unclebobmartin on Nostr: Clearly the growth cannot remain exponential. If it did then thirty years from now 3 ...
Clearly the growth cannot remain exponential. If it did then thirty years from now 3 out of 4 humans on the planet will be programmers. That's not feasible.
What is driving the current exponential growth? Exponential demand. Every N years the demand for new software that people are willing to pay for doubles. Thus, every N years we must double our capacity to write software.
What will slow the exponential demand for nnew software? Perhaps we'll run out of applications. Or, perhaps the price of software will increase.
Why would the price of software increase? Because the supply of programmers will become too low to meet the demand. This will drive programmer salaries up and therefore software prices up.
What could increase our capacity to write software? Hiring more programmers of course; but also better tools, better languages, better environments etc.
Will our tools become so powerful that we can meet the exponential demand for software without hiring more programmers? That doesn't seem likely; but some folks worry that AI will take over most of the work of writing software. If that happens then software will get cheaper, and demand for new software will increase without the need for more programmers.
The most likely outcome of all this that the exponential growth of programmers will eventually consumem the supply, driving programmer salaries up. This will create enormous pressure to automate more and more of the software process, allowing programmers to magnify their productivity. At some point all these forces will stabilize and the exponential growth of programmers, and demand for software, will plateau.
>From: (benc) at 04/26/23 23:38:35 on wss://nos.lol
>---------------
>unclebobmartin (npub19mu…jnft) when suggesting the population of programmers doubles every five years we end up with an exponential growth.
>
>Exponential growth isn’t very natural.
>
>Any thoughts on it being more like logistic growth and that some compensating factor will curb growth in the future and maintain an equilibrium?
What is driving the current exponential growth? Exponential demand. Every N years the demand for new software that people are willing to pay for doubles. Thus, every N years we must double our capacity to write software.
What will slow the exponential demand for nnew software? Perhaps we'll run out of applications. Or, perhaps the price of software will increase.
Why would the price of software increase? Because the supply of programmers will become too low to meet the demand. This will drive programmer salaries up and therefore software prices up.
What could increase our capacity to write software? Hiring more programmers of course; but also better tools, better languages, better environments etc.
Will our tools become so powerful that we can meet the exponential demand for software without hiring more programmers? That doesn't seem likely; but some folks worry that AI will take over most of the work of writing software. If that happens then software will get cheaper, and demand for new software will increase without the need for more programmers.
The most likely outcome of all this that the exponential growth of programmers will eventually consumem the supply, driving programmer salaries up. This will create enormous pressure to automate more and more of the software process, allowing programmers to magnify their productivity. At some point all these forces will stabilize and the exponential growth of programmers, and demand for software, will plateau.
>From: (benc) at 04/26/23 23:38:35 on wss://nos.lol
>---------------
>unclebobmartin (npub19mu…jnft) when suggesting the population of programmers doubles every five years we end up with an exponential growth.
>
>Exponential growth isn’t very natural.
>
>Any thoughts on it being more like logistic growth and that some compensating factor will curb growth in the future and maintain an equilibrium?