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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gib Bogle who wrote (4064)	2/7/2006 8:12:04 AM
From: Crabbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218253

Of course programs will be written, one of them in the not far distant future will be a self programming application that will write other programs. I did not intend to convey the idea that programmers will disappear overnight. But, I do not think it is in the far future that we will talk to our computers, we might say something like; Hey Joe, (we probably will give them a name for simplicity's sake), write a few paragraphs on the subject of where programming as a career went. Make it suitable for SiliconInvestor.com. Let me review it and then post it on "The financial collapse of 2001 and beyond". In the 1950's programs were written by PHD's. It is not quite so simple a subject that just anyone can do it yet, but it is proven that people with little foresight or imagination can do it now. People with a knowledge of what a spreadsheet is, for instance can write rather complex programs in Excel, while you may not consider the spreadsheet they write a program what else are you going to call it? The same can be said for Access. You see, programmers are trying everyday to allow users easier and easier ways to tell their computer what they want. Eventually programmers will get it right and then they will be out of a job. I don't laugh, I have seen too many jobs disappear to computers already, I have seen computers that filled rooms be far outperformed by computers that fill pockets. We are at the point that machines have replaced most of man's labor already. Or, in New Zealand maybe they still smell the oxen's butts as they plow the south 40? We will be at the point soon that machines do all of man's labor both physical and mental r

To: Gib Bogle who wrote (4064)	2/7/2006 1:57:44 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 218253

Gib, in 1976 [not long after battling Fortran IV], I met a programmer in Canada and I made a similar mistake to the IBM idea of there being only a certain number of computers needed in the world. I wondered whether it wouldn't be too many years before all the needed programmes were written and maybe he'd be out of a job. I didn't mean that the computers would take over the programming, I meant that all the needed programmes would be finished. He explained that that was not likely to happen. He was right, in a big way. In 1979 I was telling BP that everything that didn't need to be carried in a wheelbarrow should be on a computer and spent the next decade trying to get that to happen [as an adjunct to my actual jobs]. The boss of BP Belgium was being move to run the computer department of BP [worldwide] and wanted me to accept a transfer to his division [we were in Belgium which is how I knew him] to really kick it along [he must have agreed with my rants about computers, what they could do etc]. It was tempting, but we had 4 children who were getting older and it was time to head back to base [Auckland]. It would have been fun to be there for the cyberspace revolution. My 1979 theory was that the computer world was upside down. The hardware was hideously expensive, software quite expensive and user value was considered trivial. My argument was that it would switch over time and users would be most valuable, and hardware would be given away with a software purchase. In Japan, Yahoo! boxes were given out at train stations. Now, cyberphones are given away with agreement to purchase a service provider contract. Google is providing everything free, with the user so valuable that the advertizers bid to be put in front of the user. Computers vastly more powerful than 1979 versions are free with a service plan. So is the software, though there is still plenty to buy, via BREW for example. Mqurice