JoBo, 1 year ago

I am quite old, so remember the transition from scientists writing their own software to systems analysts who specialised in writing software that was fit for purpose. And that was exactly the ideal: the systems analyst was supposed to be someone who could code as well as their programmers could and understand the job the software was designed for as well as the customer did.

None of that seems to have happened. Some of the kids who could code got lucky with billion dollar jackpots from very low hanging fruit. And ever since, we’ve just been hit by waves of kids who can code going straight into software development with absolutely no experience of how work works.

It’s a difficult problem to solve. I have an aunt who developed software in the '60s and '70s who had to retire early because the languages she used became obsolete (apart from a brief bounce running up to Y2K). But it is a problem we absolutely have to solve. So much shitty software, wasting so much effort, for the developers and users alike.