Stack Overflow CEO Shares Plans for Certification Programs, Opinions on No-Code Programming

"We serve about 100 million monthly visitors worldwide," says the CEO of Stack Overflow, "making us one of the most popular websites in the world. I think we are in the top 50 of all websites in the world by traffic." In a new interview, he says the site's been accessed about 50 billion times over the past 14 years - and then shares his thoughts on the notion that programmers could be replaced by no-code, low-code, or AI-driven pair programming: A: Over the years, there have many, many tools, trying to democratize software development. That's a very positive thing. I actually love the fact that programming is becoming easier to do with these onramps. I was speaking at Salesforce recently, and they've got people in sales organizations writing workflows, and that's low code. You've got all these folks who are not software engineers that are creating their own automations and applications. However, there is this trade-off. If you're making software easier to build, you're sacrificing things like customizability and a deeper understanding of how this code actually works. Back in the day, you might remember Microsoft FrontPage [an early HTML web page editor] as an example of that. You were limited to certain basic things, but you could get web work done. So similarly, these tools will work for general use cases. But, if they do that, without learning the fundamental principles of code, they will inevitably have some sort of a limit. For example, having to fix something that broke, I think they're going to be really dumbfounded. Still, I think it's important, and I'm a believer. It's a great way to get people engaged, excited, and started. But you got to know what you're building. Access to sites like Stack Overflow help, but with more people learning as they're building, it's essential to make learning resources accessible at every stage of their journey.... Q: Is Stack Overflow considering any kind of certification? Particularly, as you just mentioned, since it's so easy now for people to step in and start programming. But then there's that big step from "Yes, I got it to work," but now "I have to maintain it for users using it in ways I never dreamed of." A: "It's very much part of our vision for our company. We see Stack Overflow going from collective knowledge to collective learning. Having all the information is fine and dandy, but are you learning? Now, that we're part of Prosus's edtech division, we're very much looking forward to offering educational opportunities. Just as today, we can get knowledge to developers at the right place and time, we think we can deliver learning at just the right place and time. We believe we can make a huge impact with education and by potentially getting into the certification game. Q: Some of the open-source nonprofits are moving into education as well. The Linux Foundation, in particular, has been moving here with the LF Training and Certification programs. Are you exploring that? A: This is very much part of our vision.... Stack Overflow's CEO adds that the site's hot topics now include blockchain, machine learning, but especially technical cloud questions, "rising probably about 50% year over year over the past 10 years.... Related to this is an increase in interest in containerization and cloud-native services."

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