The decline of programming civilization (was: gnat and heap size)

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <slrn9r36pi.jv.lutz@taranis.iks-jena.de>, Lutz Donnerhacke says...
>No. Availability of huge amounts of computing and storage ressources are the
>main reason for decreasing programmer and program designer skills resulting
>in ever decreasing software quality. :-(

I'm not entirely convinced that there are less smart programmers now than there
used to be. If anything I see the opposite trend. There may be a lot more
doufuses running around too, but that's just because there are so many more
programmers in general than there used to be. I don't think the percentage of
good ones has changed much.

If software quality is decreasing (something of which I'm not convinced either),
I'd blame it on the complexity of applications outstripping our advances in
being able to deal with complexity. The community's tendancy to cling to obsolte
tools certianly doesn't help matters either. One could also blame the rise of
the consumer market for software, and that market's inherent disincentive to
quality (price and schedule are vital there, and you only get to pick 2 of the
three).

Anyway, I'd personally blame all our troubles on "Visual" programming
environments. :-)

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