Weird take. I've been programming for 40 some years. I don't do it full time, trading time for $ anymore, but I still do it to write tools for my business pretty much every day. Cuz it's fun.
Iphone SE user here. Big screens is why I have an iPad in the house. Small form factor is why I have an iPhone SE in the pocket. My iPad gets _much_ more use than my iPhone. I'm not out and about much, even before the virus. I see phones sticking out of people's pockets and it makes no sense to me.
I come from the .Net toolchain as well, no longer develop full-time, but write tools for my business as needed. I use Angular (6 or whatever). They talk to a .Net (core) server as little as possible. What I find is the iterative dev turnaround time, that cycle between find a bug - fix it - test it, is so much faster with angular than if server-side rendered. It's a joy. That same cycle on server side in .Net - change some .cs file and check that fix quickly - , slowly rather - a real pain. That alone drives the choice for me.
How about making it anything less than painful to use on an iPad. Like, maybe some of your developers can actually try to use it on an iPad? If this has been fixed, I retract. I've moved on long ago.
And maybe less obvious is the start-up that Netflix once was has a tougher go of it because Comcast wants their content streamed nicely and has to keep the Netflix customers from yelling too loud and have to squeeze someone's bandwidth to make profit goals which is perfectly legal as long as they are transparent about it.
I have been programming since the late 70s. I will say, some folks my age should be discarded, not because they're old, but because they've refused to keep up their skill sets. Many of my friends, whom I worked with in the 80s, are still scrounging around for whatever RPG AS/400 jobs are left. I shake my head. I'm having more fun than ever developing these days. Angular and Typescript of late. And it'll be some new framework in a year and a half. Other folks I talk to complain that they've been replaced by outsourced Indians. A little bit further probing reveals that "well they moved it to Java, and I'm a Cobal programmer, I don't want to learn Java". I shake my head some more. I'm not helping the cause here, I guess. Just some random observations.
Is your point that 40+ aren't doing Math and Programming, so one should not aspire to be doing that at 40+? But why aren't 40+ doing Math and Programming? Because they've moved on to other challenges, or because they are being replaced? Aren't we back to the original point?
I am 57, been programming professionally since '79, still doing it on a part-time basis, which is perfect for me. Taught me some Angular awhile back. RethinkDB looks interesting. I agree with all who have said that now is the best it's ever been for a dev; web, OSS, cloud, so much power and leverage. I can't see myself not doing some software development well into the future.
That (looks nice and fun) is the only reason I kick around the idea of getting a Nest. Living in San Diego, there's not much reason for a thermostat. It does get chilly in the winter, but we use firewood to heat the house. We use the A/C maybe two weeks a year. But that UI sure looks nice.
> As it stands, Xamarin may have nearly saturated the market it has available to it.
No way Xamarin has saturated the market with their licensing costs. $1000/yr per seat (for VS integration, last I looked) is cost prohibitive. If this deal lowers that cost significantly, it's a very compelling way to go for lots of devs.
Your post causes me to reflect on how good I've had it. I've been programming for 33 years. I've been on call 24/7 occasionally, but I can only recall a few days of that here and there. I've worked a 60+ hour work week maybe 2-3 times, but I doubt 3. I did do a 30 hour weekend awhile back, while with a startup. It was fun. I do recall one pitiless death march, and still have some bad thoughts about that episode, but overall, I never worked in places that operated as you describe, nor would I.
I've tried to find something else I like more than programming, but haven't yet. And now I'm doing iOS development, leveraging Pulse and CouchDb, and doing some client-side data binding in the browser with knockout.js. There has never been a better time to be a programmer, IMO, with all the leverage the internet and open source gives us, so why stop now?
I would disagree with item 3. I am a professional developer. Not remotely professional, but flat-out professional. And I make mistakes. I know other developers, wait, greater than remotely professional developers, that also make mistakes. Even though I'm a professional developer and I've got a careful map of the code in my head, and I'm careful not to make mistakes, I still make mistakes. I've seen other developers do the same thing - make mistakes. I'm always stunned, but it keeps happening. I have found that type hints, code completion, intellisense, helps me discover mistakes sooner, often before I make them. I have found that mistakes found sooner are cheaper to fix. Type hints have huge value for productivity. Often, BTW, you are using a class (or JS function, whatever) that you didn't write, so you don't necessarily have this careful map in your head, your trying to figure out what this beast is that you're using, and hints are extremely helpful there.
I think Typescript is great, from what I see so far. And it's not like Anders is trying to hijack JS. I see it as a development tool. If the next guy doesn't want to use TypeScript, fine, have at the JS, it's nice code that it produces.
Condescending, elitist BS. OMG, the public will form uninformed opinions, because they don't know what I know, this could be horrible. I do not understand the viewpoint. The public already has uninformed opinions about NFL players, coaches, etc. Big deal. Allow them to be more educated on the game, especially since the NFL would not exist without the public's interest.