Seriously, what's with this push for everyone to become programmers? Is this the next big job trend? A couple years ago it was nursing and before that it was accounting and before that it was business. But at least those trends kind of made sense. These days, colleges are pimping their programming classes like no other. I guess computing in general is the next big job trend, so people figure that "hey, programming is related to computing! I bet it will be a very lucrative field of study. If it wasn't lucrative, why would every college is a compsci professor be promoting it like it's going out of style?" Yeah, I guess. And, hell, don't get me started on all those "Learn Python in 7 days" courses that cost $7,000. They better be beaming that information into my head and have a job set up for me in Caribbean at that outrageous price.
But the push does make a little sense, even if it does seem to come out of no where. Computing is one of those fields of work that just seems to grow nonstop. Everything getting computerized, so we'll need technicians to maintain the infrastructure and designers to design the next big gadget and compsci professionals to figure out why gmail is running like crap. But that doesn't justify the size of this push. I haven't seen colleges push an education curriculum like programming in...ever. And if there's one thing I've learned from that economics class I took five years ago, all these future programmers are really going to lower the wages of your average programmer. Competition will be immense. As if the life of a code monkey weren't hard enough, now there's going to be a flood of them filling the market and competing for the low-rung programming jobs.
I guess this is good news if you are an established, or startup, business owner who needs programmers. They can now justify paying their programmers dirt-cheap wages because there will always be another programmer to fill the role. If you want to get conspiratorial, I've heard claims that Silicon Valley is behind this push in order to drop programmer wages in the future. All speculation, but it does make you go "Hmm...". Barring conspiracy theories, this new influx of programmers will certainly make the field less lucrative. Whatever is a programmer to do?
I'm no life coach and I'm certainly no career coach, so don't take what I say seriously. But, if you were to ask my opinion, I recommend that programmers back-up their programming degree with other computing-related degrees like networking, security, computer science, and database management. Gotta make yourself standout somehow.
But what does this influx of programmers mean for our society? I think we're in for some exciting times. With all these new programmers on the market, who knows what we'll see in the next few years in terms of new technology. All it would take is one rather ingenious person to gather all of the excess programmers and do something great with them. Of course the programmers would go along with the deal, there isn't a whole lot of other work for them. I can see someone getting very rich off this entire trend, if only the colleges and independent courses cashing in on the trend.
We may also be in for a shift in thinking. Remember that article I once wrote? Sure you do, you read it didn't you? Of course you did. Anyway, programmers think differently than most people. Programmers tend to frequently use logic and, therefore, have brains accustomed to using logic. Does the incoming flux of programmers mean a more logical population? Will the scales tip to favor the logical man over the emotional man? That has yet to be seen. But, as of right now, both men tend to be welcomed by different parts of our society and I figure it will be that way for a long, long time. However, it does seem the logical man is becoming more valued within our society. Given our ever advancing technology, it isn't hard to see why a premium is being put on logical people (of course this will all, eventually, balance out with all these damned new programmers entering the market). And what happens when a population becomes more logical? Do standards of living increase? Is society improved? I would like to think so, and it would seem so to a reasonable person, but that is yet to be seen.
Whatever the future holds for us, one thing is certain. The markets are going to get hit with tons of programmers. What eventually comes of that is anyone's guess. The best we can do now is speculate. And speculation is good fun.
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