Remember, the Free Software movement all started when RMS wanted to fix his printer. Xerox told him to go screw, so he did.
Should anyone expect to make a living writing software?
First: we don't need endless piles of software. Most of the software we actually need could be written by less than 0.001 of the programmers and "software engineers" working today. (And I could put more zeros in there and still be right-ish.)
Second: if you're not one of the truly good programmers[1] you should not be writing software for others to use. It is not needed (see point #1), and it's irresponsible. Most of us should be pulling off-the-shelf components and configuring and connecting them. Excel proves that most people's real software needs are mostly handled by Excel.
We don't write all this software because we need it, we write it because we like to write software. (And because we have tricked normal people into thinking they need us and should pay us tons of money. It's a huge scam.)
It's understood that the really good folks pretty much write their own tickets (meaning they can generally pick and choose what they work on, whether they are in industry or academia or just private individuals. I.e. Jim Simons does what he likes.)
So my question is: Should mediocre programmers get paid to produce inadequate software? At all? Regardless of the FLOSSiness of their licenses?
[1] People like DJB, Fabrice Bellard, Mark Miller, RMS, and their ilk. They're like professional athletes compared to you and I.
That's going too far. The public and businesses have benefited a ton from software written by non-experts and low-quality software. I think Excel spreadsheets still drive more value creation than most professional apps. The people you refer to don't usually write it. They mostly go to best paying companies in tech or finance. You could say our baseline is dependent on people with less skill stepping up to do what better developers weren't willing to do.
That assumes they know what we need. Biggest part of making the world's software is getting the requirements right. The intellectual elite have been consistently worse at that than folks with strong people skills to get the info out of the market or just folks in it that see the need(s). A recurring example is how they all think brick and mortar is obsolete due to Prime or whatever but a ton of people just want out of house or break from family. They don't know cuz they're coding amongst their peers instead of interacting with such people. So, folks with less brains who do listen wrote software and made plans to make shopping better with Best Buy, local grocers, and others slated for death thriving last I checked.
I learned long ago that intellectual superiority or best code aren't all that has value. Most people want software to get shit done or for entertainment with relatively-low standards of quality. So, anyone that can do that should jump in. Then, a small percentage of buyers and suppliers are about design or quality excellence. That's our thing. We'll keep doing that. Judging them won't help, though. Sell them on benefits after assessing if it would even have benefits from their perspective.
Maybe, but I don't think so. If anything, I'm understating things.
> The public and businesses have benefited a ton from software written by non-experts and low-quality software.
Yes but that has to be balanced against all the problems and delays and lost work, etc... that low-quality software has caused.
> I think Excel spreadsheets still drive more value creation than most professional apps.
That's what I'm saying: Excel's benefits don't require full-on programmers to reap them, normal everyday people can "program" Excel. It's not the ultimate be-all-end-all program, but it's damn near.
> The people you refer to don't usually write it.
By "it" do you mean Excel or the spreadsheets? I think you mean spreadsheets.
> They mostly go to best paying companies in tech or finance. You could say our baseline is dependent on people with less skill stepping up to do what better developers weren't willing to do.
I'm saying, in a nutshell, that the really good programmers should write infrastructure and "meta-tools" like Excel (or Elm-lang) and most folks should be able to get their daily problems solved and work done without recourse to too much technical folderol.
Wow, that's so different from my experience. It's like saying only world-class weightlifters should work in construction carrying stuff.
The world around me seems to be constantly screaming: here's yet another thing that could be made easier with better software, no stunning virtuoso performance required, just plain old hard work. Why do I have to lift my eyes from my phone to know whether or not the bus I'm waiting for is arriving? Scrolling is nice and all, but can that menu with a hundred items take up all the space available to it? The pharmacy cashier the other day asked me for the same information twice because two systems won't talk to each other. And a million other things.
I'm an outlier. FWIW my worldview is self-consistent.
> It's like saying only world-class weightlifters should work in construction carrying stuff.
No, I'm saying only world-class engineers should design the cranes, so that regular folks can use them with minimal risk.
> The world around me seems to be constantly screaming: here's yet another thing that could be made easier with better software, no stunning virtuoso performance required, just plain old hard work.
With respect, I think that's bias. Ask an Amish person how much software is required to live a successful, fulfilling life.
> Why do I have to lift my eyes from my phone to know whether or not the bus I'm waiting for is arriving?
Wow, that's so different from my experience. In all seriousness though, if you're attention is so consumed by your phone that you have trouble noticing if a bus is arriving I'd say that's a personal problem.
Given the fact that our civilization is rapidly stuffing radio-connected computers in everything, I'd say that it becomes more imperative that we ensure that only the best quality software is deployed, eh?
> Scrolling is nice and all, but can that menu with a hundred items take up all the space available to it?
That's a problem caused by bad software, a symptom of what I'm describing.
> The pharmacy cashier the other day asked me for the same information twice because two systems won't talk to each other.
At the pharmacy there might be an good reason for that, but if not then you're describing another symptom of what I'm talking about. System design is hard, it takes really good people to do it right.
We are fortunate that, once written, high-quality software is just as cheap to use (actually cheaper) than crappy software, and we should take advantage of that. (E.g. use Elm-lang rather than JS flavor-of-the-month et. al.)
About the bus issue, I can perceive a bus coming "for free", but not whether it's my bus. I live in a big city, and it's normal for 10 or so unrelated busses to pass by.
And if someone really focuses so hard that they would not perceive a bus, would you really dismiss it as their own issue? What if it's a book rather than a phone? What if it's their child?
First, sorry for being rude. I could have phrased that better.
> About the bus issue, I can perceive a bus coming "for free", but not whether it's my bus. I live in a big city, and it's normal for 10 or so unrelated busses to pass by.
I live in a big(-ish, SF is only ~50 square miles) city, but I still can't relate personally to what you seem to me to be describing. I catch the bus a lot, and I like to read books while doing it, and I can and do maintain awareness of my surroundings and the people and vehicles and whatnot around me. I feel it's a matter of common courtesy. It's rude and a little dangerous to enter into a deep trance in a public space like a bus stop, in my opinion.
> And if someone really focuses so hard that they would not perceive a bus, would you really dismiss it as their own issue? What if it's a book rather than a phone? What if it's their child?
So, yes, in the context of a bus stop, while waiting for a bus, if one is so into one's personal whatever that one is surprised by the bus arriving, and this happens all the time, then, to me, it seems like one might have some sort of attention problem.
Look I'm all for software making the world a better place. That is literally my job and lifelong goal. I think you chose some bad examples. I want the robots to do the work and we all get on with Star Trek and sh-stuff. I'm into it. I just want the goddamned robots to work well. As it is now we have guns that shoot their own side, self-driving cars that run people over, IoT that I can't even, etc... and e.g. Mr. & Mrs. tractor-"owners" can't fix their own tractors anymore because there are computers in them now. WTF?
If you want to continue talking about this can we talk about Elm-lang vs JS? I'm not trying to pick on you personally, I'm wound up about the state of the industry.
Should anyone expect to make a living writing software?
First: we don't need endless piles of software. Most of the software we actually need could be written by less than 0.001 of the programmers and "software engineers" working today. (And I could put more zeros in there and still be right-ish.)
Second: if you're not one of the truly good programmers[1] you should not be writing software for others to use. It is not needed (see point #1), and it's irresponsible. Most of us should be pulling off-the-shelf components and configuring and connecting them. Excel proves that most people's real software needs are mostly handled by Excel.
We don't write all this software because we need it, we write it because we like to write software. (And because we have tricked normal people into thinking they need us and should pay us tons of money. It's a huge scam.)
It's understood that the really good folks pretty much write their own tickets (meaning they can generally pick and choose what they work on, whether they are in industry or academia or just private individuals. I.e. Jim Simons does what he likes.)
So my question is: Should mediocre programmers get paid to produce inadequate software? At all? Regardless of the FLOSSiness of their licenses?
[1] People like DJB, Fabrice Bellard, Mark Miller, RMS, and their ilk. They're like professional athletes compared to you and I.