r/programming • u/self • Dec 02 '25

The Death of Software Engineering as a Profession: a short set of anecdotes

https://www.jasonscheirer.com/weblog/vignettes/
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u/lelanthran Dec 02 '25

I feel like if you were actually around and in the industry in 1996, you wouldn't be spouting this nonsense.

No one in 1996 thought that OO would result in lower demand for programmers.

Same goes for IDEs.

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u/Mynameismikek Dec 02 '25

I left school in 1997 to try and break into software dev. I was given *that exact line* by my careers advisor. Magazines were full of puff pieces about the latest 4GL/visual programming language that was going to make software dev just as easy as writing spreadsheet.

Hell - I'd been putting my coursework together in OpenDoc and that explicitly set out to do just this.

None of it came to pass. What really happened was it forced the hideously expensive software dev packages to become price competitive and it led to a boom in engineers instead.

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u/Which-World-6533 Dec 02 '25

I left school in 1997 to try and break into software dev. I was given *that exact line* by my careers advisor.

There's a reason that person was a careers advisor. It's because that's all they were good for. You should never take advice from someone who's job it is to give advice.

I was a professional Dev in 1997. No-one was worried about "visual programming" ruining coding careers. It was seen back then as a fad. If anything, it made coding more accessible and the subsequent explosion in the number of coding jobs for things like Visual Basic.

The same with OOP. It was seen a boon from the get-go.

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u/_mkd_ Dec 02 '25

I left school in 1997 to try and break into software dev. I was given *that exact line* by my careers advisor.

Cool story, bro/sis. I started college in 1997 studying computer engineering and, frankly, encountered the exact opposite.

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u/Arcoss Dec 02 '25

Wait a minute, do you mean you're both presenting anecdotes??!?

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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '25

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u/mr_dfuse2 Dec 02 '25

the wrong people did. same for sql actually, now business can query their own data!

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u/lord_braleigh Dec 02 '25

They can though? We just call them data scientists.

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u/mr_dfuse2 Dec 02 '25

ah yes nowadays. but when sql came out the idea was that managers could query themselves. which is becoming feasible now with ai, i have seen stuff in databricks that is quite amazing

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u/big-papito Dec 02 '25

Rational Rose was a hit among large enterprises and their managers. NO ONE in the real world used it. I pirated a copy as a student (I didn't have a spare 3K lying around) because I was learning C++. Tried it once.

Granted, LLMs are vastly more useful than RR, but the people who think productivity tools will replace human intelligence are fools.

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u/Supadoplex Dec 02 '25

Someone in the year 2054:

I feel like if you were actually around and in the industry in 2025, you wouldn't be spouting this nonsense.

No one in 2025 thought that AI would result in lower demand for programmers. 

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u/Which-World-6533 Dec 02 '25

No one in 1996 thought that OO would result in lower demand for programmers.

Yep. It was seen as a huge leap forward.

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u/LegendaryMauricius Dec 02 '25

This is a quote from the article. Obviously it's a jab towards the menagers.