Want to be a programmer? Then think again

Press, 2 August 1983, Page 25

Want to be a programmer? Then think again

PA Hamilton Young people who saw computer programming as a career should think again, the president of the New Zealand Computer Society, Dr Colin Boswell, has said in Hamilton. Dr Boswell said programming was widely regarded as one of the glamour careers of the informationprocessing era, but he cited

what he saw as a campaign to eliminate them from all but the “nastiest,” most complex jobs, by cost-con-scious industries. Dr Boswell told a meeting of the society’s Waikato branch that career opportunities in COBOL programming — the mainstream of business-oriented data processing — were diminishing largely because of this campaign. He said more and more businesses, and institutions such as local bodies, were hooking up to “packaged” computer systems or centralised facilities, or were supplying microcomputers to individual clients, to avoid the expense of employing programmers. One such package was now shared by 26 local bodies. He advised young people keen to develop programming skills to combine this with something else ... “like business administra-

tion, or a chemistry degree.” Dr Boswell said there had been an enormous increase .in computer power in New Zealand since the mid-19705. In 1980, 120 firms were listed as owning computers; by 1982 this had risen to 600, and computer-related courses at universities had risen from 102 in 1977 to 155 in 1982.

The number of people who described themselves as employe! in computer operating had risen from 2050 to 6213 since 1971, and now 193 companies, employing 3300 people, offered computer-related services. Imports of computers had risen from S47M in 1980 to $99.8M last year, said Dr Boswell.

However, he said, there were now 38 programming aids available to computer users to “help get rid of programmers.” He saw opportunities for pro-

grammers diminishing. “Programmers will be needed in the future, but they’ll have to be smarter, able to do the nastier jobs,

and there won’t be as many of them. “If I were a programmer,” Mr Boswell said, “I’d start worrying.”