Look no further to be honest; look at older generation programming languages like COBOL and how sought-after good developers for that language are.
But I'm also afraid / certain that LLMs are able to figure out legacy code (as long as enough fits in their context window), so it's tenuous at best.
Also, funny you mentioned HTML / CSS because for a while (...in the 90's / 2000's) it looked like nobody needed to actually learn those because of tools like Dreamweaver / Frontpage.
The issue with COBOL code is that it’s hidden. It’s mostly internal systems so little code available for training. HTML, TypeScript, JavaScript, C, etc, are readily available, billions of code lines.
Well, on the 2nd paragraph, I have no illusion they’ll figure out more as they are being trained. I am more thinking of the custodians (as coders turn into that)
Say you are a good coder now, but you are becoming a custodian, checking the llm work will slowly erode your skills. Maybe if you got a good memory or an amazing skillset it might be some time, but if you don’t use it, you lose it.
How are COBOL developers "sought after"? That's an oft-repeated but woefully incorrect meme.
FAANG new grads make more. If the COBOL devs had upskilled throughout their career they'd be Senior Staff/Principal+ and making 5-10x more than they do today.
That'll be (part of) the big market correction, but also speaking broadly; as investor money dries up and said investors want to see results, many new businesses or products will realise they're not financially viable.
On a small scale that's a tragedy, but there's plenty of analysts that predict an economic crash and recession because there's trillions invested in this technology.
The challenge with Playdate games is that it's a relatively niche market; the number of consoles sold is... probably more than 100K at this point but less than a million (https://x.com/playdate/status/1757478578491732486), of which only a percentage will buy games in addition to the "free" ones.
I suspect any developer whose game gets picked for the "free" games will get a compensation, but I have no idea how much that would be. This link https://x.com/playdate/status/1757478578491732486 suggests that two years ago, all Catalog developers (so not the free games) earned about 500K total / shared amongst each other.
TL;DR: by all means make games for the Playdate but not if you want to make it your livelihood. Personal grumpy take, not based in up to date facts.
There are plenty of free or cheaper alternatives, although platforms like pico-8 are (intentionally) hard to work with, especially as a first introduction to building games and / or coding.
The Playdate is... limited though; it's very small, much smaller than e.g. the gameboy or DS, so it's not particularly ergonomic. Fine for playing around with on occasion, but it's not a platform for spending long hours with. And it made the same mistake as the GBA did - no backlight.
It does not feel like good value for money. But then, it's positioned as a niche / quirky device, manufactured in batches once a year or so, not a mass market device.
I do hope they build a follow-up some day though - make it twice as big (at least), add a backlight, make turning it off more obvious, and give more clarity about the availability and cost of games.
Bit of both I think; spend time writing code on your own, use coding tools at work if they encourage / pay for it.
I think we'll settle into a new norm over the next few years, but the role of software engineer will change though. Ultimately, always remember (and remind your boss) that you are in charge and, more importantly, responsible.
That's when you should stop your work, make a new branch from main, do the refactoring and offer it separately; it's about (self) discipline in the end. You can probably also do something creative with cherry-pick and the like.
Sometimes I do this, but sometimes it's just more work than it's worth. I have started to do this a bit more with language models to help reduce the toil, but I yearn for a more rigorous method.
These are various reasons why I also opted to not use it when it was finally time to retire vBulletin 3. We never did adopt vB 4 or 5, because while I'm sure the code was "better" from a software engineering perspective (using classes/OOP etc), it was also noticably slower, and the original developers had either been ousted or sold out.
The original vB developers built Xenforo, which is still in the spirit of vB 3 but with some modern amenities like live updates and the like.
I also found Discourse to be... challenging to self-host.
> I also found Discourse to be... challenging to self-host.
Made a completely different experience. Every once in a while you have to run a command. Over the last 10-12 years there were I think 2 problems where this did not work out of the box.
But there's other research that, at least when it comes to weight loss, there is no measurable difference between intermittent fasting and reduced calorie intake.
I mean they don't HAVE to, unless there's some law I'm not aware of can't they just say "sorry not sorry colorblind people" or something. The MBAs will say HAVE to because maximizing shareholder value.
Accessibility lawsuits are common and frequent. Everyone gets them. It's sort of an open secret in the software world, not sure why it doesn't get discussed more. I guess the business people just consider it CODB, and developers prefer to believe it isn't real.
But I'm also afraid / certain that LLMs are able to figure out legacy code (as long as enough fits in their context window), so it's tenuous at best.
Also, funny you mentioned HTML / CSS because for a while (...in the 90's / 2000's) it looked like nobody needed to actually learn those because of tools like Dreamweaver / Frontpage.
reply