.com/site/emorgankelley/LeN-VGN2.jpg

According to historical sources, there always was a huge stoker shortage back then.

I think you should beware of another illusionists trick there: You present first the wooden horse, let people examine it to see that, no, no greeks inside.
Then you distract, do the switcheroo, and presto: out come the greeks.

Bologna did want to break down monopolies, that's true. But, it also wants to create a university education market. And you should already know the implications of that.
It means that education becomes a product to be sold, one from which to profit... be it needed or not.
And it means making it possible to manipulate the market (shortage shouting, hello!?!), in order to set up revenue loops between certain movers in the market, regardless of the damage that such loops invariably inflict upon the surrounding society.
I suggest, that the student loan issue you're concerned with would not have been possible to create without bologna.
Keeping up Bologna's good rep is just part of preventing it's effects from being mitigated. Like revering the wooden horse, protecting it from harm, even proffering gifts to it and asking questions of it.

Another good example of the stoker-type shortage is the WWII muleteers. The army would've liked to use many many more mules and draft animals... but there weren't enough competent handlers... i.e. muleteers.

It's convenient for the time being, that's all. Our universities held their monopolies for too long, and they became stale. Bologna forced them to face the competition, and get their act together. It was the only practical way of solving the problem.

One of my kids is finishing his studies at a local subsidiary of an Italian university. Tuition was affordable, no need for loans, and his job prospects seem good for now. Pretty cool, if you ask me, no need for him to move anywhere, and he could study in his native language.

Now, that was local, personal point of view. Having larger picture in mind, however, your opposition to Bologna makes sense, of course. The ultimate goal, in my mind, is hyperproduction of expendable knowledge workers, with student loan sharking and other education market manipulations as possible side effect. And knowledge workers are exactly what their name implies: Workers. The trimmers and stokers of tomorrow's digitalized industry.

http://titanic-model.com/articles/tech/TechFeatureAugust2005.htm

...is down and likely to continue to go down. Whether developers are going to have a big decade or not really depends on how much there is to do that hasn't been done.

Everyone needs to be positioning themselves. I suspect many will get out of I.T. altogether. I can sure tell you I wish there were something else I was good at.

IT and app development have always gone hand in hand. A major corporation needs to have the best storage, the most stable sytems and the most reliable databases.
Sure, a couple of smaller apps and cutesy mobile apps can be thrown at a pc or a linux box or two and pretty much ignored as long as they act right, but don't try that with THE major app ( and in a lot of cases hundreds of apps ) and the frontend, midrange and DDB's that a corporation relies on for it's business. The first time it goes down for a week and cost multi millions in business and in some case regulatory punishment, THAT is when you find a good IT dept is invaluable, and are here to stay.
Yes, IT dept's have shrunk and gone off-shore, but this has occurred in all parts of the knowledge industry - including development - and is more a sign of cost-cutting than a major shift in how IT is perceived.

I've worked as a developer, as a systems engineer and an IT manager. There has always been a need for developers and support. While the make-up might change a bit, the roles will continue to exist in some form. One person, no matter what you call them, can efficiently keep up with industry changes on their own. Also, one persons vision of software engineering and system infrastructure would be limiting, especially in the case of a large enterprise. Unfortunately, sometimes a developer/software engineers answer to getting their application to run efficiently is to just buy more infrastructure, not write better code. That's not the sole opinion I'd want making purchasing decisions. Don't get me wrong, there are great developers out there. But that doesn't necessarily translate to being great at understanding disk I/O needs, compatibility with other applications in the same environment, networking/bandwidth considerations, server patch releases, etc.

It might be, if we can get the Managers out of the way! Scrum-Masters indeed!?? In this day of phones, email, IM, etc.; these managers still need daily round-table meetings just to try to figure out what's going on! Do you think Napoleon had to had face-to-face meetings with each Marshal daily in order to give orders to his army; especially when elements were hundreds of miles apart??

Well maybe not Napoleon. But I know one thing for sure, we don't want the majority of the developers doing releases.

So a competent manager "outside the bun" is appreciated

Too bad the "developer" does not know what he is getting into. Tiny office, little air, food slipped under the door. Sounds more like a prisoner than a hero. Just a few months ago, people were crying that all the "software jobs" were moving off shore. Unless you want to move to another country there will be NO jobs to be had in the Western Hemisphere; that's a fact.

I think what you should have said was that development is getting commoditized and globalized to the point where 3rd world developers are able to provide applications for 10 bucks which would cost a programmer in NYC 1000 bucks to build (because the difference in cost of living). As a result, the pricetag/payscale for programmers is plummeting and companies expect instant turnaround of robust apps. I can't tell you the number of programmers I know who have switched careers entirely in the last 3 years.

You still have to deal with changing a developers undeserved air of superiority to make them a part of the 'big picture'. Good luck.

It's about architects & visionaries. Please note: I do not mean architects in the traditional IT sense (e.g., systems architecture). I'm speaking more broadly, at a business, if not social, level.

People who can see more than one or two pieces more than one or two feet in front of them and come up with a solution to meet that need (or need to be) in the market. True, some of these might be "developers" but that is their means. It's not what makes them successful in and of itself.

On the other hand, the one trick pony types (e.g., "generic" programmers) on the opposite side of this coin will continue to be treated as a commodity. As they should be. Their only option is to become value adders that are able to differentiate - both their own talents as well as the brands they work for.

no one else has noticed except me (up till now, of course).

I agree that it's the visionaries, the people with ideas and who are at the same time, skilled to get their ideas implemented, who will make the best developers.

The app creators will be a dime a dozen and the majority of them be struggling to make ends meet in their lives.

There are still many ideas waiting for the visionaries and for the entrepreneurs. If those visionaries also have the right skills to get their projects started or completed, then it is they who will be the ultimate developers.

I could probably write a book (not here of course!) about what really ails our benighted profession. Some people have even encouraged me to do it. Well, maybe...

When I was active in the field, I was called an Artificial Intelligence Architect or Adept or Witch Doctor or worse Time Waster. When I taught in college classrooms, I tried to instill the idea that product release (aka "Smart App") should follow app testing, app coding, app documentation, development of app design specifications, and inspiration (also determination of NEED for app) using a top-down approach pretty much in the reverse order of the general steps I just mentioned.

In the "real" world, the faster a person in development could type lines of code, the more productive that person was determined to be. Bugs, design flaws and logic errors were relegated to the "maintenance" programmers who were left to clean up the mess. It helped if the folks doing the repairs had strong psychic abilities because documentation was faulty, flawed, spotty and/or non-existent, and it was on the head of the fixer to come up with something which at least appeared to solve the current problem. If the fix created new problems (all of which remained undocumented, but which had copious documentation re: how much time was spent, who spent the time, etc.) which would later require more maintenance, the term describing the outcome was something like "job security."

I am not trying to be cynical. Nor am I on a mission to point my finger and blame anyone in particular or in general either, for two reasons. It wouldn't help in any way. It is already too late for casting aspersions.

We are building machines which boggle the mind - well, they boggle my mind, but perhaps now that I am an old fart, I boggle more easily. Smart phones? When I was growing up in a small Pennsylvania farm town, we had "party lines." The whole community shared the same phone line, and the common courtesy then was to pick up the receiver, listen to see if someone was using the line, hang up softly if they were, or dial your outgoing call if the line was free. OK, so I'm a dinosaur. Excuse me while I rearrange my scales.

I am not giving an arbitrary "history lesson." I am trying to make the point that in terms of our attitudes regarding what we are about and how and why we "do it," we are sort of like stone age people who have been given nuclear submarines and orders to sail off and find the New World without directions for use or the reasons why the "RED" buttons (no pun intended to those old enough to know who he was) should never be pressed - ever.

We have been prisoners of Moore's Law even before Moore discovered it. More, faster, greater, more powerful, think about consequences later (if ever), faster, more!

If there is a bottom to this hole we're digging, I sincerely hope to be in the next phase of life before we get there. To put an end to this: Try to imagine what the ancient pyramids all over the world would be like if our ancestors had simply started slapping stones together without any sort of well-considered thought fueling the ideas for the design of the edifices they were building. Even so, not all turned out as their designers originally intended.

Also please consider that there is much more to mark the difference between "Snake Oil" and a real pharmaceutically effective medicine than the bottles they come in, or the boxes in which the bottles were packaged.

...you're preaching to the choir here.

The mad dash forward, to heck with the consequences, nature of what all IT people have to do is really pushed by non-IT people. I mean, how often do we tell our clients, customers, users, bosses, we need more time to get things right? To make sure we don't have hidden showstoppers. Be it bugs, security issues....whatever.

More importantly, how often do they listen? How often do they consider our warnings nothing more than us being unwilling to do what they want...for whatever reason?

There's not a shortage of people who are skilled enough to produce shoddy work quickly any more. And since the demanders of this work often either don't know the difference between good work and bad or, probably just as often, don't care, I'd say the fellow who wants to take the time to do quality work might have a tough time earning a living at it.

Cheap, fast, and good. Pick two.

No doubt there are many talented individuals out there. However, they are:

1) Only as good as the idea being built

2) Only as good as their understanding of that idea.

My point is, that too often those doing the coding don't *really* understand the biz needs. Nor do they attempt to understand.

Therefore, they are unable to anticipate, add value, etc. The traditional reactive developer is going to be no match for a proactive business driven contemporary developer.

Developer is a state of mind, it's not a title. Also, there's a difference between a programmer and a developer. Until developer is applied correctly and uniformly there are going to be too many programmers expecting developer respect and pay.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being a programmer. I was one once But years on the job has NOTHING to do with becoming a developer. Developer should be position that's earned.

They want quality, for free, and yesterday, if not the day before.

What they tell us they want, and what they tell us to do are somewhat at variance....

We develop within the constraints set by the business. That constraint is good enough. Until they have to compete on quality, it will stay that way.

None of that has anything to do with a definition of programmer and developer. If prgrammers are still about, it would be the systems analyst / designer tearing their hair out saying WTF, and the programmer would just be doing his comb over.

Not being funny but I've heard this schtick before. The guy who was spouting it, told me refactoring was just developers f'ing about and we should have got it right the first time anyway.

There is a difference, and yes this does have to do with that difference. The issue being there are far too many (non-proactive) programmer with the title of Developer. With that title comes expectations - on both side.

The biz expects participation, understanding and the ability to anticipate and add value. But the programmer expects the pay and respect of Developer without being able to deliver the business goods that a developer should be able to deliver.

With the title comes responsibility and accountability. IMHO, there are far too many developers who believe they just programmers with better pay and a flashier title. That's not the case, is it?

Programmers / developers / software engineers / solution arcitects wanted reuse, IDEs and other tools so they could concentrate on adding value. Business realised with our productivity enhancers cookie cutters culd churn out applications in the same time as we would have done it properly, but they cost less.

You get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get.
But the latter is after the fool, who made this decision got their bonus and or promotion.

A poor workman blames their tools....

Some of what "they" want can be done if the software shop has a library of well documented, well designed software packages (such as a Quicksort routine) that are actually designed to be re-used.

Unfortunately, management often thinks that any bit of code can be re-used, even it was a quick hack that was never designed to be re-used.

Sorry I'm new at this....

LMAO

We (the People) finally had to "bail out" the American Auto Industry in large, but certainly not the whole!, part because the prevailing attitude held by management at the highest level went something like: If we build it, they'll buy it - period.

If I am "preaching" to the choir, how many of us remember how difficult getting seat belts installed as standard equipment in a new car really was. How much more difficult was the task to convince drivers (i.e., the end users) to buckle up for their own safety - even if they were only about to move the vehicle a few feet, park it and get out?

Today, the bells and whistles still go off when the engine starts and the driver's belt is not buckled, because many people still haven't learned enough basic physics to realize that there is no such thing as a drive to short to necessitate taking the proper precautions.

What the folks in marketing (especially, since they enjoy the major influence with senior management, boards of (mis)direction, and (lest we forget,) the all-important stock holders (the pockets from which flow start-up capital, our "toys," etc.) tend to forget, ignore, or fail to understand is - before you sell the "candy," a factory must be designed and built and tested for ability to produce product in sanitary conditions while maximizing output, ability to ship and deliver, and all the other factors which must be considered in order to avoid constant FDA audits and inspections, ruinous lawsuits, and potential stacks of dead bodies rotting in the sun.

As producers of "software" we are at least once removed from the kind of dirty hands-on responsibilities one finds in the development, production, sales and distribution of a simple stick of chewing gum. Those who somehow control or provide our inspiration (carrots, sticks, chains and whips) now have people saying, "I'm a PC, and Windows blah was my idea." Right.

Part of my diatribe has its roots in the way IT, Software Development, Maintenance, and Support have evolved as a sort of mystical "priesthood" who never really communicated with the "end users." The users were - and in many respects still are - the poor devils who are supposed to make productive use of the software installed on their machines, and whose butts are on the line if for some reason they don't or can't (never mind won't) "make it do what it's supposed to do.".

Now the pendulum is swinging back to (it is hoped) a the region of "New Ideas." And so much of our information resources, assets and efforts have been invested, wasted and will be lost forever if we fail to "get it right" this time. Will we be given the time we need to get it right? Well... In an atmosphere where productivity is measured in the sound and frequency of keystrokes, and people with great typing skills and lousy or no critical reasoning ability have been raised high on our Olympian mounts as the true heroes of our "mystical" craft, I harbor serious doubt.

The machines become ever more capable, swift, and ubiquitous, so the weakness isn't there. Our greatest problem continues to be the conflict between the ways we are expected to produce and maintain new software, and the realities so many of us know are necessary to achieve the desired results.

unsuccessful, pile of rubble, 2000 dead slaves, very irritated Pharoah.

The Pharoah now out of slaves and pyramid made sure he was never heard of again, ever.

He did not thank him for reducing his staffing costs or agree that the pile of rubble was functionally equivalent to a pyramid, or cut his losses and pay off said incompetent with the gold he was going to have his Dad's coffin made out of....

Reward failure and you succeed at doing so....

Thanks

I agree with Chief Alchemist, more than hackers, we need software architects with vision having also quality and maintenance concerns.
Even if ready to play software applications are more and more developped for handy hardware, they should work smoothly for a while and then be maintained and evolve.

JF retired software engineer

Our efforts in these regards though are judged cost ineffective.

So it's irrelevant.

Q So should I write a unit test for this?
QQ How long will it take?

A Maybe later if we've got time. ?????? !!!

For those who say we should write the unit test first, I agree, but you are teling the wrong bloke!

The alchemist's point in the bin.....

Businesses might say they want quality, what they do, well different ball game altogether.

If they haven't got the people who could do it given they were to practice what they preach. Well maybe they should have hired one instead of some cheap H1b, fresh grad or out of work cookie cutter....

If you want a real pointer, look at how maintenance coders are generally percieved in the industry. Guys (or gurls) inimtately familiar with at least definitions of what isn't maintainable code.

Not to mention the art of writing it is very low value in academia.

Tony, I don't mean to single you out but your profile/bio on TR is a perfect example. It's a Who's Who of "platforms" from the last 20-25 years some of which don't even matter in 2011. Yet there's not a single mention of one business solution, one business accomplishment, one stroke of biz creative genius.

If you (and I'm saying you collectively) don't want to "just lay bricks" then you need to stop acting like a bricklayer. (With all dues respect to bricklayers of course Bricks are irrelevant. It's the resulting business buildings that matter. Yet IT continues to obsess with bricks. Anyone can laybricks. Not everyone can have the vision AND skill to build the Pyramids.

It's time for IT to smell the coffee already. The Business isn't going to change. Wake up IT! So it's time for IT to change. Stop talking about brick. Start talking the buildings (i.e., solutions).

According to your bio, you have no tools, or skills and have acomplished nothing.
No point in asking you anything is there, whereas I get PM'ed by complete strangers asking for help, on things in my bio!

Coming up with the big idea is a very rare attribute. That's why we notice them and call them big.

When you do come up with one, job one is to see if or how well it can be realised within the constraints set by the environment.

At that point you can say to yourself, ah that bits easy and drag someone who once played with lego off the street. Or you can have a look about for a chap who at least worked wth Cheop's chief engineer.

Your idea, your choice....

Doesn't matter to me, a doom clone called Purple Doom which looks like Doom but is purple, wasn't all that big an idea anyway.....

Choosing to deliver it on Lynx could be seen to make it challenge, but....

PS anytime you feel like debating the point I was making instead of attempting to ridicule my non-pointy hair style, feel free.

Prime ministers are a pain in the butt... but TR private messages can be like tiny little trojans all by themselves, as replying in almost any way will reveal your email to the complete strangers.

was an offer to save my soul from teh eternal fires of hell, so not replying became a habit from day one.

And you turned that down?!?

Had to buy books, spend time in drafty buildings, put money on plates.

I could have lived with that. Ritual canabilism I drew the line at though.
I prefer my meat fresh.

So they were Nizari Ismailis! Takes guts, turning those guys down!

Catholics...

I see how that wafer can be a disappointment to a conoisseur of fresh meats, a bit stale eh?

But that's cannibalism, I thought you meant hashish-eating

What about the new technologies that are to be deployed?

Just put the CD in and it "will just work"

LMAO

Your late again on this topic. Aside from what the industry tried to do by keep skill sets seperate, all the techs that started out in the industry and are still working were always developers. True, they were slowed down by technology users that did not want to learn and by bad software, hardware and security. But, the whole point of the "anything machine" is that you can make it do what you want with code rather than wait for another version for a year.
Catch up dude.
/:>

to judge the viability of developing these much ballyhooed "apps on devices"? I came across a few numbers recently ( Aug 28,2010 )...here's the link to the page:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/08/28/apple.passes.quarter.million.app.mark/

Here's an older page:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/05/15/pushing-the-app-store-price-envelope/

Interesting, 97 percent of apps on Apples App Store are priced uner $10 US, and the overall average price is $2.67. Apple gets 30 percent, leaves the developer $1.87. Without any statitics for actual number of downloads, one can only make a guess. Let's say your app is "average", and does pretty good and gets 10,000 downloads. Your "gross" is $18,700, out of which you take your cost to develop the app, testing time, bug-tracking, updates...doesn't really make for a "get rich quick" idea, does it? To make matters worse, roughly 25% of apps are free, and 67% are priced less than $1, so there's a good chance your competition might be "good enough" to bite into your sales, or at least coerce you to lower your price from the average to $1, then you'll get only 70 cents per download. Now, 70 cents x 10,000 (since Apple keeps 30 percent!) and for the year you just earned $7000!
I'm just not convinced...these types of numbers mean you'll have to develop what, like 7 or more apps just to earn a somewhat reasonable living?
(edit-typo error on $7000 above)

Here's what I wrote about it a few months ago:

"iOS development by the numbers
Steve Jobs is trying to convince folks that developing for the iOS ecosystem (iOS is the new name for the OS that runs iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) is a financial winner. His numbers, though, only appeal to those who are mathematically challenged. He claims $1 billion has been paid to app developers, and he says that there are 250,000 apps out there. That comes out to a paltry $4,000 per app. Sounds like a lot? Not exactly. Four grand is decent money if you spend a few nights and weekends on it, or if you are monetizing a labor of love. It certainly isn?t ?quit my day job money? even if the ?day job? is flipping burgers. They are about to sell the 100 millionth device. That means that each iOS device generates a ?whopping? $10 for app developers. Wee. Who cares how many iOS users have their credit cards stored and ready to spend, when they are spending a mere $10 on apps per device? Oh, and the $60 million in ad inventory doesn?t look so impressive when you realize that it is less than $1 per device. Jobs? numbers may impress some of the so-called ?analysts? out there, but I can do enough basic math to know better."