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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

"But any blue-collar coder will be plenty qualified to sling JavaScript for their local bank. "

Even highly trained software engineers can barely get security correct. What makes this journalist think somebody with a few years of high school programming can do any better?

I'm not sure I buy the "blue collar coder" prediction. At least not in the US. That type of work is currently outsourced to India and parts of Eastern Europe. There's an entire industry of code factories that already exists - are these US-based blue-collar coders going to be any more effective than off-shoring?

And within the US, code already permeates other professional roles. Staff accountants and data analysts do lightweight (and sometimes heavyweight) programming in Excel and other business tools. And hobbyists program things like home automation in Lua.

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> Even highly trained software engineers can barely get security correct. What makes this journalist think somebody with a few years of high school programming can do any better?

They don't have to get it better. If paying top dollar doesn't guarantee results, then why not save money?

> are these US-based blue-collar coders going to be any more effective than off-shoring?

Yes, many companies either have a bias against off-shoring employees or they want a butt in a chair.

> And within the US, code already permeates other professional roles.

So you don't need specialist programmers. So a manufacturer needn't bring in a highly paid consultant to build out a workflow system; they likely have talent in-house.

Hell, I'm a developer and some of the systems I use (for example, my finances) are run in a spreadsheet with a few clever functions. I'm always dreaming of writing proper software, but the truth is, I'd spend weeks to get a sad % of the functionality Google Sheets gives me. And with tools like Airtable, pretty rich UIs are doable. Software is indeed eating the world, but it's also eating software developers.

For that matter, there aren't a lot of local banks anymore, either. Post-2008 regulatory reforms killed them all off.

Much ado is made about how out the American intelligentsia are out of touch and I think this line is a pretty good example of why. Taleb would have a field day with this writer

“Even highly trained software engineers can barely get security correct. What makes this journalist think somebody with a few years of high school programming can do any better?”

Why would they have to be better? You just made very point here. Some high schooler with a boot camp can do just as well as many “highly trained software engineers”.

But would they do just as well? The state of data protection and security in the industry may seem abysmal because of several well publicized breaches, but in some of those cases (Equifax comes to mind), it was a lack of experts that caused the problem.

I think what he’s saying is that the industry’s still working despite the fact that such experts are generally not present, and that this can continue.

Separately, I think that people consistently haven’t actually penalized most companies for security breaches, anyway. Big brands get hacked, everybody collectively moans for a week, and then they go back to using the exact same products. People publically get mad, but they don’t vote with their wallets, revealing how they really feel about security.

First, why don't we fix the cost of medical care by letting vocational schools train doctors? After all, there are high-profile medical errors and the world goes on.

(In case the sarcasm isn't obvious, my point is that the existence of errors by professionals doesn't mean the entire system would be just as good if staffed by non-professionals.)

Actually, we kind of do, in physician assistants. Having in recent years received most of my medical care, including emergency care, from PAs, and only rarely seen an MD, I have to say, I'm not sure you're doing a great job supporting your case - the care I've received from PAs has in no respect been below the standard I'd expect to receive from MDs.

I don't think the "blue collar" label applies to physician assistants.

https://www.google.com/search?q=physician+assistant+training

No, but it doesn't matter. The comparison between a doctor and a physician assistant is quite closely parallel with that between a "conventional" and a boot-camp-trained SDE. Especially since our field has no certification requirements, minimum necessary training, or indeed any qualifications whatsoever beyond simply demonstrating the ability to do the work!

Does most of the software involve mission critical work where failure means death or loss of vital organs?

Outside some key areas, most of the software work is not that important.

So this comparison isn't fair.

My girlfriend does React/JS apps for local businesses and she's teaching some other women in the neighbor too.

No she doesn't know how webpack works but she has learned enough to produce results.

Whenever she gets stuck, she looks for Stackoverflow or GitHub issue links and 80% of the time finds the answer there.

Rest of the time she gives up on a tool and uses other tool which doesn't suffer from the same issue.

Sorry i used to think i am very smart because i am a programmer but it turns out others were simply not introduced to the programming way. Programming is wayy easier now with all the tooling/guides/courses available now.

I think it's great that many other people are taking an interest in programming and doing it. And it's true that to think oneself very smart for being able to program is the wrong attitude. But this thread that you're replying in started with this particular assertion from the article:

"But any blue-collar coder will be plenty qualified to sling JavaScript for their local bank."

An app that's secure enough for a bank is unfortunately not something one can make without a lot of training. Maybe someday.

Not only can they not get security right, I have seen MANY people slinging Javascript at banks who are career programmers with CS degrees who can't get slinging JS right. I'm not talking total incompetence or can't fizzbuzz but people who were consistently unable to deliver on midsize or larger features and who's code is unreadable and unmaintainable.

The problem with the blue collar coder concept is that there is a lot more art(or design) required to write code than to work in a factory or mining(which I'm sure also has an art to it but I'm guessing is much less conceptual and abstract). Unfortunately I don't see it happening.

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