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Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.
By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.
Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.
Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.
Which vision will prove correct?
30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:51PM (5 children)
Starving in the gutter? Do something else! But never stop coding for free.
Living in poverty? Get a retail job! But never stop coding for free.
Learned to code but still can't make a living by coding? Live on government welfare! But never stop coding for free.
What's that now? The GNU Manifesto [gnu.org] has become reality? Too bad! Richard Matthew Stallman is a raving communist lunatic who sold your future to make the tech billionaires rich.
Never stop coding for free.
Believe in GNU.
Die poor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:32AM (2 children)
Don't blame RMS, put your effort where it will do some good. It's simple, follow the money and you will find the country club, "upper crust" class who have bought and cheated their way to riches at your expense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @08:11AM (1 child)
Get over your irrational hero worship and recognize that RMS HAD NO LONG TERM PLAN for how his free software movement would affect the future. The upper crust tech moguls are billionaires now because they built their empires upon the slave labor of naive volunteers who were paid nothing for their work.
GNU and Linux have not freed the downtrodden masses yearning for free software. The tech giants took free software and used it to enslave the masses. RMS convinced the downtrodden masses to contribute to the very software that would be used to enslave them.
Every programmer who is starving today is starving because of the GNU Manifesto and RMS himself is to blame.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @09:11AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:18PM
I don't have an answer to your points - working only on free-as-in-freedom software does screw the software developer's chances of making a great living.
However, I have a counter point: everyone that isn't a software developer. Why can't you play Atari, Intellivision, Nintendo 64, or Sega games on a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360? Because Sony and Microsoft say so. Why can't your television service DVR stream Kodi content from your own media server (even if that Kodi content is a family home movie and completely legal)? Because Comcast and Verizon say so. Why can't your AT&T phone transfer to the Sprint network? Because AT&T says so. Why can't you put a newer version of Android with the latest security fixes on many older Android devices or for that matter on iPhones that no longer get hardware support? Because the Android vendors often lock down the boot loader and Apple always locks it down. Why can't you use Facebook without them bombarding you with ads and using clickbait tactics to try to addict you to the site? Because you have no control over what they do, and that's how they maximize profits.
So proprietary software makes developers rich, and more importantly makes the employers of developers rich. But it screws consumers with locked devices, unwanted features that only benefit the vendors, and planned obsolescence that increases consumer costs and wastes perfectly fine devices.
And to be clear, I'm not advocating socialism here. Lowering consumer costs and giving them more freedom to use things they bought is still completely compatible with capitalism.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday December 15 2017, @04:20PM
The GNU philosophy is a good, possibly great philosophy. Just not for making money. Personally, I wish all code was forced into the public domain after 20 years. 20 years should be plenty of time for you to capitalize on your initial creation. With the pace of technological innovations, a 20 year-old piece of software was outdated 3 or 4 generations ago, if not more. Even Windows XP which was supported for 13 years would have fallen well within that time period.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"