I bet during the industrial revolution, if you said you worked in a factory and operated machinery that made some $hit, people would think, "oooh, thats high tech!!"

It's the same $hit with software developers. We are essentially working class. The better ones who have leadership ability become factory managers and the rest can rot in the factory for life.

Take a look at high-tech companies. Instead of endless rows of workers operating machinery, you get instead endless rows of cubicles with workers operating PCs.

No wonder they like hiring Chinese people so much to be software developers. Let's see the correlations here:

China is the manufacturer of the world ---> Chinese make good factory workers --> They will make good software workers.

We are the borg. Resistance is futile.

Chinese make good hardware workers.
Indians make good software workers.

Hmmmm.... if software developer are the future factory worker so the world will be computerized as in fully equipped even the poor countries... that's not bad

it's a frightening prospect, i can think of many jobs losing out due to the growing computing industry. luckily the course i'm studying will always be safe from computers

hmmmm you've got nice point... esp. in manufacturing , instead of hiring skilled workers they will use machines... machines.. run by a computer...

Hmm, is that computer going to run a military defense system called Sky Net?

I have worked in an automated factory before with computer controlled machines doing the manufacturing instead of humans. During the 80s manufacturing was done by Computerized Machines and Robots and the countries that pioneered them were Germany and Japan and they were the manufacturing giants during the 80s. Japan and Germany made cars using Robots and they were very efficient and fast.

If China would implement Automated Manufacturing, many Chinese would lose their Jobs because they will retrench many workers and replace them with Automated Machine and Robot Manufacturers. I think that is not good for China.

Perfect answer!

And to get back on topic, I think we were talking about the idea of software developers becoming the factory worlers of the future, and not so much the use of computer hardware and associated software to run factories that produce tangible products.

Farming equipment such as wheat harvesters and tractors use GPS equipment and IBM compatible software nowadays in case the operator falls asleep in the middle of a run, and it's almost at the stage where wheat, for one thing, will be able to be farmed by a farmer sitting in his living room running a PC, and never having to get his hands dirty. Yet so many other TANGIBLE products still require manual labour and will probably continue to do so for our lifetimes.

Is it halal to program a robot to slaughter a cow?

As much as I benefit from having this thing online to pass away the hours right now, the effect of all the hardware and software I have is merely the flow of electrons and information (and drivel). Like electricity, it is an intangible product. You cannot eat software. I would recommend you don't every try to eat hardware either, for the PBCs it contains can be rather toxic. The fact that we are so prone to using image files like .jpegs might show that we humans are more interested in making computers like ourselves, than trying to adapt to being like them. When micro$oft can sell a trillion copies of a piece of software that has directories for My Documents and My Pictures, what does that tell you about ourselves. It is our own personality that we are trying to computerise, compuiters that we are trying to personalise, and not meant to be the other way around, although it can get that way at times.

I guess my opinion is that we will always need agriculture, and as much as we might oneday reach the stage where we can automate farms, and slughterhouses, and supermarkets and factories, every single industry is going to require human management, and many but not all, just many of the factories that are currently in operation will need manual labour aka human sweat to operate for a long time to come.

As for softwarte developers getting treated like factory workers, I don't see it happening, simply because 90% of people can't even USE their own computer, so what chance do they ever have for getting paid to write good code? It's a minority who can do it, but we'll always need factory workers, so there'll always be a living for people who don't have perspiration allergies.


<edit: golly did I stuff up that computerised/personalised line! I got it completely backwards>