Re MBA guys - maybe we have a different understanding of MVP here. I don't mean PowerPoint-ware - I mean version 0.1 of a product solving real problems. MBAs that are working on something more complex than yet another social network will immediately look for an engineer.
I'm not missing the average/maximum-complexity point at all, but I have a different view on it than you do. The average complexity won't stay constant, it'll keep increasing, and the average programmer will have to adapt. Will that mean a reduction in demand? I doubt it - we've yet to see the full extent of how software can be used. On the flip side, I constantly see clients looking for someone to fix or alter their "automated" installations - the average programmer will surely be in enough demand from these cases alone.
>Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website.
It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - HTML and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - that programmers entered the picture.
> Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills.
Good point, but are they doing it? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Airbnb all had technical founders. The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on. An MBA aware of this complexity deserves all the success he or she can get.
Well, first off, you're just shifting the goalposts and redefining what it means to "program" to suit your needs: it's inconvenient for your argument that there's now software that does what programmers used to do, so you just call those things something else.
But it doesn't matter, because you can't run from the core of the argument: it isn't limited to static HTML & CSS. Want web forms, but don't know how to write software or use databases? There's Wufoo, and dozens of others. Want to send email? Mailgun. Mailchimp. Want to accept payments? Paypal, Stripe. Want to show an interactive map with stuff on it? Google maps has you covered. Want to implement search on your website, but don't know anything about search? Swiftype will do that. So will Google site search. Need a sophisticated customer analytics system. OK. That'll be one line of javascript, please.
And what's more: it's only a matter of time before someone rolls all of these tools together into a pointy clicky interface that eliminates the token integration work (assuming they haven't already). There's no part of your argument that is safe from the trends that have been driving our industry.
"The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on."
True, but like I said before: almost nobody needs that. There's always going to be the need for complex software...it's just not clear how many people will be asking for it.
And in that respect, that kind of optimization has been happening since the dawn of the personal computer. Lotus 1-2-3 was the defining application of the PC, allowing average users to do programming-like operations that were once only in reach of programmers.
> Well, first off, you're just shifting the goalposts and redefining what it means to "program" to suit your needs: it's inconvenient for your argument that there's now software that does what programmers used to do, so you just call those things something else.
Definitely not. I think "website automation" is among the simplest kinds of software automation and historically it has not required a significant amount of programming.
> But it doesn't matter, because you can't run from the core of the argument: it isn't limited to static HTML & CSS. Want web forms, but don't know how to write software or use databases? There's Wufoo, and dozens of others. Want to send email? Mailgun. Mailchimp. Want to accept payments? Paypal, Stripe. Want to show an interactive map with stuff on it? Google maps has you covered. Want to implement search on your website, but don't know anything about search? Swiftype will do that. So will Google site search. Need a sophisticated customer analytics system. OK. That'll be one line of javascript, please.
That's a stretch. Wufoo, PayPal, Stripe, Mailgun, Google Maps, and MailChimp are not going to cover 100% of use cases, nor do they all come free. You're also ignoring that many of these services are alternatives, not integrations (MailChimp, PayPal, Stripe, Mailgun, Google Maps), of older services (AWeber, Authorize, MapQuest) that filled the same function, and a few of them are filling a need that simply didn't exist before prior automation tools (MailChimp for email lists, Stripe for payment processing). It's not a zero-sum game, nor do the same players stay on top throughout time.
> And what's more: it's only a matter of time before someone rolls all of these tools together into a pointy clicky interface that eliminates the token integration work (assuming they haven't already). There's no part of your argument that is safe from the trends that have been driving our industry.
I actually mentioned that in the post: "For every API that wraps around a business process, there's an application yet to be written (and an API around that application in due time)." You seem to think there's some end point, where most software will just be done and most activity automated. I doubt that will ever be the case.
> True, but like I said before: almost nobody needs that. There's always going to be the need for complex software...it's just not clear how many people will be asking for it.
You seem to imply that in the future, most non-complex (i.e. average) software will just either exist or be generated on demand. That seems far-fetched - there are programs orders of magnitudes simpler than "software generators" that routinely need to be adjusted and tuned to produce correct output (as will all the automated APIs in the future).
Put bluntly, I think that both Groupon and Zappos started as glorified Wordpress installs.
I don't think that the average complexity for business programs is going to change--at their core, most all of them have the business proposition "Take my X so I can get Y in time Z". Everything else is window dressing.
Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website. Now you're demoting producing a website to something that doesn't even require programmers, saying it's been automated for several years.
I think this proves exactly the point of the GP.
Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills.
Examples of succesful companies with not difficult to program MVPs: AirBnB, Instagram, Twitter, Groupon.
I believe many MBAs could build something like these given some time. If we want to broaden the category from MBAs to just STEM students, I know very few STEM students at my college (which is ~97% STEM majors) who couldn't build more than a MVP for one of these sites given 2-3 months.
