The End of Programming As We Know It?

September 21, 2006

Since the very beginning of our company's founding we have been completely dependent on programmers for just about every simple task that we needed to have automated. Obviously, programmers are a needed commodity in our industry because we are creating processes using technology that in the past would have been impossible – or taken eons to complete manually.

The problem is, once a large project is complete, there are typically years of small updates that need completed and it becomes tedious and seemingly never-ending for programmers. Not to mention a waste of time because they could be working on even better projects. Yet because of their “expertise” they are “stuck” working that one project because they understand the code unlike anyone else.

So what if “business thinkers” could – without a programmer – create their own piece of web based software? What if they could even do their own updates and revisions without depending on someone who knows PHP, ASP, .NET or any programming language for that matter?

According to the folks at Coghead, it’s now going to possible. Their claim is that their product (which will launch later this month according to Business 2.0) will empower non-programmers, and IT professionals alike, to construct their own rich interactive business applications. And yes… without any programming knowledge.

Now, do I love the concept? Absolutely! Do I think that our computer science majors will be standing in the downtown unemployment line? Absolutely not. The applications that we build here at Web Xtreme are often so complex and the database relationships so intricate that there’s no way a “drag and drop” application could build them. However, I think it’s going to save business owners and programmers alike a lot of time and money. For example, my wife is getting back into the real estate business. On the web site that we’re going to be building for her, there’s going to be a very minimal contact relationship management system. In the past, this system would have to have been custom built by a programmer in order to do everything that it needs to do. If Coghead lives up to it’s claims, however, it’s something that even she could build.

So if Coghead becomes a mainstream thing like Microsoft Office, will programmers be forever out of work? No way. The great news for them is that the projects that they will be working on will no longer be the tedious ones… they will be the ones that demand great mental power and creative thinking. That’s what they’re great at and enjoy so much anyway.

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