Eric Gunnerson - What is the biggest challenge for programmers?

The Discussion

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  That's a really good point. It is a good philisophical observation about the way people work when they're abstracted away from semantics, and I think we're seeing now what was originally intended; save your time to worry about the bigger issues.
  
  Now that we have this luxury I would ask, what should the bigger issues look like?

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  The rate of change is indeed a problem. And it is constantly accelerating. Every year I have to let go of some field that I used to keep up with, and focus more and more on fewer and fewer things. I think information overload is a problem for just about everyone working with development, and sometimes I wonder how my ageing brain is going to cope with this in another 20 years.

  Will development become something you get into after getting your college degree and after 10 years you will have to "retire" to another profession? Or maybe the cost and effort of acquiring the necessary skills will be so high in comparison to the time you have to leverage it, that it won't even be economical - and it will all be outsourced?

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  The fires of creativity in computer science are hot, and indeed it burns through many.
  
  It's my belief that the only things that can be outsourced are faceless commodities.

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  I think the biggest challenge for programmers is how to combat the monopolistic politics that exists in the computer industry and keep ALL industry protocols (notnecessarily source code) 100% open and freely available, and at the same time, secure.