To save you wasting 10 minutes: The distinction between programmer and software developer in government definition, led to "programming" jobs dropping by 22%. This doesn't affect the "Software development" industry which saw only a 0.3% drop.

It is really a click bait.

It is clickbait, assuming you don’t know the distinction between a developer and a programmer. If you do it’s actually a pretty solid title. I’d argue it’s worth a read because the main point is very good.

I think the core distinction is important and gets at what LLMs are and are not good at. LLMs are good at translating clear specifications into common programming languages. That is what a programmer, by the BLS’ definition, does. The hard part of being a software dev never has been writing the code.

They are claiming that the act of programming is in the process of being replaced. That seems somewhat likely. However they aren’t saying that overall tech industry jobs nor even software dev jobs are decreasing.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) definitions:

“Computer Programmer”: https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151251.htm

“Software Developer”: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

Agree on the click bait title but it did not save me a click. For those wondering more. There is some distinction, which I still do not fully comprehend between "programming" which is grunt work and "developer" which is ingesting requirements and coding on top of working with "programmers" to implement a client needs. If someone has more insight on the distinction I would love to understand because it could be interesting if programmer was the initial stepping stone into developer.

>The distinction between programmer and software developer in government definition

To save the click on what this means specifically:

"In the government’s schema, programmers do the grunt work while the much more numerous — and much faster-growing — software developers enjoy a broader remit. They figure out what clients need, design solutions and work with folks such as programmers and hardware engineers to implement them."

22% drop in programming jobs, but only a 0.3% drop in developer jobs. It's an interesting point of differentiation. I imagine there's a lot more developers than programmers when you're being pedantic about it.

I'm sure there's a more formal distinction. But I've noticed younger developers don't call themselves programmers anymore. Computer programmer was always the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" job title for kids into computers and coding, but that's changed.

What's the difference between programming and software development? I can't read the article.

From the article

In the government’s schema, programmers do the grunt work while the much more numerous — and much faster-growing — software developers enjoy a broader remit. They figure out what clients need, design solutions and work with folks such as programmers and hardware engineers to implement them.

Honestly I'm more confused as with that. Seems like 'bureaucrats who grew up without PCs try to explain job' more than anything.

To be fair other engineering disciplines do typically separate the engineers from the technicians in basically that ('design vs do') way.

At one time these were called System Analyst. Is that no longer a thing ?

Those might be called "software architect" now. At least, it's somewhat close.

It is, at least from the visual of different "coding" type jobs there is still a slide for System Analyst. I have no idea what most of the differences are.

Government statistics consider "system analyst" to be a third, different thing (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...). "Computer systems analysts study an organization’s current computer systems and design ways to improve efficiency."

I imagine it's counting the PM's, infrastructure and support staff...

It's not AI:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPSOFTDEVE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXAUTPSOFTDEVE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPITOPHE

Companies and VC's with unrealistic valuations will spin it as such.

FRED enables combining (and tweaking/scaling/etc) charts pretty easily on their site. Check out the 'edit graph' button. You can use the ID's of the individual charts (like IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE) when searching for a table to add.

Here are those 4 tables combined: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1EDHP

Nice tip. Thanks.

There's also section-174, which big corporations don't care about but kills smaller businesses left and right.

Yeah 174 is crazy: https://youtu.be/1ecu0YsCGxg

Never listen to theo.

Maybe... :-) Where is he wrong?

I hear a lot of static about this on hacker news and nowhere else.

I work for a large company and we were already capitalizing the time we spent developing software. From an accounting perspective it makes sense that software development effort produces a semi-durable asset that a company can use, sell, etc.

For smaller companies, the math is the same.

For startups very specifically, who expect to go to the moon or go bust in 5 years, I can believe that having a lower initial burn rate (because they could represent all developer salaries as opex and deduct in the immediate calendar year) was beneficial.

Also, the tax law changes actually disincentivize offshoring software development by requiring an absurdly long amortization schedule for foreign-developed software. Yet offshoring is currently as intense as it has ever been since the early 2000s. (If we expect the tax law changes to have a big effect on developer hiring, we would expect a decrease in offshoring given the disincentives).

I wonder how much of this drop can be simply explained as having reached a certain industry maturity. I assume at some point most of the fundamentals are in place, so we need less people?

Programming isn't an industry, per se. It's a skill, like accounting, sales, communications or law. There are definitely many businesses for which it's a core strength, but any large company has some need for it.

Maturity is definitely an issue. If you listen to what the industry is selling these days it's pretty much just AI. Before that it was DeFi and VR. There hasn't been a new smartphone since.. the smartphone.

I have more thoughts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41495082

That's too old to comment on directly, but I'd say tech has made a LOT of progress since the arrival of the smart phone. We have self-driving electric cars, vaccines that previously would have been impossible, photovoltaic systems at least an order of magnitude more efficient than in the past, AIs that can beat any human at Go, chatbots that pass the Turing Test... it's a long list. Tech is moving faster than ever!

You mentioned VR and DeFi, both of which are still growing, too. In fact, I think stable coins and AR headsets are both just about on the cusp of getting widespread usage in the next few years.

I think programmer is the last job I would replace with AI.

That sounds like something a programmer would say.

That's funny, but I also don't doubt that the industry, should it pursue this path, is going to be on a hiring spree to get engineers back to fix the mess they've wrought a few years from now.

As expected, the end of the ZIRP has hit startups hard.