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from the there-are-still-some-of-us-left dept.
Over at ACM Yegor Bugayenko writes:
In the 1970s, when Microsoft and Apple were founded, programming was an art only a limited group of dedicated enthusiasts actually knew how to perform properly. CPUs were rather slow, personal computers had a very limited amount of memory, and monitors were lo-res. To create something decent, a programmer had to fight against actual hardware limitations.
In order to win in this war, programmers had to be both trained and talented in computer science, a science that was at that time mostly about algorithms and data structures.
[...] Most programmers were calling themselves "hackers," even though in the early 1980s this word, according to Steven Levy's book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, "had acquired a specific and negative connotation." Since the 1990s, this label has become "a shibboleth that identifies one as a member of the tribe," as linguist Geoff Nunberg pointed out.
[...] it would appear that the skills required of professional and successful programmers are drastically different from the ones needed back in the 1990s. The profession now requires less mathematics and algorithms and instead emphasizes more skills under the umbrella term "sociotech." Susan Long illustrates in her book Socioanalytic Methods: Discovering the Hidden in Organizations and Social Systems that the term "sociotechnical systems" was coined by Eric Trist et al. in the World War II era based on their work with English coal miners at the Tavistock Institute in London. The term now seems more suitable to the new skills and techniques modern programmers need.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by loonycyborg on Saturday April 28 2018, @10:20PM (2 children)
Communication skills always were always important and their importance didn't change. In my experience people who complain about poor communication skills among hackers are drama queens and concern trolls. This article basically merely implies that those non-contributors should be treated equally to people who do the real job. This goes against principles of meritocracy, something that always captivated me most about old hacker culture. Any complex project always requires a lot of coordination, regardless of which technology it uses. And you absolutely failed to prove that things are MUCH more complex now. It's basically appeal to ignorance, hoping that people will just buy it without much thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 29 2018, @12:03AM (1 child)
Not to mention, the logic is completely absurd. "Programs are MUCH more complex, we need less skilled people to program them!" I mean really, WTF?
You still need at least 1-2 people that actually are capable of understanding what you are doing or it'll all go to shit.
Yes, ideally they are also good teamplayers because you need a team, but if not the rest of the team can probably do the extra effort to work with them anyway.
(Score: 2) by lgsoynews on Sunday April 29 2018, @09:18AM
That's NOT AT ALL what I wrote, please don't put invented words in my mouth. You took the beginning of a sentence and invented the 2d part!
I clearly wrote that we need communication FIRST but ALSO tech skills.