Revolutionizing programming
Learning how to code is seen today as key factor to building a successful career path. But this goes against history
Why? In our modern society, do we really want to speak like computers? Should not computers learn to speak our language instead?
Apple and Microsoft made their success by making computing accessible to everyone. It was through a visual and intuitive user experience. In fact, in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, engineers start building products allowing people to interact with computers without speaking the code. Before this golden age we had to master the command line to use computers. Fortunately, the Mac II and Windows replaced this command line with a simple and intuitive graphical user interface. This allowed computer users to expand from a few specialists to nearly everyone. This is a trend in technology. Everything becomes easier over time, and as it does, more people use it and find creative ways to exploit it.
Programming has not followed this path yet. Ok that is not completely true*. BASIC, one of the very first programming languages, celebrated its 50th birthday and yet, modern programming languages still reflect this archetypal approach. The way people program today is by typing highly structured text — the code — in a text editor. You have to write some kind of stuff so that it is easy for the computer to parse them, instead of being easy for us to read them.
*True, a lot has been done to make the coding process faster with better learning tools (forums like Stack Overflow), and code-sharing (the Open Source movement). However, and in spite of these geek efforts, you still need to be super trained as an engineer to build software.
10 years from now, I can not imagine people programming as we do today. It just can’t be. I hope that the future will be a world in which programming is self-explanatory, where people talk to computers to build software. And it is already the case when you talk to Siri to ask for information. To get there, programming tools should first use our language. This could change a lot in the way we live and create.
Revolutionising programming is one of the biggest opportunity of our time. There is not a field where computers haven’t had an impact yet. But how do we want to get there?
Rely on engineers to build the products that will transform everything else. In fact, we have already started to turn engineers into an elite class that runs a consequent part of the world. Major tech companies are in fact controlling how we live. People that do not know how to program will at some point miss a big game. Think about drivers. Do you think they will still be needed after Google’s driverless cars go mainstream? We’re talking about a lot of people: hundreds of millions will eventually lose their jobs.
Another option is to give the power of creation to everyone. Instead of being consumers of technology, people will produce it. This could unleash a strong economic potential, as the number of people able to build new products and companies would propably skyrocket. Enabling people to build their own solutions to their own problems is an incredible opportunity.
According to me, as technologists, it is a responsibility to make this happen as soon as possible.
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