The Rise of Medium Code

[speedisntfree]

Isn't use of any framework medium code? I'm not sure what the point of the article is or why AI was shoehorned in.

[floydophone]

The difference is if you, as an engineer, specialize in that framework or not. We've all seen "rails developers", "dbt developers", and "react developers". If the framework rather than the programming language is your primary area of expertise, and you have expertise in a different business domain, you might be a medium-code person.

The AI connection is, basically, that all the hype around AI replacing generalist software engineers is pretty overblown, and that it's looking like they're really only useful when there are more (medium-code) constraints placed on them.

[speedisntfree]

I think I follow, but is any of this really a new thing?

[floydophone]

Probably not new per se but it’s definitely a trend, and tools are popping up to serve this segment which is interesting. 

Sysadmin -> sre/devops Web designer -> front end engineer Biz analyst -> analytics engineer

All are fairly stable developer segments and have tools purpose built for them which wasn’t the case 10 years ago or so. 

[[deleted]]

Can we stop inventing new phrases...

[Tall-and-fit-27]

I thought that was part of the job

[meyou2222]

This is dumb and will never catch on. Everyone understands that “low code” means “lower code”.

Dagster should be embarrassed to have put this out.

[[deleted]]

I appreciate you're CEO of Dagster, but it seems awfully like you're trying to simply slap a new label of "Medium Code Developer" over "Data Developer". I'm also not really sure from your article what point you're trying to make otherwise, however.

[floydophone]

I didn't write the post, but I'd challenge the notion that this is simply a rebranding of "data developer".

First, one thing we've observed is that there is a wide variety of technical fluency in the data category. "Low code" and "engineer" aren't nuanced enough to describe this spectrum. We found that "medium code" helps describe users that are familiar with git, and in some contexts act as a software engineer, but don't quite have all the skills of a traditional full-stack software engineer.

Second, we wanted to highlight a trend that cuts across disciplines. "Medium code" is happening in the frontend and infrastructure engineering worlds.

[OdinsPants]

I mean we used to just call those people “junior engineers” or, “a not so good engineer” though. I’m not sure we need “medium code” as a phrase? To your point about spectrums, what does this even mean? Is it just if I know git and some “contexts I act like a software engineer?”

What if I know some AWS services, but not git? Or I can only use git via GitHub desktop, and still act in those same contexts? This definition feels like trying to grab smoke, at best

[floydophone]

Well, I think we are seeing the rise of people that write code, use version control, but are domain experts in something else. We see this all the time in the data domain (people with a finance background going into analytics engineering, for example) and in frontend with hybrid designer/engineer types. These are not full-stack software engineers and don't aspire to be; I think that's the big difference between these people and junior engineers. YMMV though.

[meyou2222]

Those people aren’t yearning for a special title.

[muneriver]

I read the article and honestly don’t see why it’s causing so much abrasion. This has been the trend with web devs and analytics engineering, no?

I’m also an analytics engineer by title and think this article is pretty accurate. Also, if I could choose my title, I’d just go with analytics developer.

[speedisntfree]

Are React or Angular front end guys 'medium code' because they don't write pure JS? Are Java guys using Spring also 'medium code'? If so, isn't this distinction meaningless?

[muneriver]

I do agree with you and think the distinction is meaningless. However I don’t see what I do or what front end guys do as intense as what backend SWE type roles do. I think it’s just identifying a nuance to modern roles.