I'd argue in part you're both right about A. Good devs (those can keep running up the abstraction chain) will always be useful. But the bar for what a "good dev" is keeps getting higher as we introduce more and more abstraction. The sheer amount of knowledge and understanding that the average dev needs in order to be productive AND understand what's going on enough under the hood (to the point where they're not doing stupid things constantly) keeps getting larger.
Think back to CS in the 70s - AFAIK, the majority of the field that was understood is now covered before an undergraduate gets to their upper division classes. We're now expected to understand things at a much higher level of abstraction, but we ALSO need to know how logic gates and machine code works in order to fully understand what we're doing.
The 'incubation period' to produce a good dev is going to keep growing. The ones that make it to full dev maturity are going to be more productive than ever before, but fewer people will make it there.
Sure, there is a divergence of skill sets...We're going to have "doctor" developers – people who carry an incredible breadth of knowledge and are paid accordingly.
Beside them will be "nurse" developers – people who are just as professional, but less learned in the full range of computer science ideas.
Though the abstract nature of the field often benefits from analogical representations, I think this one detracts. I don't see how our current hodgepodge list of role titles we've already borrowed from other fields (architect, developer, designer, scientist, ops, product manager, evangelist(?!), quality assurance, security specialist, chief information officer (not to mention wizards, code monkeys, Java baristas (aka the bespeckled missionaries (they don't C# for whatever reason) who walk through your neighborhood every once in a while to knock on doors with warm smiles hoping to share their beliefs on the one true Oracle and some bizarre philosophy of enterprise scale spiritual development involving complex and brittle structures and subservience to feudal and [frankly] regressive class structures that most favor a nepotistic inheritance procedure designed to chiefly empower their children and a small circle of similarly interested functionaries that seem hellbent on oppressing the rest of the system), unicorn jockeys, tech debt lawyers, and whatever you call that long-gone contractor who years ago thrust a bizarre moonscript backend into the core of your team's architecture like Excalibur waiting for an Arthur everyone hopes won't happen along because rock that asshole stuck the sword in happened to be the kingdom's cornerstone and even the slightest nudge will cause the whole system to precariously sway ...)) can be summarized with a doctor / nurse dichotomy.
Even if writing, practicing and administering software legally required a degree and license, I think this still detracts. Maybe useful once software powers organic, higher-order life forms, at which point I imagine our doctors and nurses will be entirely software driven anyway[0].
Whatever the "doctor" developers write to abstract away the nurses, it's still not going to be able to communicate with nontechnical managers. Or at least, once it can do that, the "doctor" developers will be obsolete soon anyway.
Comments
I'd argue in part you're both right about A. Good devs (those can keep running up the abstraction chain) will always be useful. But the bar for what a "good dev" is keeps getting higher as we introduce more and more abstraction. The sheer amount of knowledge and understanding that the average dev needs in order to be productive AND understand what's going on enough under the hood (to the point where they're not doing stupid things constantly) keeps getting larger.
Think back to CS in the 70s - AFAIK, the majority of the field that was understood is now covered before an undergraduate gets to their upper division classes. We're now expected to understand things at a much higher level of abstraction, but we ALSO need to know how logic gates and machine code works in order to fully understand what we're doing.
The 'incubation period' to produce a good dev is going to keep growing. The ones that make it to full dev maturity are going to be more productive than ever before, but fewer people will make it there.
Sure, there is a divergence of skill sets...We're going to have "doctor" developers – people who carry an incredible breadth of knowledge and are paid accordingly.
Beside them will be "nurse" developers – people who are just as professional, but less learned in the full range of computer science ideas.
Though the abstract nature of the field often benefits from analogical representations, I think this one detracts. I don't see how our current hodgepodge list of role titles we've already borrowed from other fields (architect, developer, designer, scientist, ops, product manager, evangelist(?!), quality assurance, security specialist, chief information officer (not to mention wizards, code monkeys, Java baristas (aka the bespeckled missionaries (they don't C# for whatever reason) who walk through your neighborhood every once in a while to knock on doors with warm smiles hoping to share their beliefs on the one true Oracle and some bizarre philosophy of enterprise scale spiritual development involving complex and brittle structures and subservience to feudal and [frankly] regressive class structures that most favor a nepotistic inheritance procedure designed to chiefly empower their children and a small circle of similarly interested functionaries that seem hellbent on oppressing the rest of the system), unicorn jockeys, tech debt lawyers, and whatever you call that long-gone contractor who years ago thrust a bizarre moonscript backend into the core of your team's architecture like Excalibur waiting for an Arthur everyone hopes won't happen along because rock that asshole stuck the sword in happened to be the kingdom's cornerstone and even the slightest nudge will cause the whole system to precariously sway ...)) can be summarized with a doctor / nurse dichotomy.
Even if writing, practicing and administering software legally required a degree and license, I think this still detracts. Maybe useful once software powers organic, higher-order life forms, at which point I imagine our doctors and nurses will be entirely software driven anyway[0].
[0] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Hologra...
Your reply is dizzying. Glad my commment could help you get some angst out of your system!
Hopefully the sword will be more Excalibur and less Sword of Damocles.
^^ I have no idea what that means, but it seemed relevant. :)
What will the "nurse" developers do such that the "doctor" developers don't just write something to abstract away the nurses?
Everyone knows the doctor developers rarely show up, and the nurse developers end up doing all the work.
Doctor is a long-running process that requires a callback from nurse.
Whatever the "doctor" developers write to abstract away the nurses, it's still not going to be able to communicate with nontechnical managers. Or at least, once it can do that, the "doctor" developers will be obsolete soon anyway.
Until we have AGI that replaces all developers, someone will have to do the work of converting business requirements into LOB apps.
The level of the 'hood' rises too. Used to be that in-depth knowledge of assembler, register efficiency and compilers was considered a requirement.