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Editorial

Journal RLiegh's Journal: Is there room for ameteurs in this field? 3

Journal by RLiegh

Given the combination of outsourcing, and the fact that modern languages such as perl and java are too advanced to offer hand holding for, I have to ask: is there room for ameteurs or self-taught hobbyists in the programming field?

At first glance, one would think 'no'. As stated; the languages are too complex to learn without a CS degree and also the economic realities are such that if you aren't making your living coding you need to GFTO and make room for someone who is.

This makes recent industry moves a bit inexplicable, however. While it's natural that companies such as IBM and Novell would take over hobbyist projects such as Linux, and that the 'desktop battle' would be fought by the corporate sponsors of GNOME, that's not exclusively what is going on. There are major sites which offer no-cost hosting and support services for hobbyist projects (freshmeat and sourceforge are two such sites) and there is also an upswing in development tools which are distributed free to encourage hobbyist development (the GNU compiler for one, there's also Microsoft's latest Visual Studio offerings).

Given the conflicting nature of the facts as they are one has to look deeper for an explaination. A proliferation of freely available development tools encourages the formation of a gift culture which the industry can turn to who will work for little more than food-stamps. Currently, IT professionals are a financial liability, but by courting the hobbyists market, corporate america has a built-in development force which is second to none in the first world for cost.

So, the next time that you fire up that "free" copy of Visual Studio or run GCC on your "Free" OS, remember this - you're using tools designed and written to put honest, hard-working Professionals out of a job.

Ask yourself how you can manage to sleep at night knowing whose paying the price of your tools.

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Is there room for ameteurs in this field? More

Is there room for ameteurs in this field?

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  • This reminds me of the information revolution, when companies realized that their business were not physically built something, but the technology and know-how of how to built it. You can always set-up a factory in china or india, but the car project/desing is always done in the home country. So as software programming becomes more separate from software design and achitecture, I think we'll follow the same route as the market one did. For bad or for worst.
    • I wholly agree. I think your analogy underscores the need to assess the market forces which lie behind the events, instead of simply taking the events as the are, at face value. Corporations will always seek to decrease the amount required to invest in the workplace and feild of expertise (by choosing cheaper alternatives for building materials, carefully selecting factory/office locations, hiring non union workers when possible).

      That said, one would hope that employment is not merely a matter of running fr

  • um (Score:1)

    by johnpeb ( 940443 )
    I can't tell if you're serious or not because I'm pretty tired. Assuming you are being serious you're clearly wrong. The economy exists for the consumer not the worker. OSS benefits the consumer. It increases the standard of living of the consumer. If OSS makes workers obsolete then OSS should put workers out of work. Either that or the workers should innovate. Its a waste of resources to pay someone to do something if you can get a better product for free elsewhere. If an OSS model isn't sustainable then

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