Tell me I'm not crazy...

[cdnmatt]

spoken like a true believer that all you need for a career in "software development" in the Internet age is a few MOOC courses - I mean who needs computer science and software engineering skills when you can develop and distribute your "killer app" on the mobile app stores with a couple of dodgy, insecure and unstable public libraries and a few code snippets from stackoverflow

*shrug* My latest software platform just underwent a $12,000 security audit / vuldnerability testing, and passed with flying colors. Sorry, but a computer science degree is generally quite useless for a multitude of reasons. Technology simply moves too quickly, so you'll start university most likely learning obsolete technology and methodology, then by the time you're done not only is everything you've learned obsolete, it's ancient by then. Plus simple knowledge doesn't make a good software engineer -- the ability to learn, innovate, and adapt do that.

I've hired a good number of 4 year grads straight out of university, as I used to live right by the U of A so it was easy to recruit (just walk over and post a flyer on the jobs board). Not one of them said their degree helped them with their job with me.

Obviously though, if you go somewhere like CMU then it's a different story. There you're doing ASM, writing your own kernels and programming languages, etc. That's quite different than your average 4 year Comp Sci degree though.

It's a moot point anyway, as us developers have about 3 - 5 years left, before 95% of us are out of a job, and are replaced with a few AI algorithms.

[frequent]

*shrug* My latest software platform just underwent a $12,000 security audit / vuldnerability testing, and passed with flying colors.

Good to hear that you're rebuilding your life in Canada

[cdnmatt]

Good to hear that you're rebuilding your life in Canada

No, I actually just got a brand new 10 year passport last Friday. Was in Victoria for the week anyway, so decided to give it one more try. Apparently, the coffee spill did the trick, and wrecked the biometric data and made the passport un-scanable, so I got a new one. Good, no need to wait until Feb 2019 now.

I'll be back in Asia shortly.

[frequent]

No, I actually just got a brand new 10 year passport last Friday. Was in Victoria for the week anyway, so decided to give it one more try. Apparently, the coffee spill did the trick, and wrecked the biometric data and made the passport un-scanable, so I got a new one. Good, no need to wait until Feb 2019 now. I'll be back in Asia shortly.

I told you it would. So, back to software development being a dying skill - why exactly did you give your catamite books on programming? And how will you support yourself a few years from now when, according to you, AI will have made you redundant?

[cdnmatt]

I told you it would. So, back to software development being a dying skill - why exactly did you give your catamite books on programming? And how will you support yourself a few years from now when, according to you, AI will have made you redundant?

Well, of course I didn't advise him on the books. That would be stupid. He just went and bought them one day, and I don't think he's ever tried learning from them. Obviously, I recommended places like Lynda and Coursera to him. Tried to get him learning HTML and Bootstrap first, as Bootstrap has really nice, easy-to-follow documentation, plus he could easily see his work results on the screen, so thought that may get him ambitious about it.

He decided he can't learn online himself though, so went and bought some books, and never even cracked them I don't think. I think he just needs better English skills, and he'll realize for himself that he is capable of learning on his own. Going to school to learn software development is retarded, unless you're going into a very specialized field.

As for AI making my job redundant, I'm not 100% on that, and just what I think. Well, myself and loads of really intelligent folks like Mark Cuban and others. If and when that does happen though, about 2 billion jobs worldwide will most likely be on the chopping block, so we'll obviously be living in a different world. Robotics killed loads of blue collar jobs, and now with AI, loads of white collar jobs are on the chopping block and have been slowly disappearing for a good while now. Analaysts is one field that's getting hit, including financial analysts. For example, what used to take Goldman Sachs 400 employees is now currently done with only 2 employyees.

You can expect that trend to continue, and most likely at an exponential rate. Nobody can predict the type of world and society we will be living in once that happens.

[frequent]

You can expect that trend to continue, and most likely at an exponential rate. Nobody can predict the type of world and society we will be living in once that happens.

That is not my expectation, but then I accept that you just sit in your room and make silly assumptions, whereas I read more widely. Do you know, for example, that almost no-one in the self-driving cars ecosystem actually believes we'll have self-driving cars in the next 10 - 20 years, if ever? I'm sure you'll know how to google that

[cdnmatt]

Yeah, self-driving cars are definitely a difficult one.

You don't seem to realize how quickly technology is advancing though. Just one of many examples, check out gene editing via KRISPER. That's made leaps and bounds in advancements over the past 2 - 3 years. Obviously, I keep up to date on that one, as I want to see again.

[frequent]

Just one of many examples, check out gene editing via KRISPER ... Obviously, I keep up to date on that one, as I want to see again.

I wonder how you do that, since you can't even spell CRISPR. Or is your screen grabber assuming it's a homonym?

[paborn]

You know Matt, I often - sometimes in jest - criticise Frequent as a stickler for spelling and grammar. But, really you keep up on this? Thanks to my news feed CRISPR is known even to this computer novice. Just what do you do again?

[arsenal]

He annoys frequent and that's good enough for me.