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Programming TNG
19 June 2013
The notorious FizzBuzz problem has become a standard tool for separating those who can code from those who can't. Possessing a computer science degree is not a guarantee of success. How one can graduate with a Master's degree from the likes of MIT, yet be unable to write FizzBuzz is something I cannot explain, yet I have seen it with my own eyes. The shocking truth is that only 0.5% of people who submit their resumes for a programming job can pass FizzBuzz.
Other than repeatedly interviewing for positions, what are these FizzBuzz-failures doing? Today, they aren't doing much. But until recently they powered the computer industry. And soon they will be joined in unemployment by half of current programmers. Let's take a trip into the past and extrapolate the future.
Below is list of tasks ranked by programming skills (reality is not one-dimensional, with most programmers having a matrix of competencies in different areas, but let's keep things simple). Use the timeline to step through the decades.
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In 1980 if one had a thousand numbers to add together then you needed to
get a programmer to write a simple program. Lots of low-skill programmers
were used to perform table calculations.
By 1990 a whole class of programming had been wiped out. Table calculations
were replaced by Lotus 1-2-3, VisiCalc, and Excel. Markup languages
became the new lowest level for programmers (HTML didn't exist in the '80s,
but other formats did).
By 2000 the army of HTML programmers who were the foot soldiers of the
dot-com boom found themselves slowly squeezed out of a job by authoring
tools and content-management systems. The simplest form of programming left was
performing system maintenance tasks such as chronjobs for backups.
By 2010 most system maintenance tasks had been automated with
self-maintenance and auto-updating. Many system administrators
disappeared due to cloud computing. Building a finite
state machine to parse a data structure became the new low-skill limit.
We are not at 2020 yet, but already the low-skill limit is rising. DTD
declarations make finite state machines unnecessary in many cases.
If the trend continues, decade by decade the low-skill limit for being an
employable programmer will rise. The programming field is being eaten away
from the bottom. By 2040 (the decade that today's elementary school students become the next generation of programmers), they will have to rank in the upper 50% of the current skill range, just to get an entry-level programming job. |
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040
We are constantly being inundated with reports of how there is a shortage of programmers. While that may be true today, what will matter far more in the future is the quality of programmers, not the quantity. Any programmer who can't hack together a JIT compiler in 2040 will be as useless as a programmer who can't solve FizzBuzz today.
Looking at the field of professional sports provides inspiration. Everyone has gym classes early on. Those (and only those) who exhibit talent and interest are encouraged year after year. From a fraction of a percent of the population one gets a group of extremely talented professionals who can go on to compete at Olympic levels. The days when one can limp through a few classes and get a career doing table calculations are long gone.
[The preceding is part of a talk I gave on behalf of Google at the Computing At School conference in Birmingham last week. The remainder of the talk detailed methods of how to achieve high levels of programming proficiency, much of it based on observations of CS in Vietnam. I'll post more in a few months once we are ready to launch.]
