Category: AI, Computation, and Technology

SORRY BOB, YOU CAN’T PROFESSIONALIZE PROGRAMMING. ITS JUST THE NEWEST OF THE TRADES.

(computer science, programming, sociology of technology)

Bob Martin, like many of the Agile leadership, dreams of a return to the original history of programming as an art practiced by professional scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. His hopes that programming will join the ranks of the other professions: accounting, law, and medicine. He correctly identifies the problem that given the rate of expansion of our industry, the exaggerated demand, and the constant entry of many young people means that the majority of programmers are unprofessional. Meaning that they are unable to manage themselves, and take responsibilty for the scope, time, budget, and quality of deliverables.

But while where bob envisions a profession, I am absolutely certain I see a trade: a hierarchy of skill sets from cleanup crews (support desks) to maintenance crews (IT departments), to refurbishment crews (ongoing development and maintenance), to construction crews ( ordinary web, enterprise, and application developers) to retail architects (small systems) to commercial architects (large systems), to specialty suppliers (drivers, frameworks, tools, IDEs, operating sytsems), to Monumental architects (for government and the international industries). The secret in these industries is that it’s the suppliers, not the architects or the craftsmen that possess the material knowledge, that architects and craftsmen rely upon.

Nick Carr predicted the deflation of IT years ago and IT has already become a tradesman’s occupation in a hierarchy culminating in hosting centers. He did not address programming specifically that I recall.

Perhaps we might consider advanced degrees, but we already have them. Unfortunately those degrees are just as unpredictive of market survivability as architectural degrees are predictive of market survivability. The only proof of market surivability is the market, or insurance and bonding where there is skin-in-the-game.

I can easily see a future where there is an equivalent to a building code for software, and architects and development leads are bonded. this would create a semi-professional trade where chaos reigns.

The problem is of course, that while we can establish codes for recreational, residential, light commercial, heavy commercial, light industrial, heavy industrial, agrarian, grazing and forresting, we would have to also produce codes for each of these. ISO9000 makes very little sense really, just as many other regulatory hurdles that claim some degree of extreme, make little sense – and we would just create a black market for the offshoring of software development.

Quality and Certainty increase price dramatically. And software is still too useful and too cheap, and without sufficient damage – at least in commercial settings – to drive up its cost to the point where it’s not worth taking the risk for liability reasons rather than cost reasons.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kieve, Ukraine