Concerned about automating programmer jobs?

I just had to comment.

In a recent Ask the Headhunter (“I, Programmer,” 8/23/2007), my friend Nick Corcodilos worries about Gordon Morrison’s “new” approach to software development: Use more automation to write code. In other words, no more programmers.

I put “new” in quotes because in the context of information technology, 25 years counts as ancient and this notion qualifies for the adjective. It reappears every so often, sometimes succeeds, doesn’t eliminate programmer jobs, and goes away again.

For awhile.

Anyone who thinks this is a new idea has never read one descriptive word about Delphi, Forte, or for that matter Microsoft Access (I’m deliberately mentioning only frightfully old examples). Developers drag visual objects around and the integrated development environment (IDE) does the rest. Or at least most of the rest; sometimes the developer does has to write code to fill in the gaps.

In the end, it’s barely possible that Morrison has developed a Genuinely New Idea. If he has, it still won’t eliminate the role of software developer – it will merely eliminate a few more of the most mechanical tasks.

It’s been at least twenty years since the best developers have been those who can squeeze a few more milliseconds out of execution time. The best developers are the ones who can translate what the business is trying to accomplish into what computers can do.

Perhaps Morrison really has gone Holy Grailing and returned with a magic compiler that can intuit what business managers and users really want the software to do, even when they themselves aren’t entirely sure until they talk it through with a professional.

In an infinite universe, everything must happen somewhere at least once. If I had to play the odds, though, I wouldn’t bet that the magic compiler has happened here, on this planet, just yet.

– Bob

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