I was listening to Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch’s interview in the background, and fell into a reverie about changes of fashion in technology.
The first, most obvious point is the almost ubiquitous equation of technology with computers in contemporary parlance. Just one or two generations ago, “technology” would be most connected with analogue hardware: cf. 董啟章’s 天工開物‧栩栩如真.
And so much changed has happened even with recognisably modern computers.
There was the birth of UNIX in the 1960s, the first popular operating system that is written in a high level language and meant to be portable across different machines: cf. Brian Kernighan UNIX: A History and a Memoir.
There was the birth of LINUX, the first popular free open-source operating system, in the 1990s. It is hard to imagine now, but before then most users had to be content with whatever operating system Microsoft or Apple offers. Cf. Linus Torvalds, Just for Fun.
And there was the world wide web also in the 1990s: when Linus Torvalds was first playing with computers as a teenager, he had to mail order books to his native Finland. It is hard to imagine now how people at first didn’t see the World Wide Web as the next big thing and Tim Berners-Lee had to work hard to keep the project alive, cf. his memoir Weaving the Web.
The change of context isn’t significant only for its objective impact. Even a non-technical person will appreciate the world is more connected and moving faster now: whether they like it or not.
More to the point, with each change of technological epoch, there is an entirely different “developer experience” (to use a contemporary term):
Before an important pitch for the Microsoft Operating System, Paul Allen left behind some crucial code, and had to hand write pages and pages of machine code to boot the machine. Any small mistake would be fatal, cf. his memoir Idea Man.
One of Donald Knuth’s first projects was to set up an AI programme to play tic-tac-toe, something he had to work on for months.
Now it is possible to heavily use AI (e.g. within the Vercel eco-system) to generate and deploy code for a working website in the matter of days or even hours.
One thing I am undecided about is whether this sea-change of developer experience means there is a stable core to the role of “software engineer” or “coder”.
Let me lay out the issue in this way.
Despite the many changes in fashion/social understanding, there seems to be a stable core meaning of what it is to be an author. I accept the idea probably cannot be stretch too far, e.g. into Greek antiquity. One can readily grant that Homer may well (in fact may very well be) a fictional entity, with the works of Homer being in reality an oral tradition that was contributed to by a wide range of story tellers.
But by the time of Dante (born 1495) or Shakespeare (born 1584), there emerged a fairly recognisable idea of an author: someone who writes a genre of literary works with well-understood conventions.
And, despite the many changes in fashion and circumstances, this idea/identity persists. Sally Rooney is a very different kind of author as Dante or Shakespeare, but in an obvious sense she is practising the same craft.
But what about tech/IT?
First of all, the term seems to cover a very wide spectrum, from scientists to entrepreneurs to the sys admin. Does Turing, Gates and the school computer administrator share so much in common?
Second, the medium they work with have changed so much as well. Even if Rooney uses a computer to compose her works, her workflow, in its essentials cannot be so different from Dante’s.
By comparison, a tech in the 50s or 60s who had to figure everything out himself/herself, but without the distraction of the internet. In some ways such a figure unrecognisable to the constantly connected 2020s coders, using LLMs tools while listening to tech influencers int he background.
Does this (arguable) lack of stable identity matter? Only to the extent that “working in tech” is seem as a profession, with its own ethos and identity. But is it?
Can’t figure it out: may come back to it later.