The End of Programming

Sometimes when I'm not coding or reading - which together account for most of my waking moments - I begin thinking about the strange profession I have. Strange in how it began, and I suspect strange in how it will end. I have not been able to overcome disquieting thoughts after reading Vernor Vinge's prediction of The Singularity. His most famous quote is the one that appeared in Omni magazine in 1993: Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended.

Some have expressed their belief that by 2030, in some lab somewhere, a researcher will turn on the world's first AI, and that will be that. Of course, when that happens, programming as a profession ceases to exist. So - assuming we escape the Mayan apocalypse - shortly after 2030 there will be no more buggy IDEs, no more non-standard compilers, no more language wars, and probably no more CS degrees. I mean, what would be the point? Obviously AIs could program computers better than humans.

This means that there are about two decades to go. So far, there seems to be plenty of work for programmers. IEEE Spectrum reports that The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems. And Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems.

Talk of 1, 2, or even 6 MLOCs excites even the most jaded programmer. But these are all puny efforts. The real gorilla in the room? Cars. Yep, if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, “it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code,” says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. The current S-class Mercedes-Benz requires over 20 million lines of code alone, and the car contains nearly as many electronic control units (ECUs) as the new Airbus A380.

I wonder what will be the first car with BLOCs under the hood?