>Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website.
It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - HTML and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - that programmers entered the picture.
> Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills.
Good point, but are they doing it? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Airbnb all had technical founders. The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on. An MBA aware of this complexity deserves all the success he or she can get.
"It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - HTML and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - that programmers entered the picture."
Well, first off, you're just shifting the goalposts and redefining what it means to "program" to suit your needs: it's inconvenient for your argument that there's now software that does what programmers used to do, so you just call those things something else.
But it doesn't matter, because you can't run from the core of the argument: it isn't limited to static HTML & CSS. Want web forms, but don't know how to write software or use databases? There's Wufoo, and dozens of others. Want to send email? Mailgun. Mailchimp. Want to accept payments? Paypal, Stripe. Want to show an interactive map with stuff on it? Google maps has you covered. Want to implement search on your website, but don't know anything about search? Swiftype will do that. So will Google site search. Need a sophisticated customer analytics system. OK. That'll be one line of javascript, please.
And what's more: it's only a matter of time before someone rolls all of these tools together into a pointy clicky interface that eliminates the token integration work (assuming they haven't already). There's no part of your argument that is safe from the trends that have been driving our industry.
"The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on."
True, but like I said before: almost nobody needs that. There's always going to be the need for complex software...it's just not clear how many people will be asking for it.
Even if you limit it to static HTML and CSS, there are still many people who do that as a job. The only thing that has really been automated away is when someone is willing to use bog standard templates.
And in that respect, that kind of optimization has been happening since the dawn of the personal computer. Lotus 1-2-3 was the defining application of the PC, allowing average users to do programming-like operations that were once only in reach of programmers.
> Well, first off, you're just shifting the goalposts and redefining what it means to "program" to suit your needs: it's inconvenient for your argument that there's now software that does what programmers used to do, so you just call those things something else.
Definitely not. I think "website automation" is among the simplest kinds of software automation and historically it has not required a significant amount of programming.
> But it doesn't matter, because you can't run from the core of the argument: it isn't limited to static HTML & CSS. Want web forms, but don't know how to write software or use databases? There's Wufoo, and dozens of others. Want to send email? Mailgun. Mailchimp. Want to accept payments? Paypal, Stripe. Want to show an interactive map with stuff on it? Google maps has you covered. Want to implement search on your website, but don't know anything about search? Swiftype will do that. So will Google site search. Need a sophisticated customer analytics system. OK. That'll be one line of javascript, please.
That's a stretch. Wufoo, PayPal, Stripe, Mailgun, Google Maps, and MailChimp are not going to cover 100% of use cases, nor do they all come free. You're also ignoring that many of these services are alternatives, not integrations (MailChimp, PayPal, Stripe, Mailgun, Google Maps), of older services (AWeber, Authorize, MapQuest) that filled the same function, and a few of them are filling a need that simply didn't exist before prior automation tools (MailChimp for email lists, Stripe for payment processing). It's not a zero-sum game, nor do the same players stay on top throughout time.
> And what's more: it's only a matter of time before someone rolls all of these tools together into a pointy clicky interface that eliminates the token integration work (assuming they haven't already). There's no part of your argument that is safe from the trends that have been driving our industry.
I actually mentioned that in the post: "For every API that wraps around a business process, there's an application yet to be written (and an API around that application in due time)." You seem to think there's some end point, where most software will just be done and most activity automated. I doubt that will ever be the case.
> True, but like I said before: almost nobody needs that. There's always going to be the need for complex software...it's just not clear how many people will be asking for it.
You seem to imply that in the future, most non-complex (i.e. average) software will just either exist or be generated on demand. That seems far-fetched - there are programs orders of magnitudes simpler than "software generators" that routinely need to be adjusted and tuned to produce correct output (as will all the automated APIs in the future).
>Previously, most people would say that it requires programmers to make a website.
It hasn't required a programmer to build a website in many years now - HTML and CSS were declarative to begin with. It's only with the advent of CMS's - which are definitely NOT all automated (i.e. Joomla or WordPress) - that programmers entered the picture.
> Re Re MBA guys - I don't know how many MBAs are working on something more complex than another social network, because many successful businesses recently have been quite easy to build a MVP for with not a lot of programming skills.
Good point, but are they doing it? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Airbnb all had technical founders. The true complexity of these startups lies in their server software - how to optimize at scale and so on. An MBA aware of this complexity deserves all the success he or she can get.