Do We Still Need Programmers?

When reading descriptions of how software is produced, I often wonder what role programmers play. Programmers used to be the people who made software, but now a lot of other people are involved and claim credit for doing the work.

There has to be an "architect" who guides the overall structure of the system. Often architects are former programmers, but they are far too important to write any code anymore.

Then there is the "user experience" designer, who decides how the software should interact with its users. We used to call this "user interface design", but the UX people have redefined UI design to be the monkeywork of laying out controls and fields on forms. Programmers can't be trusted with any important design decisions.

There is the database administrator (DBA), who ensures that the programmers can't screw up the database schema.

There are testers who tell the programmers whether they have done their jobs well enough.

With all these other people making the important decisions, what does a programmer do? Apparently programmers are glorified typists who transcribe specifications written by architects and UX designers into code that is verified by testers.

Of course, that's not how things are.

While there are teams and organizations that operate as described above, a lot of software is created by solitary programmers. The boss says "We need feature X," and a programmer then designs the user experience, updates the database schema, implements the new functionality, tests it, creates some new icons in Photoshop, adds a couple of pages to the user manual, and deploys the new software to the customer.

Somehow a programmer is able to do this without help from all those people who are too important to write code.

Those other people aren't useless. Software is certainly better when a good architect and good DBA maintain its structure, and when a talented UX designer makes it easy to use, and when good testers find the problems. But software is still made by programmers. Those other people don't make software—they make wishes.

© 2003-2023 Kristopher Johnson