The answer, I think, is warranties. As soon as software can no longer be delivered “as-is”, the profession will need to change. Hobbies will still exist, just as they do for almost all other professions, but as soon as software is required to be fit for purpose, we will need to get serious. That’s when regulation and (gasp) licensing will need to come in to play.
As soon as, say, a retailer or a bank can be sued to oblivion for bad and/or insecure software, whether it was written in-house or not, the regulations will flow back to the producers of the software.
We are still in the Wild West days. Enjoy it while it lasts. Once we, as a society, start requiring software to actually do what it says it does, the fun times are over…at least professionally.
We will still be able to have hobby projects automating sprinklers and lightbulbs and such with the latest unlicensed (edit: un-warrantied, really) Raspberry Pi and Linux.
But at work we will be using buttoned down OSes, programming with buttoned down programming languages, using a (comparatively) small number of professionally licensed third-party libraries, and all this with some painful professionally certified software development methodology.
Edit: for clarity.
As soon as, say, a retailer or a bank can be sued to oblivion for bad and/or insecure software, whether it was written in-house or not, the regulations will flow back to the producers of the software.
We are still in the Wild West days. Enjoy it while it lasts. Once we, as a society, start requiring software to actually do what it says it does, the fun times are over…at least professionally. We will still be able to have hobby projects automating sprinklers and lightbulbs and such with the latest unlicensed (edit: un-warrantied, really) Raspberry Pi and Linux.
But at work we will be using buttoned down OSes, programming with buttoned down programming languages, using a (comparatively) small number of professionally licensed third-party libraries, and all this with some painful professionally certified software development methodology.
Edit: for clarity.