In a post from before I show that computer programming is something everyone will have to learn eventually because it makes more sense, cost-wise, for a company to hire someone with programming skills instead of a developer for one small program. Why hire someone to develop something that should only take an afternoon to make when you can hire an employee for marketing who can also program small apps on the side whenever they need to?
Smart App development will rise faster than what is being proposed right now. In the works is a system created by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) that will patch pieces of code together found all over the internet. The program is called MUSE (Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves) that would allow someone who doesn’t know any code to be able to program a computer just by telling the computer what they would like for it to do. The idea is almost like If this then that where it puts together resources from the internet to make anything happen, except MUSE only wants to pool together all lines of code ever written on the internet and bring it to one place.
Paradigm Shift
Right now if someone wanted to program a server or computer of any kind they would need to know the right language in order to do that but with the MUSE software all someone would need to know is how to design everything to work together. The shift in thinking would be not to think in programming terms but more in creative design layout. The software would then piece together parts that it needs, across different languages, in order to bring to life what it is being asked to make.
If one computer comes to mind it should be HAL from 2001: A space Odyssey, where instead of him trying to attack you or go against your wishes (hopefully not) he will take your instructions and do what he needs to.
This whole way of programming goes against what is being pushed at schools and universities right now, which is to learn programming. Schools all over the world are pushing kids to learn how to program in different languages; colleges and universities are telling students to major in computer science because of the number of jobs available (which should not be the reason to major in something). But if in 20 to 30 years we will have computers that will make programming obsolete then what will happen to the programmers that MUSE relies on for code?
They will still be needed except MUSE might start combine code into different forms to learn. Right now it is a hard idea to think of happening but one thing that can not be doubted is the need for programming computers. That is something that will never end and as people become more tech savvy then programming will be apart of many people’s lives.
Whether you want to start now or start later, it’s important to at least know how to read code so you understand what someone is telling you. It’s difficult to determine whether that will happen or not but if it does then people will be able to create all kinds of things and leave people with computer science degrees in the dust.
Get started now or wait to see what happens, either way, you will be required to know how to make smartphone apps in a few years as a basic office skill
The Life of An Entrepreneur 