My fear, perhaps ill founded, is that the "electricians" of the machines will just age out like COBOL devs. Highly sought after and in demand, yet work no one new is learning to take over.
A large percentage of the current software workforce, professional and open source, are people who learned these skills casually growing up rather than explicitly in school as a career. I'm not sure this demographic exists in any meaningful numbers in younger generations.
Will there be enough people to maintain our foundations when the only ones who understand them are the ones formally educated? What happens to the actual number of people even interested in a computing career path when they didn't grow up with "classical" computers?
I am happy to be totally wrong here, it's just the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
A large percentage of the current software workforce, professional and open source, are people who learned these skills casually growing up rather than explicitly in school as a career. I'm not sure this demographic exists in any meaningful numbers in younger generations.
Will there be enough people to maintain our foundations when the only ones who understand them are the ones formally educated? What happens to the actual number of people even interested in a computing career path when they didn't grow up with "classical" computers?
I am happy to be totally wrong here, it's just the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.