April 2004
Many commentators are upset over the loss of programmer jobs. One of the big reasons is that most of the "middleware" jobs are going away now that we have XML, web services, .NET remoting, and the other "standard" interfaces between software applications.
Back in the 1980s we use to make big money writing "middleware" for all of the different automation equipment out there. There were very few standards and every time you needed two pieces of equipment to talk with each other -- you had to write custom code. Even something as simple as a PLC needing to communicate with a drive -- $10,000.
Along came standards in the early 1990s and there was a huge loss of business for the "middleware" code writers, including us.
When you look at things on a higher level -- truth is -- everyone did more for less and was better off. There were huge gains in productivity. For example, for the same money that it use to cost to get just two devices to communicate, now you could integrate a whole process. So we went from writing a lot of "middleware" to integrating more processes.
It was amazing what all you could do, and how fast you could do it, when standards came on the scene. I
So again we will lose a lot of middleware business. But I bet we will be developing more MES, MRP, and ERP systems and integrating more entire facilities.
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