{"id":3787,"date":"2010-06-10T11:49:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T18:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=3787"},"modified":"2010-06-10T11:49:17","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T18:49:17","slug":"de-took-er-databs-jrbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2010\/06\/10\/de-took-er-databs-jrbs\/","title":{"rendered":"De Took Er DataBs Jrbs!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Daily Speculations, Alan Corwin writes about database programming jobs that will never return.<\/a> The gist of Alan’s piece is that the tools for databases are basically so turn-key and so easy that those who were trained to build their own database code by hand will be unlikely to see those job returns. He ends his article by noting: “For my friends in the programming community, it means that there are hard times ahead.”
\nTurn the page.
\nHere is a report from UCSD on “Hot Degrees for College Graduates 2010.” 3 of the top 5 are computer science related, and number 3 is “Data Mining.”
\nNow I know that database programming does not equal data mining. But it is interesting to contrast these two bits of data (*ahem*), especially giving the dire prediction at the end of Alan Corwin’s article. Besides my tinkering with iPhone apps, simulations for my research, and scirate, I’m definitely not a professional programmer. But I am surrounded by students who go on to be professional programmers, many of them being immensely successful (as witnessed by alumni I have met.) And when I talk to my CS students about job prospects, they are far from doom and gloom. So how to reconcile these two views?
\nWell, I think what is occurring here is simply that those who view themselves as a set of tools and languages they use to get their jobs are misunderstand what the role of a programmer should be. There are many variations on this theme, but one place to find a view of the programmer as different than someone whose skill set defines them is The Programmers Stone<\/a>. And indeed, in this respect, I think a good CS degree resembles a good physics degree. Most people who come out of physics programs don’t list on their resume: “Expert in E&M, quantum theory, and statistical physics.” The goal of a good physics program is not to teach you the facts and figures of physics (which are, anyways, easily memorized), but to teach you how to solve new problems in physics. For computer science this will be even more severe, as it is pretty much guaranteed that the tools you will be using today will change in the next few years.
\nSo doom and gloom for programmers? Only time will tell, of course, but I suspect this answer is a strong function of what kind of programmer you are. And by kind I don’t mean a prefix like “Java” or “C++”.
\n(And yes I realize that this is an elitist position, but I just find the myth of the commodity programming job as an annoying misrepresentation of why you should get a degree in computer science.)
\nUpdate<\/b>: more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Daily Speculations, Alan Corwin writes about database programming jobs that will never return. The gist of Alan’s piece is that the tools for databases are basically so turn-key and so easy that those who were trained to build their own database code by hand will be unlikely to see those job returns. He … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “De Took Er DataBs Jrbs!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-science","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}