From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,71d1fdde81c072f8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Wes Groleau Subject: Re: Computer Programming for Everybody? Date: 1999/09/22 Message-ID: <37E8DD13.AA81C767@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 528223431 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <7rbkm4$pn6$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7rikv9$ibg3@ftp.kvaerner.com> <7rjceh$92t@dfw-ixnews15.ix.netcom.com> <37DE5CA1.22658433@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> X-Accept-Language: en,es,fr,pt Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: news@icg.raytheon.com X-Trace: bos-service2.ext.raytheon.com 938007779 151.168.144.162 (Wed, 22 Sep 1999 08:42:59 CDT) Organization: Raytheon Company MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 08:42:59 CDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-09-22T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: > > Today's elementary students will all (well, 95%) need to be > > comfortable with computers when they are adults. But only > > (wild guess) 60% will need to be programmers. > > That's a pretty high proportion of programmers. I guess we'll have > lots of unemployed programmers :-) Today in the USA, there are only about > one-million people employed in software development (counting managers, > tech-writers, etc.). This is in a workforce of about 190 million with > population about 260 million. Like I said, wild guess. But even today, probably one-third of the people who are not formally "software developers" do some kind of programming. A friend of mine is a chemist, and does lots of it. Computers will become easier to use, resulting in less programming by the "uninitiated" but I still think that as more and more people become able to do programming, it will be harder and harder for a non-programmer to compete--even in a non-programming job. But I still say under ten is too young for most kids to start doing programming. Again, my ten-year-old son, who beats me at chess and whose math skills are in the top 5% of fifth graders, is NOT ready for programming.