Here's a greater threat than outsourcing

[DavidDvorkin]

Computer scientists from Rice University, the University of Pennsylvania and seven other institutions are teaming up to address one of the greatest ironies of the information age: While computers and robots have automated the manufacture of thousands of products, the software that allows them to do this is still written mostly by hand.

Armed with a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the researchers hope to create intelligent software agents -- smart programs that can first observe and learn from human programmers and then help humans write code faster and with fewer errors. Based at Penn, the five-year effort is dubbed Expeditions in Computer Augmented Program Engineering, or ExCAPE. It is funded by the NSF's Expeditions in Computing program, which supports ambitious research agendas that will define the future of computing.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/ru-pct040312.php


First they'll help programmers, then they'll replace them.

[IDemo]

1. "HAL, get rid of the stack overflow in line 12,541."

"I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm afraid I can't do that."

[HiPointDem]

2. I think this kind of thing goes along with recent developments in education, such as the

increased cost and dependence on student loans, the cutbacks to public institutions, and the proliferation of private diploma mills.

As technology eliminates jobs, it also eliminates the need for a large sector of people who understand the underpinnings of the tech -- how it's made and how it works. Why educate the masses when they're not needed and can be positively detrimental to control (by hacking, independent development a/o other types of sabotage of the 'machine')?

[wandy]

9. Not bragging. This is a true story....

With considerable knowledge of an area I analyzed the processes.
I designed a system to automate the process.
I coded the system.
I implemented the system.
Good job, got promoted and moved on to other things.
All went well for about two years. Then something needed a minor change.
The first thing that became apparent after the two hour flight back........

Absolutely no body knew how the automation worked.
Absolutely no body could perform the basic process.
No one had even a functional understanding of the building blocks.
Ain't getting computers to do the work great....

Dear management. Be carefully what you wish for. You may get it.

[HiPointDem]

10. I believe it.

[Vincardog]

11. I have been consulting on systems built by human coders that were the same situation.

[RC]

12. As a kid growing up in the 1950's, I've read science fiction stories along those lines.

The civilizations of the life forms that did that usually ended badly. Either because no one knew how to fix anything and their civilizations crashed, or the machines learned what was happening, took over and eliminated the life forms, as they were no longed needed.

We can't deny we were not warned.

[kudzu22]

13. Happens quite a lot I hear

I've known people who've been let go after coding up such a system -- thanks, now get out! Then they need to change something and sheepishly crawl back to the guy who built it, who had already taken another job.

If it were me I'd take $500/hour in consulting fees.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. The suits will jump at the chance to get rid of those scruffy

weirdos who are so hard to control and who expect big salaries. Software agents who work 24/7 for no pay at all will seem wonderful to them.

Until those agents develop management software agents.

[Ohio Joe]

4. ...

"We are no longer particularly in the business of writing software to perform specific tasks. We now teach the software how to learn, and in the primary bonding process it molds itself around the task to be performed. The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck, but it is the primary bonding process--the childhood, if you will--that has the most far-reaching repercussions.
Bad'l Ron, Wakener, Morgan Polysoft"

Sid Meier's Alpha Centuari

[FSogol]

5. See "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

[abelenkpe]

7. +1000

I thought the same when reading the OP. Player Piano!

[abelenkpe]

6. ..

Then republicans will call those out of work programmers deadbeats....

[phantom power]

8. as a SW engineer, I'd welcome some automated/semi-auto dev support

A lot of tasks in software fall into the "mechanical enough to be unrewarding and painstaking, but not quite mechanical enough to be automated
(yet)"

My guess at the likely consequence for human programmers would be eventual expectations of increased productivity, as opposed to actual replacement. We'd be expected to learn how to use automation support, just as we're now expected to know how to leverage debuggers, optimizing compilers, IDEs, etc.

[RagAss]

14. Bull Shit !!... just like when they told me the mainframe was going away..

...." better get out of that technology, it's dying out"...That was 1985...Nineteen Fucking Eighty Five...and I'm still coding IMS and DB2 Cobol on the mainframe.....fucking jokers....I've heard all this shit before some of my co-workers were born.