Article:		The Blacksmith and the Bookkeeper, Part 2
Subject:		the death of programming
Date:		2004-10-04 02:42:59
From:		jwenting
10 years ago it was hailed that within 5 years programming would be obsolete and everyone would just plug components together. 5 years ago it was hailed programming would be obsolete within 5 years, it would be replaced by business analysts inserting their business rules in human readable text into a generator which would create the application for them. Today it's predicted programming will soon be obsolete and everyone will plug components together... Tools that allow you to plug components together into applications have existed since about 1994 at least. They still require people to write code if you want more than the most basic of functionality. Sure those tools are evolving, but the days when all you need to create anything BUT that basic framework of an application are not here and probably never will be. Remember that someone has to write those components, someone has to write the CDEs or whatever you wish to call them. There will always be things the component creator didn't think of or didn't consider worth the investment of his time and resources. And what will the component creator use to create his components? Even if some of them will just plug other components together, somewhere someone will have to write the very components that form the basis of the tree. Taking Java as an analogue, noone has to write memory management code it seems. But someone has to write the JVM which contains that memory management code we all call and plug into. And even the JVM plugs into the host operating system for a lot of things (like accessing hardware). That operating system itself plugs into (in many cases) firmware on integrated circuits. Will we still be programming in 10 years, 20 years? Certainly. Will we still be writing code? Certainly, at least many of us. Will that code look like the code we write today? Probably to at least some extent, similar to Java sharing many of the characteristics of older languages. Will there be people calling themselves programmers who never wrote a line of code by hand? Of course, just like there are people now who can plug components together in VB and call themselves programmers. But the end of programming? Certainly not.