Programmer tsunami threatens to swamp IT industry

[Peter Korsten]

This was forwarded to me at work. I thought it was a funny way to put 
those tens of thousands of downloads of the iPhone SDK into perspective...

- Peter


*Programmer tsunami threatens to swamp IT industry *
13/03/2008 08:40:00
*You know those horror stories about exponential population increases? 
Where someone calculates that if rats (or mushrooms or beetles) were to 
be left unmolested they'd breed until we were all shoulder-deep in the 
things? Something similar seems to be happening to programmers.*


According to companies like Apple and Facebook the bespectacled, bearded 
tykes are well on the way to outnumbering the users they're supposed to 
be writing programs for. It's developing into a real problem.

It was Apple who first raised the alarm.  It recently announced that it 
had flushed out thousands of  programmers by laying bait in the form of 
a free iPhone SDK (software development kit). Over 100 000 code fiends 
couldn't help breaking cover to download the software. Apple staff then 
had to stand by in horror as over 1 million people, many of whom were 
suspected techies, watched the SDK launch video.

Facebook has an even worse infestation. It claims it is now hosting a 
spine-chilling 200,000 developers and has strong evidence of their 
activities through the 16,000 applications the pests have deposited so far.

The implications are appalling, especially for Apple.  On current 
figures there are, at most, just 40 users to every iPhone software 
developer: clearly not a sustainable ratio. Unless iPhone users can 
somehow accelerate their breeding rate, the exploding programmer 
population faces mass starvation.

Before you reach for your checkbooks or put out a call for Sir Bob 
Geldof, please remember that trying to subvert the Darwinian imperative 
is not only doomed to failure but  actually prolongs programmer 
suffering to no useful purpose.  Life in an ecosystem can be cruel, no 
matter how cool that ecosystem happens to be.
 

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