Can you imagine to still develop software within the next 20 years?

Question

I have been working as a software developer for about six years now (and I still have to work 35 years until retirement).

Sometimes I try to imagine how my job as a software developer might change in the future.

Will we still be coding instructions in a certain language even in 30 years?
Will we be able to keep up with future technologies?
What will our experience be worth in 30 years?
Will companies still seek for developers like us in 30 years (we will be real "oldies" then)?

Sometimes I'm even a little bit scared ... what do you think about the future as a software developer?

EDIT: Suprisingly (for me) nearly all of you are very optimistic for our future. Relief!

Answer 1

Can you imagine to still develop software within the next 20 years?

Yes.

(Disclaimer: I want my house in Tuscany, Italy and work from home by then :)

I'm already a project manager, and don't like it particularly... having my own company would be my dream.

Answer 2

After 20 years, I would suspect that a good software engineer wouldn't be in the trenches writing code, except by choice. I personally hope to be a team lead, if not higher 20 years after graduating from university.

Answer 3

We will find a way or make one!

Answer 4

I hope so.

Tried the management route for a few years; not for me, but I'll certainly not be able to retire by then - I'll be working until I'm 80.

Answer 5

I've been at it for 15 years, and I want to do more coding in trenches than I can at the moment. I'm doing management stuff because someone has to, not because I want to. I think promoting a good software developer, more often than not, lead you to losing a good developer and gaining a mediocre manager. I worry about managers who don't still want to get their hands dirty occasionally.

Answer 6

Software development in some form will still be around in 20 years (and beyond). However, many people who do development now will no longer be doing development 20 years from now.

This is mostly because most people will change careers many times in their working lifespan. The few developers who have a true passion for software development will continue to learn the new technologies and adapt to the changes, and continue to develop software. Most people will eventually decide that they want to do something else - Some will become managers, some will become BA's, because it makes sense for their career path and earning potential. Some will decide to open a bait-and-tackle shop in some remote fishing getaway area - because thats what makes them happy at that point in their lives.

It's nothing to worry about - if you have the passion for it, you won't have a problem keeping up. If you don't have that passion, you will know when the right time to make a change is. Change is good, in both instances - and not to be feared!

Answer 7

I think it's critically important to keep your skills up to date through self-directed learning, attending conferences, frequenting development websites, etc. Then, no matter what the technology landscape looks like in 20 years, you'll be ready for it.

Answer 8

In 20 years, I hope to be walking down the street and have a girl walk up to me and say "Sara Chipps? You're the reason I got into programming!"

So, yes, you could say so. However, by then, I hope to be mentoring many younger developers.

Answer 9

Having been a developer for 25 years, it hasn't been difficult at all. :-)

Will we still be coding instructions in a certain language even in 30 years?

Yes, there will still be a market for coders in most popular languages. There are still Cobol coders out there doing quite well. :-)

Will we be able to keep up with future technologies?

Yes, most new technologies are incremental improvements over the old ones anyway, you will probably pick them up faster the more experience you get.

What will our experience be worth in 30 years?

It will be worth quite a bit, getting paid what it's worth is a whole 'nother question. :-)

Will companies still seek for developers like us in 30 years (we will be real "oldies" then)?

Yep, they will still need folks to maintain thier older legacy systems - the older it is and the more "out of fashion" it is, the more you can get paid.

Not much to be afraid of.

Answer 10

I've been doing this for 16 years, and the job really hasn't changed much from when I started. I'm not writing much C anymore, my display is more than 80 columns wide, and the Internet has eliminated the shelves full of reference material, but the process of writing, testing, and debugging code is what it always was.

I don't expect it to change much in the next 20 years either. I just hope my monitors continue to get bigger as time goes on.

See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37671/should-developers-worry-about-ageism

Answer 11

This question bothered me too. I would certainly like to be coding instructions, but in 30 years I wouldn't bet I'll be using the same languages as today. It'll be interesting to see what will happen in the future.

If we can keep up with new technology (and I think most of us will be able to), then our experience will surely be worth a lot in 30 years. Every project, every program written teaches us something. This is something that young people fresh out of school don't have. I see that as something almost priceless. I would see myself more like a mentor though rather than just a developer.

Answer 12

The day I stop coding, you can cover my bed with a shovel.

I can see myself trying out other types of careers, though. There's always a ton of interesting open source projects to contribute to, while I'm not coding for a living.

Answer 13

As you get older, you need to shoot for positions with less coding, such as team lead, project manager, Director, etc. I've hired and fired two elderly programmers because they couldn't adapt to OOP, which depressed me because I could see that happening to myself. However, we have another programmer who's over 40 and still going strong, because people can stay mentally agile for a long time.

It will get harder to find positions as you get older, though, because the employers think something is wrong if you haven't moved into management or design yet. They're unlikely to understand if you don't see your career as the most important part of your life.

Languages of the future will be more abstract, and in 30 years there'll be a flurry of new demand for coders of old languages to fix the "Year 2038 bug" (or Unix Millennium Problem). Future languages will also approach solutions from completely different perspectives in order to exploit the hardware of the era, much like how functional and declarative programming is coming into vogue today to deal with multi-core CPUs and parallel machine environments.

Answer 14

The world of software development will certainly change a lot in the next 20 years and I don't think it's possible to accurately predict what it will be like then. It may even be unrecognizable to someone from today. But there will always be a need for people who understand what's going on underneath the hood and I expect that, when the time comes, I'll be one of them. It's just a matter of continuing to learn and to grow as the world changes instead of becoming ossified and insisting that things should remain "the way they used to be".

Answer 15

I believe so. I started professionally 17 years ago. My first language was Clipper Summer '87. Then I moved to Delphi, Visual Basic, and then finally to Java. I've been happy in the Java world since 2000.

One thing I do see is that it will continue to be a competitive market with programmers coming from all over the world now. The best thing you can do is stay up-to-date with your skills so that you can remain market worthy.

Answer 16

Well, I'm already at more than 20 years of full-time employment as a programmer, so... Yes.

As others have mentioned, "keeping up" isn't really a problem, if you stay interested and active. I read an average of a half-dozen or so work-related books a year, I also read a lot online, and I bring new technologies in to work when they seem appropriate.

I already tried a spin on the management track, and it didn't really work out well for me. I'm probably going to be coding until I retire (and I'll retire only when I can't find work, I suppose). I've already got a side-business started, so at some point, I may give up "working for the man", but I'll still mostly be doing the same thing, regardless.

Answer 17

I don't know about you, but I always wanted to be a lumberjack!

Answer 18

20 years for me in the industry, and I've been keeping up with things and am still in demand. Though some languages and technologies I used back then are no longer in use, such as REXX and Paradox. My C language experience though is still useful.

Answer 19

We might not even have electricity in 20 years, let alone an economy to pay us to be coders. Peak Oil is a big problem.

Answer 20

In the future, I see myself owning a successful software company... @ that point i prolly won't have the time to do some coding... that's my ultimate goal. :)

Answer 21

Whatever happens in the programming-language/computer world, there will always be high demand for people that are able to make a set of business requerements into some sort of software application. That is really what programming is all about.

Answer 22

If you want to "develop software" (write code) for 20+ years, yet still enjoy the ability to advance your career (i.e. get promoted, earn more money, etc.), one of the tricks is to find a company that values technical skills at all levels. Generally these will be smaller firms, which also means you'll likely be working harder than you would at a larger firm.

I've been a full-time programmer for almost 15 years, and one of the things I enjoy most is that I'm constantly learning new things -- languages, techniques, architecture. And that's critical. One of the first things I learned on the job is that it doesn't matter as much what specific technologies you know, it matters how quickly you can pick up new things and how adaptable you are to a changing environment.

Nobody can predict the future, of course, but I assert that if you have the appetite to continue learning, and if you can find the right environment, you can still be a valuable programmer for as long as you wish.

Answer 23

I've been doing it for 23. I believe the future will continue as it has over the last 23 years. Some key points:

1. Constant change (mostly for the better)
2. Hardware will get faster, smaller, etc.
3. Tools will get better.
4. New methods of developing will be developed.
5. The industry will shift back and forth between mostly server based, mostly client based, client-server (endless loop).
6. The software layers will get deeper. The norm will be far removed from the hardware.

To me the big hurdle that will change everything is the user interface. When we can have heads up displays, wear our computers, and have some kind of cyborg link to them, that's when things will really go crazy.

The bottom line is that it is endless opportunities to learn and have fun.

Answer 24

There will likely be some new languages, development methodologies and IDEs between now and 30 years from now. Think about what it meant to write software even 10 years ago before .Net, ASP, and all this other fancy Web stuff... ;)

Some of us will keep up with some technologies. I believe very few people can really know all there is to know about a technology as things keep changing and some areas keep getting broader. For example, does anyone know all of the .Net Framework 3.5?

The experience's value will fluctuate depending on what you use and how it is still used that far into the future. I do think knowing design patterns and being able to apply them in different languages is a big plus on helping to keep a good programming edge in the future having gone from C++ to VBScript to C# in my 10 year experience so far.

Some companies will still seek developers to solve their business problems which may be as simple as looking up what is in the database at times. Somehow it doesn't surprise me that while this is a somewhat simple and mundane task, it has to be done repeatedly at many companies in different ways.

The position of being a developer and what that entails will morph some I think as it may be that investigators become more common to do the troubleshooting side of what some developers do. I think the better question is where up in the corporate ladder food chain do you think you'll be in 30 years? Still down as the developer, an architect, a manager, or something else?

JB

Answer 25

• Will we still be coding instructions in a certain language even in 30 years?

I think yeah but will be more and more the same, like Java and C# in the format.

• Will we be able to keep up with future technologies?

I think someday all those different framework will be naturally reduced...

• What will our experience be worth in 30 years?

Yeah for solving problem and for all the experience gained but no for the language specification we all learn :(

• Will companies still seek for developers like us in 30 years (we will be real "oldies" then)?

Why not if you keep up to date.

Answer 26

Not many people mentioned what I think is the biggest factor -- will there be much demand for and not highly elevated supply of developers in 1st world countries?

The supply and demand equation has changed radically over the past 10 years. Depending on what kind of laws are passed, treaties, immigration, etc., it could change radically in the future.

This, more than just anything else I think, will determine for many of us if we are still developers in the future. If it paid hald as much would you still do it? What about 2/3 less? Are there other careers you might consider if that happened? I believe real income (what you can buy) for developers has decreased substantially over the past 10 years.