The Death of the Software Laborer (The New World)

What will you do if you don’t have to write the function, develop the data structure, or code up the tests?

Like one guy with the shovel learned how to run the excavator and another why they were gonna dig the hole, you’ll need to learn how to direct the software-producing system and what it should build.

Here’s what a software laborer will still do:

• understand the problem
• understand customers and users
• decide what should be built
• handle ambiguity
• understand how technologies can be used
• break problems into pieces and manage the work
• choose architectures and tradeoffs
• determine whether the output is actually correct
• test against reality
• integrate systems
• decide when not to build something

Not many construction workers today pine for the time when they used a shovel all day.

Neither will software laborers pine for the time when they typed in code themselves.