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Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

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128 points taylorlunt | 1 comments | 30 Jul 25 14:58 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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arethuza ◴[30 Jul 25 15:25 UTC] No.44735477[source]▶
I'd have said the Golden Age started about the time Linux distros allowed you replicate the full Unix workstation experience on a basic PC - which I think in my case was around '93 or '94 - right around the same time as the Web starting to become a standard technology.
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freedomben ◴[30 Jul 25 17:22 UTC] No.44736974[source]▶
Agreed, and importantly the increasing availabilty of open source compilers/interpreters that made it possible for the broke kid to sling real code.
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1. TheNewsIsHere ◴[31 Jul 25 10:45 UTC] No.44744280[source]▶
It wasn’t just programming either. It was anything with computing. I remember when you could walk into a book store and find a wall of books on Linux, so many of which came with “the Publisher’s Edition” of a Linux distro. That’s how I learned (and obtained!) Linux for the first time. I was hooked.

Where else was a kid going to get a full Linux suite (with just a dial up connection) and a sound basic education for it, in 2003?

I never quite took that for granted, but I still miss being able to walk into a bookstore and walk out with a book with software included. There was something really special about that.