Programmer Musings

The Recurring Myth of Programmer-less Programming

Why is it that some people regularly suggest that someday soon we won't need programmers? I've recently been seeing this as part of the IT outsourcing debate. But, this isn't the first time I've seen it. The first time I saw this meme was shortly after I started programming professionally 17 years ago. I talked to some other people at the time and they said it was old at that time. In all of this time, I have yet to see it happen.

Why does this meme keep coming back? Why are some people so drawn to the idea? And, just as importantly, why is this a myth?

The most recent version of this meme has compared programmers to typists. After all, a decade ago no one would have believed that there would have been no need for typists. But now everyone types their own documents and there is no need for someone who's title is typist. So, with an interesting jump in logic, someday soon we won't need programmers either.

I'm sure that most people developing software would consider the comparison of programming to typing completely invalid. But, how do you explain that to someone who wants to fire the experienced developers to replace them with cheap college students or workers in third world countries? After all, if programming is equivalent to typing, shouldn't we just replace expensive programmers with cheap typists and make more money?

I think this a great example of a mistaken analogy. It would be more accurate to compare typists to scribes and programmers to writers.

There was a time in history when scribes were the only people trained in writing. But much of what the average scribe did was copy or transcribe the works of others. Some scribes were scholars, and many were quite skilled. But, most scribes did not do original writing. As more people learned to write, the need for scribes went away. Much like the use of word processors reduced the need for typists.

However, just because people learned to use pen and ink to write down everyday information, the need for writers did not go away. In fact, writers were more in demand as people became more literate. There is more to writing than the skill of using a pen and ink.

Likewise, there is more to programming than typing on a computer. I've noticed that many people who don't program or who have only a cursory understanding of programming assume that there's not much to it. After all, you figure out what you want to do, you type it in to the computer and the computer does it. How hard can that be?

Much like writing, there is more to programming than meets the eye. I've heard it said that for a good writer, getting an idea is only the beginning. There are hours of research and rewrites and real work that goes into almost everything worth reading. Much like a good piece of writing, a good program may look easy once it's finished, but not everyone is able to research and design and rework to get that finished product.

The two hardest parts of programming are similar to the hardest parts of writing. In both, you have to be able to really think clearly and understand to a degree that most people don't understand. Secondly, in writing and programming, you have to be able to communicate those thoughts.

Unfortunately, in programming you have two very different audiences. The first is the dumbest machine ever invented. Computers do exactly what you tell them to, no matter how dumb the instructions are. No person or animal would ever follow instructions that blindly. The second audience is other programmers (or yourself some time in the future). This audience has to be able to understand what you wrote well enough to adapt it at a later time.

Because this is much harder than almost any non-programmer can fathom, there is this myth that we can replace programmers with something mechanical or with non-programmers. This is much like saying that we'll replace the people that write the company's press releases or contracts with trained monkeys. After all, how hard can it be to crank out this stuff. The answer is (in both cases) some of the writing/programming can be done practically automatically. But the stuff that really matters, the stuff that makes the difference between success and failure needs someone skilled and talented to write it.