A software engineer doesn't sell "code," or "programs." He sells encapsulated domain knowledge, expressed in a form a computer can act on. That knowledge is difficult to come by, requires intimacy with the customer, and dictates an ongoing support relationship that few non-American IT firms can sustain. In belated recognition of this, many outsourced IT projects are coming home to these shores. More will follow.
Edward Yourdon, who knows IT better than just about anyone, predicted the same dire fate for American IT in his book The Decline And Fall Of The American Programmer. It took him a decade or so to admit he'd been wrong. when he did, he wrote another book: The Rise And Renewal Of The American Programmer. And I daresay he has learned from his earlier, unrealistically static view of our technology and our world not to shoot from the hip a second time.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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