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Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

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128 points taylorlunt | 3 comments | 30 Jul 25 14:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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zwnow ◴[30 Jul 25 15:04 UTC] No.44735172[source]▶
It also caused the "Golden Age of Programming". It's only been a golden age because of high salaries for relatively low effort. So if their needs change, obviously the industry changes. This article has nothing to say really.
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rkozik1989 ◴[30 Jul 25 15:11 UTC] No.44735280[source]▶
>It's only been a golden age because of high salaries for relatively low effort.

Money is how you define a Golden Age of Programming? I consider the late 1990s and early 2000s more of a Golden Age, and my reasons for it have nothing to do with making money. The time was of Golden Age because that's when programming became more accessible to the masses. Yes it wasn't without its fault, namely with regards to cyber security, but people all of the world suddenly were able to learn how to code and all the needed was an Internet connection.

Frankly, all this nonsense about money, total compensation, etc. is the cancer that killed programming.

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zwnow ◴[30 Jul 25 15:17 UTC] No.44735355[source]▶
I define golden age by how much I have to do to support my family. How much work there is and ultimately how much $/hr you are paid for it. Your interpretation is also very valid. The article complains about there not being available jobs though, so I went that route.
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ecb_penguin ◴[30 Jul 25 15:22 UTC] No.44735439[source]▶
That would be a golden economic age. We're talking about the craft of programming. They're different things.
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surgical_fire ◴[30 Jul 25 16:20 UTC] No.44736206[source]▶
If that's your metric, then the golden age never ended, and we are still in the upward trend.

There were never as many tools, programming languages, IDEs, framework, services and tools available for programming. And with the advancement in technology, even a pretty old laptop is still powerful enough to run it all. You now even gave LLMs that are interesting (even if very flawed) code assistants.

If anything, the golden age of programming is a tomorrow that is always postponed another day.

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1. freedomben ◴[30 Jul 25 17:26 UTC] No.44737033[source]▶
That's true, but I think you need to account for the state of hardware and operating systems too. Unless you're on Linux, the hackability and control over your own computing environment has never been worse (aside from when those things weren't accessible at all). Yes I can build almost anything nowadays, but actually using it is a different story, even just for personal use (ask people with iPhones and increasingly Android about that).
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2. surgical_fire ◴[30 Jul 25 19:00 UTC] No.44738215[source]▶
> Unless you're on Linux

Why would anyone interested in programming use anything else?

I am forced to use a Mac at work, but I digress.

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3. freedomben ◴[31 Jul 25 18:14 UTC] No.44748436[source]▶
> Why would anyone interested in programming use anything else?

I totally agree, but most people I know (myself included) initially got started on different systems (Windows in my case). If I'd had to learn Linux at the same time, it may have been too steep a learning curve