* Software engineers will be an endangered species.
* High-school and college students will take over the jobs of software engineers.
* These engineers will not mind, because there still will be plenty of work.
These three propositions were presented by Todd Fast, a Sun engineer, as reported by Paul Krill (infoworld, 2008).
The argument states that users, without the assistance of a professional, can create their web sites, their blogs and, by using applications such as Microsoft’s Access can even build their own applications. There are also many application generators that can be used to accomplish these tasks. Users can build all this software without the help of a professional engineer.
I say, this is good. Extremely good! From my experience, when businesses are using such type of software they soon need professional advice. They automate a task, see the benefits, but they have not the knowledge and the expertise to expand and integrate their system with another or even change it to adapt it to new situations.
You have to be really calm when you see a database created by a user. Among other omissions that is not normalized. Who needs normalization?
So stay calm! We are not yet in any immediate danger, till the next AI application comes out.
Reference
Paul Krill (2008). Developers’ role shifting from apps to platforms . Available at: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/12/Developers-role-shifting-from-apps-to-platforms_1.html
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