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.

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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omnicognate 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.)

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bitwize 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Programming by humans will become a handicraft, something people indulge in in their spare time because it's "retro" or interesting or whatever. Like knitting or weaving by hand, or programming in BASIC on a C64. I mean to use the "computer" example again, people still do arithmetic by hand, and even learn tricks to better do it in their head.

But no serious software will be written by humans in ten years. It will not be a profession.

	▲	omnicognate 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And I will again also state stuff without any supporting argument: In 10 years programming will be done entirely by specially trained ferrets.

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somenameforme 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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swiftcoder 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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

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sam_lowry_ 12 hours ago | parent [-]

I guess the same can be said about plumbing and HVAC installations.

I think art is different from the rest in that it lost utilitarian value. In other words, Art is degenerative by definition.

	▲	swiftcoder 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I guess the same can be said about plumbing and HVAC installations. I feel like both of those have fewer paths to a successful end-product, and minor issues in the final product are way more visible to the users thereof. We tend to have a pretty high tolerance for minor software "quirks", unlike if the hot water system or the drains start acting up...

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winwang 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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plastic-enjoyer 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.