July 9th, 2007
Craft, open source, and the outsourcing debate
Programming is a craft, like journalism. (Or like cartooning, as Hal Mayforth shows here.)
Many people can program, but their skill levels vary. Many program as well as I write. A few do it as well as, say, Larry Dignan. A Jimmy Breslin, that’s rare. Yet all three of us are journalists.
The same is true for programmers, only employers have a world to choose from in search of some Dignans or a Breslin.
In a competitive world you want to employ as few programmers as you need to get the job done, and open source is an immense help there. By sharing code, not to mention QA, you cut your need for staff.
This is the genius of Eclipse, shared tools which boost everyone’s productivity. But there is no Moore’s Law for software.
Programmer productivity can only increase arithmetically, not geometrically, and as tasks grow more complex even those gains are swallowed up.
Another way many employers want to cut costs is by outsourcing, or insourcing. A recent Christian Science Monitor piece implied this is leading to a dearth of U.S.-born programmers.
Wages have been stagnant for a decade, the foreign-born trend seems destined to keep them that way, thus smart American kids look to other careers, like real estate, reality show contestant, or hot dog eating champion.
Should they? If you’re reading this you might be a programmer. Would you want your kid to be one?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 07/09/07
