alt Hacker NewsProgramming is different from art or writing in that nobody gives a fuck about the code, only the results—the benefits it brings them. Programming is an industrial process, not an art form.
Ten years from now "programmer" will describe machines and mechanical processes, not people, in a tradition similar to what happened with "computer" after the 1940s.
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I think most people here are probably missing his reference, because it's quite apt. "Computers" were, for centuries, a whole class of people whose job involved doing calculations for all sorts of processes - astronomical, mathematical tables, and much more. I'm certain many of them had an absolute love in working things out, a preference for elegance, and much more.
But in the end? All that 'really' mattered was their final product, and once it could be automated - we quickly reached a point where most people no longer even know these people existed. I suspect many of the exact arguments made in argument of the longevity of programmers of today were probably also made about the longevity of computers in the past, as it became clear that 'computing machines' would be able to complete much of the same work.
> Programming is different from art or writing in that nobody gives a fuck about the code, only the results
Nobody except the programmers, I guess. Quite a few of us care about the craft
Strange. That's like saying no one cares about the technicals of art, just how they feel about looking at an image.
As a consumer of graphics and music, let me "agree" for just a moment. I might not care how the music or image came to me. I just care that I like the final product. Which is why most paintings are trash, because I prefer highly saturated colors.
...I suppose this is somewhat true of many people already.
> Programming is different from art or writing in that nobody gives a fuck about the code, only the results—the benefits it brings them. Programming is an industrial process, not an art form.
Not necessarily. There are niches in programming that I think could count as art (e.g. live-coding, algoraves) where the programming as performance and the visualized code become part of the artwork. But I think this is not what the OP has in mind.
Maybe programming needs to die first, to be able to be elevated to an artform.
Ten years from now, there will still be both human programmers and people who don't understand why they are needed. (I'd make a case as to why that is, but I'm replying to a comment that just states the opposite without explaining why, so I don't feel the need to.)