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gaius

As programming gets easier, the problems we will tackle will get harder. Net "difficulty" will remain constant.

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Put another way, the timeless definition of a programmer is "person who has the most control over computers".

As programming gets easier

I'm not sure this is something that's actually happening.

In the 8-bit age, you turned on your micro and had instant access to BASIC which you could easily edit line by line. Today, you have to install your SDK, maybe an IDE and learn a language a lot more complicated and deal with enormous APIs.

Or you can go to http://tryruby.org/ and start right away. Not to mention every computer has at least one web browser with a javascript interpreter.

And yes, today's languages may be a lot more complicated than BASIC, but that doesn't imply they're more difficult to learn.

And what used to be onerous tasks are now easy as pie thanks to those APIs.

Need to open a file, write to it and save it? A couple of lines.

Need to parse some badly written HTML to get data out? Include a library and then a few lines of code.

Want to enable table re-ordering client-side in javascript? Include one file and then one line of code.

We're spending less time mucking around with solved problems now.

Today you can download python, run the installer and you get IDLE, and you can start doing some tutorials right away.

You can also download .NET and get started right away. I'm sure there are a lot more examples. It has never been easier to start learning how to program.

Nonsense. One can build a mulit-user database system in a few days. That would have taken months just 20 years ago.

That's not because programming has gotten fundamentally easier, though, but rather because the tolerances have been widened by the progress of the underlying technology, removing some of the constraints. It's like saying tightrope-walking is easier now that all the ropes are a foot off the ground and falling off, touching the ground, and getting back on--that is, screwing up--is now a regular part of the show (like consuming 800MB of memory is now a regular part of peoples' applications.)

I think the argument can be made that the invention of the £Tightrope Support Scaffolding (whatever) made Learning How To Walk A Tightrope significantly easier. Programmer in, Application out.

But you are right of course about the downside of this evolution, which is wasteful use of resources.

If oil would suddenly become 10x cheaper, it would make it easier to drive long distances but would also lead to waste of fuel.

20 years ago? Really? Months? In 1990?

Not that this has anything to do with 'ease of programming'.

Actually, probably, yeah. Say you want a database application for 20 concurrent users. In the early 90s that was client-server, thick client on the desktop (installed how? even the tools for remote deployment sucked back then), a "big iron" database server, proprietary languages on both ends, networking with IPX or Token Ring or something, etc etc.

Nowadays you can take for granted everyone has TCP/IP and a web browser and you can knock up a RoR app in a day...

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