To Dave’s point, I liken it to perpetual motion or infinite compression; we’ll never quite get there. We mostly use high level languages but someone needs to write the microcode and optimizing compilers for new CPUs and instruction sets (admittedly, I don’t know to what extent those tasks have been automated.) On Tue, Jun 6, 2023 at 1:01 PM Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On 6/6/23 12:39, Bart Hirst via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Well of course WE'LL still keep performing it :) similar to vintage computer knowledge like peeks & pokes, orientation of "pin 1", jumper settings, storage layouts, I/O Port Addresses, IRQ's, DMA, plus many, many more (please list more if you like.) How has the backgrounding of these vintage things (largely unneeded for today's modern computer) yet still relevant, enriching and mind-provoking affected the space? How would the loss of coding impact it?
I'm torn. As a programmer, I love a clean piece of code, and at the same time if maintaining other's code, fixing bugs and refactoring could be done using natural language, then sign me up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yI4yfYftfM&t=1415s <-- link to the part of the video that triggered this email
The idea of programming becoming an obsolete job because computers can now write code is a very old one. I distinctly remember reading about a program called "The Last One" in BYTE magazine when I was a teenager in the 1980s that purported to end programming jobs by being "the last one", and I remember a much older mentor of mine telling me at the time that it wasn't even a new idea then.
But it's interesting to think about.
-Dave
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA