When Dartmouth College launched the Basic language 50 years ago, it enabled ordinary users to write code. Millions did. But we've gone backwards since then, and most users now seem unable or unwilling to create so much as a simple macro
To be fair, we are at a point where most users will never need to program anything as most needs are already met by existing work. The whole “there’s an app for that” marketing had a lot of truth to it.
Also most student-age people today who would have become programmers 20 years ago probably won’t, because AI will be generating most code. The definition of “programming” will change to writing and tweaking effective specs for AI to generate code from. Back in the 80s and 90s I liked to say our ultimate goal as programmers was to eliminate our own jobs. Well I’ll be darned…
To be fair, we are at a point where most users will never need to program anything as most needs are already met by existing work. The whole “there’s an app for that” marketing had a lot of truth to it.
Also most student-age people today who would have become programmers 20 years ago probably won’t, because AI will be generating most code. The definition of “programming” will change to writing and tweaking effective specs for AI to generate code from. Back in the 80s and 90s I liked to say our ultimate goal as programmers was to eliminate our own jobs. Well I’ll be darned…
Terrible take.