The role of a software developer has certainly changed over the years. Like programming in the punch card days in the 1960s when Star Trek debuted in the 1960s, professional coding has undergone radical changes over the decades.

Using the Vulcan “mind meld” concept from Star Trek from a previous conversation as a starting point,  Alex Williams, founder and editor-in-chief of The New Stack, during Cloud Foundry Summit Europe 2018 in Basel, Switzerland, discussed how the developer’s role has changed during a podcast with Tammy Van Hove, distinguished engineer at IBM, and Simon Moser, senior technical staff member, IBM Germany Research and Development.

Van Hove remembered wanting a communicator when she first saw Star Trek. “I wanted that communicator and then when the first flip phones came out, [I said], ‘oh, I got a communicator, right?’” Van Hove said.

Regarding the developer experience today, the culture has become very “varied and community,” Van Hove said. “When I first started programming, it was terminals and terminal rooms,” Van Hove said, adding that “resources were limited.”

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kIZ91kPKTLM