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More on Extinct Software Engineers
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To continue with the idea that software engineers will become extinct, as I discussed earlier, and as is being discussed on FlatWorldSoftwareDevelopment, I would like to extend the thread beyond the idea that "high tech" jobs will disappear from the USA by 2016 into an old idea. The focus of software engineering will become almost exclusively on tools for software development, with the focus of software development being tools for end-users to create their own software.
This isn't a new idea, but has been around for awhile. It's never come to fruition because the technology [or maybe the technologists] weren't up to the task.
Most software, if not all software, is very frustrating for non-technologists to use. Much software is even frustrating for the technologists. When I watch my parents [both in their late 70's] trying to use a computer, even the "easy" UI of the MacOSX, I realize what should be obvious to the most casual observer. The current UI paradigm is anything but intuitive. Pushing a mouse or tracing your finger on a touch pad or point in an horizontal plane and relating it to selections on a separate vertical plane is confusing as hell until you've done it for a few years. It is counterintuitive. Hiding functions behind multiple and cascading menu options is counterintuitive. Making software that satisfies technologists' training but not end-users' needs, processes and ways of working is not just counterintuitive. 'Tis idiotic.
The real power of software, computing and digital communications will come from embedding and hiding the software functions of today in tools that allow end-users to create their own applications to automate their daily personal and business tasks; from UI's that follow the way the user prefers to operate and interact, to software that implements their algorithms, paradigms and processes. And, folk will be able to do this repetively, on-the-fly, as needed or wanted.
There are examples already being implemented in the Web2.0 world, using AJAX and Flash, such as Dabble DB.
So, will software engineering become extinct, in the USA or elsewhere. No, but it will change dramaticaly, and become a much more focused field of study.
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