[Tfug] Punched cards and paper tape.

[Paul Lemmons]

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: [Tfug] Punched cards and paper tape.
From: Mike Martinet <mmrtnt at earthlink.net>
To: tfug at tfug.org, tfug at tfug.org
Date: 01/19/2011 10:13 AM

>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:23:55 -0700
>> From: "Ed Wilson"<debed at debed.com>
>>
>> WOW, 5,000 cards! That is a lot, and you took a single fortran class? I am
>> impressed.
>>
>
>
> Okay all you card-punchers and paper-tapers (for the record, my first encounter with a computer was in 1977 on a training device with wire-core memory, but sadly, no Big Iron experience), how long until programmers are rendered obsolete?
>
> I'm thinking here of the success of Watson on "Jeopardy"
>
> Ten years?  Five years?  Twenty until computers are programming themselves?
>
> MjM
>
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Card-puncher here :)  (I still use them as note cards)

First computer Dec PDP-10 over dial-up acoustical modem running 110 baud 
in '74. I have seen a lot of changes since then.

I don't think the programmer is going to go away completely but I 
suspect the skill set will change radically. I see a day when a 
programmer will be more like an MD than a technician. They can go into a 
system diagnose what type of problem it has perform corrective measures 
ranging from applying a "patch" to  performing "surgery".

We already have systems that are more complex than a single person can 
manage. We even have systems that are too complex for even large teams 
to understand fully. Code that has evolved over many years often 
surpasses the our ability to comprehend fully, yet we are able to 
maintain it. Not unlike the situation with our biological bodies.

I suspect that the day will come when "programmers" are really business 
experts. The computer is there and all it needs is to be taught how a 
business operates to be able to serve that business. One might buy 
access to a cloud based "hospital" or "industrial" or "financial" 
support entity that comes with the basic knowledge of those environments 
but not the way *you* do business. Your "programmers" would be a team of 
business specialists that consult with you on your business rules and 
configure, as opposed to program, the system to operate as *you* do 
business.

I see programmers becoming a very (relative to today) small group of 
people that manage, maintain, augment and service the behemoth systems 
running in the cloud.

As for when... it is already happening...