Howard Chu (hyc@symas.com) on 2/17/08 wrote:
---------------------------
>David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 2/15/08 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>Howard Chu (hyc@symas.com) on 2/15/08 wrote:
>>---------------------------

>>1. You're not an average programmer - average programmers are not as good at optimization and are probably lazier
>
>Those folks should find another career then, one where their aptitude will allow
>them to be excellent instead of just average.

Take that to its logical conclusion, and you eventually will become average and have to stop programming. Sometime after that, there will be nobody left. :)

But seriously, it is quite obvious that there is supply and demand at work, and you simply can't just brush that under the carpet without telling us how you plan to switch the world to controlled economies.

So given that we actually have a lot of crappy programs and not-so-good programmers around, what this actually means is that software is so important to people that they are willing to pay for a poor product. Pricing them out of the market by reducing the number of programmers will not help them. What will help them is increasing the quality and productivity of the supply of programmers.

Education is definitely one way to go. It is by no means the most cost effective or the only way to go. So increasing the quality and/or quantity of the poor and average programmers output (by means other than education) definitely has value.