Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's broken. Nobody would say that say, advanced mathematics is broken because the layman doesn't get it.
My bullshit detector notes that he talks very generally about "knowledge workers leveraging machines". The problem with the phrase "knowledge worker" is it often means "person who sends lots of emails". You don't need to be a programmer to send lots of emails.
Real "knowledge workers", like, the kind of people that actually are working to extend human knowledge and need computers to do it, largely do know how to program to some degree (IE, scientists and mathematicians and so on). A lot of it isn't "professional" grade, but it works well enough for them and it keeps getting better.
Also a tangent: but I'm sick of the whole "coding is literacy" nonsense. Not everyone needs to code. Literacy unlocks centuries worth of knowledge in any domain you want, from contemporary thinkers to people who are long dead. Coding lets you tell a computer how to do specialized things. It's not even remotely comparable.
Exactly. Life is hard. Business is hard. Coding doesn't eliminate work, it just enables new kinds of work. And, it's like coding an app that makes money isn't completely effortless but it is obviously possible.
Coding != literacy. In fact, not everyone needs to go to college either and can still make a living. Mike Rowe's trades-awareness work is fantastic: http://profoundlydisconnected.com/ There are many trades where the average age is 50 because no one wants to be seen as blue collar. Some of these are high income opportunities that are being missed because they're not mainstream fashionable.
> Nobody would say that say, advanced mathematics is broken because the layman doesn't get it.
We do make math more tractable and accessible over time with various reformulations and new abstractions and conceptual tools, though. You're probably using arabic numerals when you do arithmetic, and there are good reasons for that.
(Though heaven knows, if I'm likely to run across an abacist anywhere in this sort of discussion, it's probably here. :)
I wouldn't say it is easier (or harder), I would say it is different. Before you were having to remember lots of tricks to fit as much information into as little memory as possible. Today we have lots more stuff to remember. Operating systems are way more complex.
At the end of the day, most people are programming at a far higher level, so things are more productive. I have produced a reasonably sophisticated databases / web front end for my work, in Django as a one man team. Ten years ago I believe that it would have taken far more man hours to achieve the same thing. I don't have to remember tricks to compress data, as disk space is cheap now. I do have to know reasonably advanced SQL, and remember a lot about how Django works.
but in the end, most people can't understand vector calculus, just like most people cant understand programming no matter how easy you make the syntax, the concepts themselves can be hard to grasp.
Woodworking is hard. The more you know and the better your toolchain, the better your projects and experience.
At one time, woodworking was incredibly relevant, so there was a good payoff for dabbling in it and you'd have a few tools and get "okay" or "pretty good" without becoming a professional wood worker.
Today wood working is irrelevant, so very few learn it.
My bullshit detector notes that he talks very generally about "knowledge workers leveraging machines". The problem with the phrase "knowledge worker" is it often means "person who sends lots of emails". You don't need to be a programmer to send lots of emails.
Real "knowledge workers", like, the kind of people that actually are working to extend human knowledge and need computers to do it, largely do know how to program to some degree (IE, scientists and mathematicians and so on). A lot of it isn't "professional" grade, but it works well enough for them and it keeps getting better.
Also a tangent: but I'm sick of the whole "coding is literacy" nonsense. Not everyone needs to code. Literacy unlocks centuries worth of knowledge in any domain you want, from contemporary thinkers to people who are long dead. Coding lets you tell a computer how to do specialized things. It's not even remotely comparable.