Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype - <AUTHOR> https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/glut-in-demand-for-science-graduates-challenges-stem-hype-20190327-p517zj.html <comment><USER2> As someone else said below, treating STEM as one category is absurb and lumps together way too many different majors and careers (that have drastically varying levels of attractiveness and compensation growth).

Majors like biology and chemistry have fairly terrible prospects with just a BS degree, but CS and the engineering majors are still quite good. Physics and math are more iffy, but if you know what you're doing and pick up some employable skills on the side, then those majors will at least get you into interviews for good jobs.

There's also the question of what "not enough jobs" means. There are definitely struggling CS majors, but I think that a statement about there not being enough jobs needs to be looked at in a relative way - that is, one needs to consider what the alternative options are and whether those alternatives have better prospects. Many careers have been on the decline, and it's difficult to really identify career paths that are significantly better than computer science / software engineering (at least, at the undergraduate level). Even if we compared careers that required graduate school, the only paths that one could plausibly argue are significantly better than tech are medicine, law, and business (in my opinion). Those three careers all come with their own serious tradeoffs and downsides.

If anyone has information on what career paths are significantly better than CS / engineering, I'd be interested to hear your opinion. Right now, I'm unfortunately not seeing significantly better alternatives.

<comment><USER3> I think the hype is really, really dangerous. I work as an external examiner for CS students at an academy and bachelor level. 10 years ago, maybe 20 students would finish from a single school, in 2019 that number is in the several hundreds some places thousands. If I look at my average grading over the years, there is a clear trend too. People are either really good or really bad, where 10 years ago it was far more spread out, and a lot more people were "average". It's anecdotal but I think it's because hype has pushed too many people into CS.

There will always be a need for excellent CS students, preferable with candidate or masters, just like there will always be a need for excellent biologists or great escimologists. I don't think there will always be a need for below average CS students, especially not at the rate of which we're producing them right now, again thanks to the hype.

One of the reasons I say this is because of automation. If you look at operations, the cloud has really killed a lot of jobs in enterprise IT departments, because it's so much easier to operate your stuff in AWS or Azure than when you had to have your own infrastructure. Sure there are still operations people around, but notice how they are the best operations guys not the averages, because the people who were average 10 years ago are unemployed today.

It'll be the same for development. We already see bits of it, at least if you've been around for a while. 19 years ago we build our first web based enterprise tool to handle employee vacation, sick leave and tax-refund on corporate related driving. It was a massive JSP undertaking that took 20 guys and 6 months. In 2017 it was replaced by a modern web tool build in .NET framework web-app and Angular, it took an intern three weeks to do it.

If you look at what areas are becoming useful, it's not really CS. Sure you'll be able to use some CS students for ML, but you'd rather have a mathematician or a statistician who can code. Sure you can use some CS students for robotics, but you'd rather have an electrical engineer.

I'm Danish, our jobmarket is different, but we too hype STEM and especially CS, but the truth is, that what we're really going to need is electricians, pumblers and other craftsme because every young person wants to learn to code.

<comment><USER4> One thing that had happened, especially in SE Asia, is the wage has been driven down outside of FAANG. Many non-tech people view development as plumbing, which it kind of is, but at least plumbers are certified which guarantees a minimum level of competency. Buyers don't view development work in terms of value delivered but only in terms of price. This destroys the middle market for good but not industry leading devs.

<comment><USER5> This is not limited to SE Asia. Outsourcing, rather over-simplified and limited definitions of cost, buyer's market for companies (and no, the bigger players don't care for real talent at large) drive this in other environments too. I am from Germany and in this market for 20 years as a freelancer/contractor/consultant. Personally - having a major in mathematics and relevant project experience - I have no significant problems. But 'dev- only' people certainly face the mass market effects.

<comment><USER6> Also from germany. CS degree = 75% mathematics + 5% coding + 20% other theory. Fresh out of university i hardly could write code at all and had zero experience with databases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Working as staff at a major university, I get to interact with a lot of students in biology and often hear back from them once they graduate. At least for biology, the job prospects are not great. With luck, you may make a living wage and have a full time job with job security by the time you reach middle age, but there are so many students that graduate and end up working at Whole Foods, or waitressing at the Cheesecake Factory, or being a personal fitness instructor at a private club. Those are all jobs recent _MS degree_ graduates from my institution are currently working while they wait for something better to come along. Sometimes something better doesn't come along.

Of course, the situation isn't always that bad -- students graduate and can do quite well for themselves, but there is no guarantee of a good job if you graduate with a BS or MS in biology, and that is a little different from graduating with a degree in math or CS. At least, that's what it looks like from my vantage point.

<comment><USER8> > Sometimes something better doesn't come along.

Things in life don't just "come along." Maybe this is their perspective, but they probably didn't try hard enough.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, "just try harder" isn't always the solution to this problem. Sometimes it's better to fail, catch your breath, and then select a different path.

<comment><USER9> Honestly selecting a different path sounds like it could fall under the rubric of "trying harder", or at least, trying smarter.

<comment><USER10> There's a big random factor too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can be a "STEM graduate" but if you insist on trying to get a job doing basic scientific research, you're probably not going to find interesting well paid work. If you do an engineering degree and get a job building mining equipment, you're going to do fine. The job market doesn't care about your aspirations, it cares about how useful your skills are in solving a company's problems.

<comment> barry-cotter If you want a job doing basic scientific research the entry level qualification is a doctorate. That's certainly true in universities and it's equally true in biology and chemistry though that's probably not enough. You almost certainly need a post doc or two. Physicists have enough outside options that if they want to get out the post doc is unnecessary but getting a doctorate is a terrible financial decision. That's what happens when the government does a careful study of how to reduce the prices of highly skilled scientific labour and then follows the recommendations.

> Government and Universities Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists

> During the late 1990s I became convinced that in order to orchestrate lower > wages for scientists, there would have to have been a competent economic > study done to guide the curious policy choices that had resulted in the > flooded market for STEM PhDs. For this theory to be correct, the private > economic study would have had to have been done studying both supply and > demand so that the demand piece could later be removed, resulting in the > bizarre 'supply only' demographic studies released to the public. Through a > bit of economic detective work, I began a painstaking search of the > literature and discovered just such a study immediately preceded the release > of the foolish demography studies that provided the public justification for > the Immigration Act of 1990. This needle was located in the haystack of > documents the NSF was forced to turn over when the House investigated the > NSF for faking alarms about a shortfall.

[https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why- gove...](https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government- universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech- workers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The examples in the article are:

* "X, 23, from Sydney's inner west graduated with a bachelor of creative arts in film and television production from a private college in 2016. She wants to be a film director and actor."

* "Y, 23, studied journalism at the University of Wollongong and was warned it would be tough to get a job."

* "Z graduated with a degree in social research and policy from the University of NSW in last year said it took her a year to find a project management job."

None of these sound like STEM to me?

<comment><USER13> That's a different topic, as signalled by the words "Meanwhile, a new study has found ..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the real reason why women are graduating in computer science in much smaller numbers than when I was in school, when the number was 30%. Programming, like engineering and science, has turned out to be just not a good long-term career prospect for most people.

Whenever demand softens, which it does every few years, women and minorities take the brunt. Once you have been out for even three years it is very hard to break in again.

Part of the problem is that when employers don't feel like paying a living wage, they easily persuade government to import foreign help, in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. The companies pretend that this doesn't depress salaries, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Furthermore, they have arranged not to be obliged to pay overtime, and then they demand overtime work on a routine basis. I have never seen such an employer pay engineers overtime, under any circumstance. Sometimes there are "bonuses" that are a tiny fraction of what overtime would cost them.

The only plausible solution to this problem will be for engineers and programmers to unionize, and start cultivating representation in legislatures. We are handicapped by myths about self-reliant cowboy engineers who don't need to join together.

<comment><USER15> I'm surprised. Out of all of the STEM degrees, I'd have thought CS was the most useful for guaranteeing a highly secure, well-paid job out of college.

<comment><USER16> Are you kidding? We have people flooding into CS jobs from ALL other fields, and ALL other countries, because, "If I don't make it in XyZ I can always get a job programming!", at Google I sat next to a math PhD, an EE, and a Music Major! What do you think happens when every one uses your major as their backup plan?

<comment><USER17> Software engineering is not a "CS job". Computer science is a research field that has very little to do with the workaday business of creating good reliable software.

Developers would do well to realize that they're skilled labor, not academics or superstar artists, and start behaving accordingly.

<comment><USER18> I regularly have to design complex systems and also do correctness proofs for isolated functions.

But I see the error in my ways and humbly realize that I'm just "skilled labor".

Really, if you compare the level of thinking of an average developer to an average academic, the academic often has nothing but his degree.

The level of parroting and complete lack of critical thinking is widespread among academics.

<comment><USER19> Not strictly related to programming, but in general, most engineers don't use the stuff that they learned in college. If it's maybe 20% of the work, it will go to 20% of the workers, rather than each worker doing it 20% of the time. As a result, engineers quickly differentiate and stratify in the workplace.

You may be one of the 20% in your particular area of interest. If you're doing the kind of work that most engineers tend to avoid, you will never be unemployed. ;-)

<comment><USER14> I got a degree in EE, but spent a year in CS (don't ask). Some years back I totted up what have used since graduation that I actually learned in class. I didn't get a CS degree because it is too easy -- you just read the book. So I didn't learn any CS there, I had already read the book.

The only thing I have used since graduation, for work, that I actually studied for a class was big-O notation and reasoning.

But! Every week, in every engineering class, they assigned problem sets. Every week I read them through and knew, with certainty, there was no way I could do them. Then, every week I turned them in, completed correctly.

So that was what I really learned in school: that I have no real sense of what I can learn to do, and do. Since then, I have just done things, without worrying about whether I was really capable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> recent STEM hype aside, it has historically been very challenging to find work as a "straight" biologist, especially with only a BS, and if you can it's probably going to be scut-level underpaid lab or field work.

Part of the reason I think STEM is horseshit is that it is so broadly defined as to be without meaning. You just can't reasonably talk about something as one labor market if it includes zookeepers, pharmaceutical chemists, medical doctors, facebook engineers, economists, and advertiser...er, data scientists.

<comment><USER21> The difference between science and engineering (education-wise) is that an engineering degree is strictly defined with regards to subjects learned, with little choice of electives by the student: everybody is learning the same thing.

With science (and most other degrees) the student can pick and choose their topics.

<comment><USER14> That is just entirely false.

Electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers have quite different courseloads. Even within electrical engineering, semiconductor physics, radio frequency electronics, electromotion, and power systems are all completely different from computer architecture and one another. That's without delving into specialties in each.

<comment><USER22> The person you're replying to never suggested that there weren't differences between the engineering degrees' course loads. I believe you may have missed their point completely.

<comment><USER14> Are you suggesting that engineering students have no choice about which areas to study, just because they have labels? Many study more than one, and take multiple degrees. I knew one who got seven bachelor's degrees in various engineering and science fields.

<comment><USER21> I'm saying that if you did a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) you've done EXACTLY the same course material as every other student in that course, even across different universities.

An employer getting an Engineering graduate knows exactly what they are getting.

<comment><USER23> > I'm saying that if you did a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) you've > done EXACTLY the same course material as every other student in that course, > even across different universities.

While engineering (including EE) programs tend to have less flexibility within schools, and probably also between them, than other fields, it is by know means zero difference in classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I never get this notion of "jobs" being a bottleneck that's "created" by employers and how there are "not enough jobs" around.

The real bottleneck are problems that can be solved in a profitable manner. And those are almost endless.

So instead of waiting for someone to match your skills to a problem, just go and find a problem yourself :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is just basic systems thinking (I am re-reading "the Goal" sorry ...)

We know overall we need more STEM based jobs because that drives innovation and invention and wealth.

So we educate people in STEM.

But when they arrive, we have failed to arrange incentives to grow new industries or expand use of STEM in current ones.

It's a bit like taking 100 newly graduated astronomers to the observatory, and when they say sorry our last telescope is broke, just telling the 100 go plough fields, we are pretty sure the sun just goes round the earth once a year. We'll be fine.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think its been this way for a while? At least since the Great Recession imo. I have friends who have amazing credentials (talking like compsci and physics phds from places like caltech and cmu) and very few of them are employed in their field. Some of them didn't even do anything and are basically NEETs who play video games all day.

It's pretty clear the actual value and potential of these degrees aren't being honestly advertised. The "STEM" hype as mentioned here certainly doesn't help the situation. It is a lot of time and money and effort thrown away for a lot of people and it's heartbreaking.

<comment><USER27> If they want jobs as a developer there are plenty. If they see NEETs that just play video games all day it's probably their own lifestyle choices that are at fault

<comment><USER28> As a physicist it's easier to get into the tech field than as a life scientist. Just saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The default algorithm for most people is:

      1. Get educated
      2. Find a job

Step 1 currently does pretty much nothing to help you transition to step 2. Sure, there are career networking events for juniors and seniors in college, but they are very superficial. It seems like colleges are producing unfinished products -- students who know a lot about theoretical concepts and not that much about applications. Maybe more colleges should try and obtain a better product-market fit by requiring vocational training for at least a semester.

<comment><USER29> I dunno, on the other hand, I got a B.S. in Ecology and have about 5 years of experience doing field work, long term monitoring, and data analysis and report writing on said research. Ostensibly that should be plenty of experience to prove I know my field and can learn new methods and skills related to it. Despite that I can't seem to find anything that isn't more seasonal work below my worth now or wanting a Masters degree even though I have plenty of real-world experience.

I agree that there's some serious gap between steps 1 and 2, but I did alright in finding internships and experience and still can't find squat.I admit I knew going into my undergrad that a Masters would be needed to find a /good/ job, but I didn't think I'd need one to find any job at all. I'm sure there are a multitude of reasons to explain it, but this job market blows. I never want to hear someone tell me they can't find good employees or fill positions fast enough when I apply to five or six jobs at a time every week and don't even get a rejection email from half of them, let alone an interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The same thing happened with lawyers around 5-10 years ago. It's almost like having everyone jump into the same market at the same time causes the market to change...

<comment><USER31> An analysis of this very thing, from 6 years ago: [http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/bimodal-lawyers-how- ext...](http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/bimodal-lawyers-how-extreme- competition-breeds-extreme-inequality/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the age-old academic scam by greedy professors who want more graduate students! manufacture a fake scientific staffing crisis to pump up the funding for stem research grants and teaching and faculty and screw a whole generation of young people with fake vaporware jobs! NSF promoted the same bullshit lies in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond!

<comment><USER14> Professors don't have that much influence.

Corporations are driving, for obvious reasons. More supply, cheaper wages, more profits.

<comment><USER16> As an ex-professor myself, do you understand how the world works? NSF is run by high ranking(in the pyramid scheme) professors. Your tenure depends on raising an army of researchers so you lie about job prospects, lie about research potential outcomes and importance, over-drsmatize the importance of your work, and some even lie in their publications! This is the path to success.

The career path at MIT is work 20 years at MIT then go to a US government funding agency (DARPA, NSF, ONR, etc.) to raise even more money for MIT. These places are staffed 100% by ex-professors (and a few token PhDs who succeeded in industry, to provide political legitimacy "cover".)

<comment><USER32> Would this explain why MIT has an absurd clawback rate for overhead from NSF GRFs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is about Australia, which is not like our average developed country with no primary ressources. When you have one sector in your economy producing most of the export, you have a lot of trouble to have a high level of good job in another sector to export. Your currency exchange rate and cost of life is being driven by your main exportation. Countries rich in oil or other primary resources are like that.

</comment><comment><USER34> As a developer in Australia, this is true... there are literally no jobs for people doing a science degree. Even doing a CS degree can be pretty shaky - most businesses/companies here are just looking to get a basic app out, and something like Machine Learning / AI is just not required as of yet. That's why I'm looking to move to the US for better opportunities...

<comment><USER35> As I approach my 30's, I'm seriously considering a roadmap to getting out. This, along with recent legislation makes me very concerned about my future prospects.

<comment><USER34> Just out of curiosity, why not move to the US now? I know a ton of friends that went over once they did their Bachelors.

<comment><USER35> Don't really like the way the US has conducted themselves, particularly with healthcare, and I have a family which makes things more complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This article is confusing overall - it talks about STEM in the headline, then cites a general chart by Grattan Institute (a policy think tank) similar to another recent piece by Grattan's Andrew Norton (quoted in the SMH piece): [https://grattan.edu.au/news/graduate-employment-is-up-but- fi...](https://grattan.edu.au/news/graduate-employment-is-up-but-finding-a- job-can-still-take-a-while/) .

Not familiar with Australia, but there's also recent articles of it being in per-capita recession. (see [https://www.smh.com.au/business/the- economy/australia-falls-...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/the- economy/australia-falls-into-per-capita-recession-as-growth- tumbles-20190306-p5122r.html) )

</comment><comment><USER37> The article starts with a discussion about science graduates, but it's primarily about the weak job market for college graduates in general.

Unfortunately, college degrees are not a sure fire way to get hired in today's economy, but they are essentially needed, unless you plan on going into some trade.

<comment><USER38> >but they are essentially needed

Kind of. College degrees replaced high school degrees as a baseline for general knowledge. It used to be the case that a high school degree meant you had some general knowledge of math, history, geography etc., with an above average level of literacy and a reasonable level of intelligence. High school degrees do not mean any of those things anymore. Many kids who graduate with a high school degree are functionally illiterate (1 in 5 graduates).

</comment></comment><comment> ui-explorer12 Shouldn't STEM (and to a greater extent STEAM) refer to degrees that combine the component areas into a program and not a degree that is solely a single component?

Yes, I understand you do very little Chemistry or Physics in a Comp Sci program, but your fundamental building blocks are almost entirely pure Chem and Physics, even more so in engineering.

I mean, ultimately the response really should be:

1\. The overall macro measures still support success rates of STEM trumping other areas of study,

2\. All hype is not created equal; even within Comp Sci or Engineering there are winners and losers.

3\. Use general trends and measures to guide your overall strategy, not set specific tactics

</comment><comment><USER39> The title is a bit confusing as the article is about a glut in supply of science graduates and a dearth in job opportunities (in Australia at least), also the anecdote about the journalism student was not germane at all.

I tried finding info on job opportunities but came up short - could only find data on worldwide STEM graduates [https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the- co...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-countries- with-the-most-stem-graduates-infographic/#5791cd1a268a) and STEM job info about the USA: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/education/edlife/stem- job...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/education/edlife/stem-jobs- industry-careers.html) TLDR - vast majority of STEM jobs in USA are computer related and India/China/USA far outstrip other countries in producing STEM graduates. Whoever advised those Australian students to get non computer related degrees did them a disservice, if they did not forewarn them of the job market.

</comment><comment><USER40> Am I missing something or does the word "Glut" in the title here mean the opposite of what the article describes?

<comment><USER41> The title at smh.com.au is "Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype" and the word "glut" doesn't exist on the page.

OTOH, the URL slug is 'glut-in-demand-for-science-graduates-challenges-stem- hype-20190327-p517zj'.

This suggests that in the intervening 10 or so minutes since the story was submitted to HN, someone in Australia noticed and fixed the problem in the title.</comment></comment>


Marc Andreessen on Why Software is Eating the World - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html <comment><USER2> You can pick at Marc's words as much as you like, but having heard his visions back in '95 when Netscape was big, he's a big picture guy and is seeing the forest for the trees.

Consider the following:

\- In this decade and the last, software engineer consistently ranks in the top ten best jobs

\- During the financial crash, software engineers enjoyed the least turmoil and the quickest recovery compared to almost all other sectors

\- Software is mission critical to almost every business in the world now, regardless of sector

\- Our jobs tend to have the highest pay among the majority of jobs (again, top ten)

I'm with Marc. I'll double down on software right now...it's not going away.

<comment><USER3> The argument of "mission critical" was once given for trains and planes and each had their bubble.

It was clear that the technology itself would succeed. This was the "core of truth" at the heart of each bubble.

The mistake was taking this to mean that one should invest in businesses pursuing those technologies.

In fact, the thing to do would have been to supply those industries, see general stores and the gold rush.

<comment><USER3> In other words, anyone can see that software is a winner.

What's not easy, and perhaps harder now than for other industries (with less spotlight on them), is to predict who the winners will be, and when they will win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is actually one of the things we consciously look for: companies that are turning businesses that didn't use to be software businesses into software businesses.

<comment><USER5> A funny anecdote from a customer of mine, make of it what you will:

They're in an absurdly low-tech niche. I'm going to call it gardening. Their business model since the dawn of time has been "You call us up, we send a van of guys to your house, they uses _scissors_ to trim your bushes."

Five years ago they got a brochureware website, but they were still doing everything the same way: phone, van, guys, scissors.

Then came Groupon, of all things. See, their number one problem was getting more bushes to trim. Groupon solved that very efficiently, but now they had a different problem: paper no longer scaled sufficiently to schedule everybody. So they started tracking their phoned-in appointments in (I think) Google Calendar.

This pretty much opened the floodgates. They now use one of the help desk SaaSes because the email volume was getting too big and the business owner and office manager were having communication issues. Both of them bought iPhones so that they could run the business from the road, because the owner of a small gardening firm still needs to use scissors on occasion. They bought Appointment Reminder to free the office manager from X00 phone calls per month, so she can spend the time taking bookings and managing their (packed- to-capacity-and-beyond) schedule again. Things are booming.

They're now a software, van, guys, scissors business... and the owner is a wee bit weirded out by it.

<comment><USER6> How are they a software business? They are not developing software just consuming it. Is not much different than using a cellphone. You wouldn't call them a technology company because of that.

<comment><USER7> They are clearly on the track to developing their own software; if they don't, a similar business in the same situation will.

How long before they want to book orders via website? Unless there is an OpenTable for gardeners I am unaware of, that will require some custom code.

How long before they want to join their calendar and help desk software? How long before they want email logs integrated into the help desk? Those are custom software opportunities.

One of the most interesting things happening in software right now is how easy it has become to write just a little bit of it. The idea of a gardener developing, or directing the development of, custom code would have been laughable 20 years ago. With PHP and MySQL and ubiquitous cheap web/app hosts and proliferating web APIs, it's become increasingly common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As they say in the financial world, "He's talking his book."

That said, much of what he says is spot on. Software is creeping into everything. Education seems obvious. Health Care will be more difficult. A lot of the change will happen in the US.

If we can't invest money, we still can invest our careers.

<comment><USER9> > Health Care will be more difficult

To implement Health Care is an immense systems integration problem.

Having done some system integration work on a much smaller scale, it seems to me that in the US, more universal health care is an effective subsidy of IT for years. I think we can't really expect a working universal health care system for years.

Using Britain as a possible analogy, building the actual master universal health care system to handle billing and invoices and patient care will be a technical and political challenge that will suck resources from patient care to IT [1].

Integration is a difficult problem and with 452 HMOs in the US - even though some will be inevitably consolidated - there will be plenty of IT work [2].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service_(Englan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service_\(England\))

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health>

[http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publicatio...](http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_111591)

[2] [http://www.statehealthfacts.org/profileind.jsp?ind=347&c...](http://www.statehealthfacts.org/profileind.jsp?ind=347&cat=7&rgn=1)

<comment><USER10> Sorry to "talk my book" as well - our start-up provides a personal health records system that is connecting the UK's providers where the government's master system approach has failed - but investing in IT does not suck resources from patient care, it frees them up. I noticed this as a physician having to walk around the hospital to deliver pieces of paper. So I wrote software for Palm Pilots with a peer-to-peer encrypted handover system, gave it away, and convinced each of my colleagues to buy a Palm themselves. Each of instantly saved time they could spend on patient care, and the quality and accuracy of our handovers increased.

The problem of health care integration is not just solvable, it is already being solved (we are playing our part) but many in the mainstream are still expecting a big system approach and thus missing the small pieces, loosely joined approach that allowed the internet to scale.

<comment><USER11> I think he means suck resources more in a financial way, the money to build a big all encompassing system will have to come from somewhere and it will result in less money for patient care in the short term. Of course if the system was actually built and working it would then free up resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "And, perhaps most telling, you can't have a bubble when people are constantly screaming "Bubble!""

Oh, I bet you can.

<comment><USER13> The housing bubble seems to be a pretty good counterexample. Plenty of people were saying that it was a bubble, while others were furiously flipping properties.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. It's just like the interviews with some of Bernie Madoff's clients. They knew that he had to be doing something not quite legit to be getting the returns that he was getting, but they all figured that they could make some money off of it.

Everyone sees a chance to make some money and convinces themselves that they will get out before the crash so that they won't be the last one holding the bag.

The smart ones realize that it's a bubble, and the dumb ones don't. It's just that the people that know it's a bubble convince themselves that that knowledge shields them from getting burned because they know more than the other guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming."

I can't wait for the revolution to come to the control and automation industry. I can see the heritage and legacy of the (software) tools I have to use, and unfortunately they aren't so old as to have a unix heritage but to have been born in the windows 95 era.

Probably I just need to pony up and get the real good high end shit, but the automation industry is ripe for disruption like health care too. the problem is the market is small and the stakes are high, so we end with old, expensive, tried, true, ancient solutions.

/rant

<comment><USER16> I hear ya. I think people have the idea that automation and controls are high tech. In reality, most of the stuff I've seen is more like 1970s state-of-the- art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While I don't really agree with Marc's take on what's going on with current tech valuations, he hit on one extremely important point, and about it he is spot-on.

There is a major crisis coming in this country if the gap in skills and quality education continues to widen. Too many manufacturing jobs are moving overseas while high-tech jobs are expanding at unforeseen rates. I worry a lot about what's going to happen, and as controversial as it may sound, I think we may see a day in the not-too-distant future where the minimum wage is done away with.

As for Marc's commentary, it seems to me that every significant example he cited was related to content disruption (communications, entertainment, etc.). So I think a more accurate theme would have been "Why Software is Eating the Entertainment Industry."

</comment><comment><USER18> >And, perhaps most telling, you can't have a bubble when people are constantly screaming "Bubble!"

Not true. People were conscious, as early as 1997 that the dot-com bubble was just that. It didn't stop an unsustainable rise in valuations.

<comment><USER19> Even more so, it was pretty much common knowledge at the time. It was just that there was lots of money to be made, and people always want to believe they won't be the ones to lose out in the pyramid scheme.

Sure, the speed and the impact of the bubble bursting was a bit of a shock, but the bubble itself was pretty obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The cat is out of the bag! What the technologists have known all along! The market is huge, and mushrooming. Only the largest tech companies can keep pace with the growth, and there is still a-plenty for today's startups. Get yours today. Seriously!

Even already-connected markets, like the USA and Europe, will mature impressively as more people get better at using an improving internet. And by the time the entire living world is connected, birth rates alone will sustain satisfiable market growth.

How's that for a pitch?

</comment><comment><USER21> It's not just about who will build the software, it's about who will use the software.

The way I see it, we're on the edge of going post-material. The trend is that the proportion of the population involved in the manufacture and distribution of physical goods is dropping. Follow that trend for a century, and you get a society where most people's jobs involve only virtual goods (although many of those goods will be turned physical by 3d printers or large bespoke manufacturing companies). Apple and google are the vanguard of the all-digital companies (apple isn't in the business of making stuff, only designing it). This means the majority of people will be making their money producing digital content, and spending it purchasing digital content. Already a sizeable portion of our income is spent on content (tv, dvd, games, books, magazines, ...). I see no reason why that trend shouldn't continue until we have a digital post-material economy.

And if we will have a digital economy, that means most people will be software users, producing content for others to buy. We're not just going to have to train the people that will make the software, but also the people that will use the software. I think the actual production of software will remain a small share of the economy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Analogies limp:

A few centuries ago, someone may well have remarked that many of the best businesses in many industries, were moving into office buildings, an invention that was only a few decades old at the time, and that office buildings were eating the world.

1\. They would have been right.

2\. Moving into an office building would mean that a business was keeping up, not that it was necessarily a good business with respect to other businesses.

3\. It would have been a good time to be building office buildings.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Today's leading real-world retailer, Wal-Mart, uses software to power its > logistics and distribution capabilities, which it has used to crush its > competition.

Wait... others _don't_?

> Likewise for FedEx, which is best thought of as a software network that > happens to have trucks, planes and distribution hubs attached.

Again... do their competitors really not? How can they get anything done?

<comment><USER23> He uses many examples to illustrate (belabor?) the simple point that businesses leverage technology for productivity gains. This has always been true.

25 years ago i.e. a _quarter century_ similar points could have been made-- writers/authors/journalists are now using word processors instead of typewriters, accountants are now using spreadsheets instead of written ledgers, grocery stores now have automated UPC scanners instead of relying on cashiers to read price stickers, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The days when a car aficionado could repair his or her own car are long > past, due primarily to the high software content.

More likely, it's because all said software is proprietary. If people got the source code to their cars' computers, you'd see a lot more people repairing their cars (and a lot more interest in automobiles in the current generation, leading to real, open innovation in the space).

It's interesting to consider how cars went from being something anybody could hack on, to something that only a few "qualified" people are now able to service. I don't expect the same thing will happen with software (in other words, I don't think "trusted computing" will ever become the norm), but we must be sure that it never does if we want innovation to continue in the software space.

</comment><comment><USER25> And herein lies the problem with patent reform.

The patent system is horribly broken, no doubt. But now that everything -- and I mean everything -- is turning into software, what does that mean for patents?

The capitalist answer is that we should let ideas freely grow and fight each other in the marketplace, but _having_ an idea and _selling_ an idea are two completely different skills. We will reward the salespeople, marketers, and business creators at the expense of the ideas people.

Perhaps that is what we want. Perhaps all ideas, not just startup business ideas, will become worthless. Execution will be the only thing that matters. If so, that's going to have some major impacts in the rest of society. It'll be interesting to watch this play out.

<comment><USER26> You are assuming that the patent system as it stands rewards people who have ideas (more than the alternative of having no patents at all would).

I think there is a good chance that this is not true at all.

Some possibilities:

Maybe the system rewards people with the best lawyers? Perhaps the system rewards people who are more worried at shooting the other runners instead of running as fast as he possibly can? It could also be that it rewards large companies (since worrying about patents is mostly outside the radar of small companies), making good people want to join them?

Ideas will not ever become worthless, if only because often it takes a certain mindset to extract value out of them.

<comment><USER25> _You are assuming that the patent system as it stands rewards people who have ideas_

Sorry, I should have been clearer: I am describing the _purpose_ of the patent system, not the current application of the patent system. As I said, the actual application of the patent system is horribly broken. My question was whether or not the underlying assumptions that created the patent system in the first place will still be valid or not once everything becomes bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As someone who has been involved in software for a long time (since I was a kid), of course I love to read news like this.

Having said that, I noticed that in almost all Hollywood futuristic-theme movies, software (or any ground-breaking inventions that usually found with the help more advanced software/hardware) tend to cause problems that forces humans to destroy them and put humans back to the world pre-software.

I hope that would never happen but looking at the trend that whatever Hollywood producers imagine usually come true (even though it may take 5-10 years since the movie is out) in real life makes me scared sometime when I read news like this.

<comment><USER14> Hollywood (media in general) can create self-fulfilling prophesies, but that doesn't necessarily mean things are set in stone:

1) Where is my flying car? Where is my personal jet pack? Where is my faster than light travel? Where is my single world government? What about space elevators? Why are we still eating food and not geometric shapes in primary/secondary colors (ala Star Trek's 'food cubes')?

2) People try to emulate the cool things that they see movies and read in books. Creating software that takes us to a post-apocalyptic world isn't 'cool.' People want to create light sabers, phasers, and/or transporters. People don't want to create master control programs that will manage the population.

3) There are many more things to be afraid of. We have nuclear arsenals that can wipe all of humanity off the face of the planet. We are so dependent on industrialized agriculture and mechanized supply lines, that we would be totally and royally screwed were they to be disrupted for a significant amount of time (e.g. a super-volcano goes off and we can no longer use most of a continent for farming).

<comment><USER27> No it does not mean things are set in stone.

Personal jet pack is here albeit still in its infancy. I'm quite sure people are researching into ways to make car flies. I don't think you can have time- travel (hence no faster-than-light-travel either). Of course there are "impossible" Hollywood tricks and of course some of the things would take longer to be created.

Sometime people invent something for a specific goal but ended up as something else. Nobody plans to create post-apocalyptic world. But if the invention evolves or ended up as a base to create something else, who knows what it'll turn out to be?

Take plastic as an example of that.

Yes, I do aware of the other things to be afraid of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This seems inevitable, and positive. There are some friends of mine who dislike the resulting job shedding and concentration of wealth; I am not quite sure how that will shake out.

It will be interesting to see if today's 'software' disruptors will themselves disrupted by software. Today's revolution seems to me, a changing of the guard from the massive inefficient people-driven gatekeeper to the massive and lean software-driven gatekeeper. I wonder if the evolution of this will lead to decentralization and eventual diminution of today's usurpers?

<comment><USER14> If things did lead to decentralization, I would celebrate such a thing. In general, decentralization wouldn't necessarily be the death of the software industry, just of centralized gatekeepers in specific areas. Things like Big Data(tm) (gathering and analysis) would be hard to decentralize.

<comment><USER3> Big data is exactly the kind of thing to decentralize: see p2p.

<comment><USER14> Someone has to gather all of the data into one place and crunch numbers on it to make it useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In music its all software now, mixers, sequencers, synths are all software based. Djs use software like tracktor or serato to mix their mp3s.

</comment><comment><USER30> An interesting article, however the trend described might be a superficial one. Replace "software" with "paper" and the same arguments could be made for the economy 100 years or more ago. That indicates that the real driving force is something more fundamental (productivity is mentioned several times here) that could result in software being replaced with something better.

<comment><USER31> I've heard this argument before, but I'm not convinced by it. There's a vast difference between paper and software. Paper is bounded - it's just paper. Yes you use it to organize matters more efficiently (although the Babylonians were just fine - thank you - using their stone plates 4000 years ago), but there it ends.

Software's biggest difference from _everything_ else is its being fully meta. It keeps growing. Abstractions keeps being added. Compare software in the 60s and today - some of us earn our bread by writing code for tools that other people use to create other tools, that IT companies use to provide computing to traditional businesses. And another level of abstraction isn't far away - when it's needed, it can be added.

I don't know of any field of human knowledge similar to this aspect, which is why software is here to stay.

Asimov had this story about all jobs being pre-assigned according to genetic abilities. Just one job wasn't pre-assigned, and that was allocating and assigning jobs (I may be badly mis-remembering... sorry...). Software is this job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It is amazing to see how far we have come. I'm so glad that I picked the right industry to get into. The world changed all around us, and we were a part of it.

My only fear is that this will flood the market with crapy developers. That is how this change WILL be like the DOT COM boom.

<comment><USER12> I'm going to assume you don't do hiring at your company, then. Because the market is already flooded with crappy developers. The resumes that come in are often amazingly bad. Of those that pass that check, most of them can't even talk the talk. And fewer still can actually code anything worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "We believe that many of the prominent new Internet companies are building real, high-growth, high-margin, highly defensible businesses."

What about profit? Doesn't ignoring profit (the article only mentions it in the context of Apple despite name dropping some other wildly unprofitable businesses) sort of suggest that maybe we are in fact making at least some of the same mistakes as the last bubble?

"Today's largest video service by number of subscribers is a software company: Netflix"

Netflix certainly uses a lot of software, but I think it is slightly disingenuous to paint them as a software company.

<comment><USER34> The "high margin" part of the quoted sentence accounts for profit (after all margin is revenue - cost, roughly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Something I noticed: he did not use Facebook as an example, while talking about Google, Linkedin, Zynga, Apple, Amazon.

Is there a reason?

<comment><USER17> He mentioned it in the beginning with Twitter and Foursquare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Technology is just mimicking the rest of the economy in developed countries by moving to selling services rather than selling stuff.

</comment><comment><USER37> Politicians support software only if it furthers the interests of others to ultimately serve their own self-interest.

</comment><comment><USER38> Add to these the recent announcement of Foxconn to install 1000000 robots. Now software will even be eating up sweatshops. Unfortunately, the rest of the economy is slow to catch up with these changes, in both the developing and (in a smaller degree) in the developed world. For the developing world this means a slump in growth until a more educated generation grows up, for the developed world, it means slow job creation. It's not a fault of technology; governments should have seen this coming decades ago. It's a shame that still, in many countries, programming is not required in primary or secondary education.

Take a moment to brag and enjoy the glory. Marc is a hero and this is an inspiring piece. Now back to work...

</comment><comment><USER39> He omitted a bigger, more central point:

The main drive in the economy is more productivity; the main approach there is more automation; the main approach there is computer hardware driven by software.

Next, the main point about software is that it be 'smart' enough to give especially valuable output. For that the main tool is math.

</comment><comment><USER40> Well i guess this means that emotionally warped hypergeeks will truly inherit the Means of Production and run your life like a program---from cradle to grave. Fuck Marx and Engels, we have Andreesseeeeen and Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER41> yes...we emotionally warped hypergeeks have something tht we can offer people....their own time...while the others seem to be making money through bullshit sales pitches!!</comment></comment>


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Len/Mathematics: A computational algebra system in Smalltalk - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/len/Mathematics <comment><USER2> An interesting "alternate universe", that Smalltalk/Squeak/Cuis is... Open, highly discoverable. Which, in theory, makes it accessible for beginners and those who are not programmers; for kids, who are usually very good at discovering things. Thinking exclusively in terms of "objects" helps: objects are things that (again, in theory) immediately avail themselves to our perception via our senses as well as intuition. Yet, abstract thought is by no means excluded or even hindered - an object's nature can be quite general and abstract (not in a mathematical sense but from the object-oriented design standpoint.)

Still, all this leaves me wondering, as someone who learned programming via "traditional", i.e. compiled, languages - wondering whether being "born" into this "alternate universe" could have some kind "crippling" effect on the ability to live in a "normal" universe (say, as a professional programmer, etc).

<comment><USER3> > Open, highly discoverable

I made a post under eggy's comment that kind of touched on this, but I don't think Smalltalk (Pharo, at least) is particularly discoverable. It seems like a highly bureaucratic language when it comes to making new classes or adding methods to an existing class, and in many cases I poked around and never really found what I was supposed to do. From what I've seen, Smalltalk is highly _inspectable_ , but no more discoverable than any other language.

<comment><USER4> Never used a less bureaucratic language. And am using it everyday for business.

Shortest path between my ideas and a running implementation = Pharo.

Ok, took me a couple years to become decent enough for my needs but this is one of the best decisions I ever made.

<comment><USER5> >Shortest path between my ideas and a running implementation

This is the comparative advantage of Smalltalk

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also see [https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk- Dev](https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev) "... We feel we are the real keepers of Smalltalk-80, and enablers of the Dynabook experience."

</comment><comment><USER7> I saw this mentioned in the Go newsletter the other day. A CAS written in Golang. Thought it may interest others. [https://github.com/corywalker/expreduce](https://github.com/corywalker/expreduce)

</comment><comment><USER8> While I can't comment on this system (but I'm going to have a look at it), a very mature and similar system is gap ( www.gap-system.org, github.com/gap- system/gap ). It uses a custom python-ish language (it actually pre-dates Python by quite a few years, and has some very interesting features in the type system, hence why it uses a custom language)

</comment><comment><USER9> I really like the Smalltalk environments, but I have never done anything but play around in them. Don't misunderstand me, play is very important to creativity, yet I have never done a project or lengthy program in Smalltalk. I use Maxima on Android (running on ECL), and Mathematica. Jupyter notebooks are also a great way to do explorations in say Julia or Python, but to this day, Mathematica is my favorite mathematical playground. I know Stephen Wolfram gets called out a lot on HN, but the product is great in my opinion aside from the closed source mathematical routines. I'll try Len out, but it looks like graphics from the 80s compared to the drag-and-drop, code, curated internet resources of Mathematica. Watching Christopher Wolfram code in Mathematica for some fills for the movie 'Arrival' was cool too [1]. In any case, I am glad to see mathematics anywhere I can!

      [1] https://www.liveedu.tv/christopherwolfram/

<comment><USER3> > I really like the Smalltalk environments, but I have never done anything but > play around in them

Every now and then (usually when I see a post on HN about Smalltalk or Pharo in particular) I download a Pharo image and try to get started but never get particularly far. Part of the issue is that the Smalltalk image is huge and it's not obvious how to do anything nontrivial, and another part of the issue is that when I go and seek some kind of introduction so I can learn my way around I find nearly nothing.

The Pharo project has a book that's supposed to be a good introduction, but it seems to skip a lot of info and has outdated screenshots and instructions so sometimes I can't find out what I'm supposed to click on. So I give up until the next time I try.

It's a shame because everything I read about Smalltalk is so appealing, but the actual onboarding experience is too rough for me to actually go through.

<comment><USER10> I'm a fan of Smalltalk, particularly the small Cuis variety. Anyway, you may be interested to know that Pharo either has or had a MOOC about learning and building things with the language. Additionally, there is an updated book I believe, at [https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExa...](https://github.com/SquareBracketAssociates/UpdatedPharoByExample). Some Cuis-oriented tutorials or documentation can be found at [https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk-Learning/Learning- Cuis](https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk-Learning/Learning-Cuis).

Happy Smalltalking! (Just don't do 'true become: false' :) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool.

Make me think of PolyMath ([https://github.com/PolyMathOrg/PolyMath](https://github.com/PolyMathOrg/PolyMath))

Sven

</comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone tried installing it? Earlier today on a recent checkout of Cuis- smalltalk-dev and encountered an error.

<comment><USER13> If you're having problems, the best bet is to post something to the mailing list ([http://cuis-smalltalk.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev_cuis- sma...](http://cuis-smalltalk.org/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev_cuis- smalltalk.org)) with some details as to the trouble and someone should be able help get it sorted out.</comment></comment>