Developernomics

[Mich the Tester]

True.

This'll be the third year in a row that all the Christmas pressie shopping has been done online. No queuing for a parking space, trudging about in the wind and rain, being pushed from all angles, getting unbrellas in your face only to face the poor, ill-informed, often indifferent, and sometimes even rude service offered by most High Street retailers (despite facing declining sales) and to pay over the odds for the privilege too.

It goes further than that too. Music, movies, books, games, communication (TV, telephone, mail) all computerised, all requiring software.

So if you're looking for a skill that can't either be computerised or outsource abroad, there's burger flipper, plumber, builder, electrician, and any other manual labour oriented skill.

Everything else is up for grabs.

It's always surprised me that while businesses spend heaps of money designing, producing and marketing their products and services and pay the people with the skills to do so quite handsomely, they pay crappy wages for those who'll actually be in contact with the consumer. That way, you have a great product at the right price but nobody buys it because the useless chavette at the till's yapping with her fat mates instead of serving customers.

[original PM]

It's always surprised me that while businesses spend heaps of money designing, producing and marketing their products and services and pay the people with the skills to do so quite handsomely, they pay crappy wages for those who'll actually be in contact with the consumer. That way, you have a great product at the right price but nobody buys it because the useless chavette at the till's yapping with her fat mates instead of serving customers.

Yes well thats cos they are inevtably run by fu<kwits who put no value on service because you cannot measure a direct return in £$£$£$£$£

[PAH]

you have a great product at the right price but nobody buys it because the useless chavette at the till's yapping with her fat mates instead of serving customers.

Only a problem if the product is only sold via those crappy outlets. The only ones suffering are the shops as people will just buy the same product elsewhere, and increasingly that elsewhere is online to avoid the bad shopping experience.

[Jeff Maginty]

..

[OwlHoot]

I have thought about this, but it's the first time I have seen it summed up so well.

But there's also a polarising effect, where the smartypants and specialists encapsulate software more and more flexibly in products which can then be used increasingly as a "blackish box" commodity by the rest of us.

For example, how many people use JQuery - loads, and it's easy peasy. But how many people did it take to develop? A mere handful I imagine.

[NotAllThere]

Black-box software doesn't eliminate the need for programming. You just end up doing it with black-boxes as your datatype, instead of integers or whatever.

Programming is about putting components together in layers. But unlike building a bridge, there's no top layer. As soon as you can put a conditional around a black-box, you end up with a new layer. Once you've built a bridge, you can't then use it in an über-bridge.

[PAH]

The natural progression is that things become easier as more 'black boxes' are built.

Problem is if it becomes too easy it means lesser skilled people can try to replace the developers.

Though often that results in more work for the developers after the management have tried to create their own solution with an Excel front end, or outsourced it to Bob thinking anyone can do it with minimal guidance.

A lot of successful development is down to initiative and experience. That's what they expect from contractors.