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How many programmers are there?

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The chart above shows the Bureau of Labor statistics on programmer employment. I am not convinced that these numbers are at all accurate. Getting reliable data on programmer employment is surprisingly difficult.

To begin with, programmer is a vague category, and it is by no means clear that everyone who worked on “programming” defined themselves primarily as a “programmer.” Secondly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not beginning tracking programmers until 1972, and in 1983 and again in 2000 they adjusted their categories and methodologies. For the first ten years, three broad categories (“computer specialists”, “computer programmer”, and “computer analysts”) encompassed everyone working in computing.

By 2000, these categories had expanded to include Computer and information research scientists, Computer systems analysts, Information security analysts, Computer programmers, Software developers, applications and systems software, Web developers, Computer support specialists, Database administrators, Network and computer systems administrators, Computer network architects, Computer occupations, and “all other” computer occupations. This seems to explain the decline in the number of programmers post-2000. Some of them simply got recategorized.

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The one person who can’t be replaced by a computer …

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… is the person who runs one.

I came across this advertisement for the Electronic Computer Programming Institute (ECPI) in the September 16, 1966 issue of Life Magazine.   It is particularly notable for the way in which it plays on fears of technologically-driven unemployment:   “For all the people the computer puts out of a job, it can put more people into new ones.”

During the mid-to-late 1960s, vocational schools offering training in computing sprung up all over the country, appealing to the massive growth of the computer industry and the desperate need for programmers to develop software for them.  Some of these schools were legitimate attempts to provide much needed training in computing; others were fly-by-night operations that played on vulnerable populations (the un- or under-employed, women seeking to reenter the labor market after taking time off to have children).  All promised a high-paying job after graduation.  Most relied on some form of aptitude testing as an admissions criteria (although many admitted students regardless of their scores, with the sole condition that they were able to pay).  Many did not even provide hands-on time with an actual computer, or at best provided an hour or two of time on a leased machine.1  Edward Markham, “EDP Schools: An Inside View”, Datamation 14:4 (1968)

 By the late 1960s, the flood of vocational schools had become something of a scandal.  Numerous exposes of their less admirable practices were published in the industry literature, and many companies adopted “no vocational school graduates” policies.  The result was frustrating to both aspiring programmers and their potential employers, and highlighted the problematic nature of programmer education and training.  The need for quality programmers was apparent to everyone. But what exactly made for a quality programmer?

 

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      Edward Markham, “EDP Schools: An Inside View”, Datamation 14:4 (1968)
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New dissertation on the history of programming

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A young scholar whose work I have been keeping an eye on for many years has just finished her dissertation on the history of programming.  The scholar in question is named  Joline Zepcevski, and the dissertation is entitled “Complexity & Verification: The History of Programming as Problem Solving.”  For those of you with access to the Proquest Dissertation database, do check it out. Joline did her PhD at the University of Minnesota, and her advisor was the renowned historian of computing Arthur Norberg.

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Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise