No offence, but where have you been getting news on his perception in the last few years? He's proven probably the most significant philanthropist in history, this isn't new.
Let's say one of the most significant philanthropists. Carnegie and Rockefeller were extraordinary philanthropists and in inflation-adjusted dollars, Rockefeller gave away more.
What Gates has done that's unique is to pressure/induce other super-wealthy individuals to also donate their wealth to charity.
Gates isn't being measured as the most significant philanthropist because of how much money he is giving away, inflation adjusted or otherwise. He isn't even measured that way because he's also directing much of Warren Buffet's (and others) wealth towards philanthropy; those those are significant accomplishments.
Rather, he's being measured as the most significant philanthropist, because his underlying belief systems, is so all encompassing:
From: [1]
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life.
Well, he is the Andrew Carnegie of our generation. I would say he has helped a very large number of people and been an inspiration to even more, especially outside of the US.
1) Programming isn't reverting to guilds because there's no way to restrict people from learning about programming, and there's no way to restrict people to only hiring guild programmers.
2) No, not everyone will become a programmer. But a greater spectrum of people will do programming type things as the rewards for being able to control computers effectively (via programming) will continue to increase.
3) Bigger People vs. Bigger Ideas seems a statement that is so generalized and open to interpretation as to be meaningless.
4) Finally, no mention is made of things like superior parallel processing, something that is integral to continuing to do fancier things with advancing technology.
"Programming isn't reverting to guilds because there's no way to restrict people from learning about programming"
Sure there is: nondisclosure agreements, secret APIs, expensive proprietary tools, etc. You already see this to some degree with video game development. App stores are going to make this worse, as people are going to have to pay more in order to develop software and will not be able to just run development tools on any old system.
"a greater spectrum of people will do programming type things"
Those people will also be more restricted in terms of what they can do. People will know how to write macros for a specific product; they will not be able to write programs in general. I suspect that the number of people who can write general-purpose software is going to decrease as platforms become less open.
"Finally, no mention is made of things like superior parallel processing, something that is integral to continuing to do fancier things with advancing technology."
First of all, we do not even know if we can benefit from parallel approaches to certain very important problem classes (see: NC v. P). Second, we have heard the "parallel processing will save us" argument in the past, but we were not saved. From where I sit, algorithmic improvements will be more important than parallel programming over the next decade: better approximations, better heuristics, and faster operations are going to win over more cores.
1) Guilds could form more through the power of evolved authority and authentication. The assumption is the role of the University is reduced and education becomes more specialized and short term results driven. In that world how do you know who has real skills?
With Cisco training, for example, your Cisco certifications are your credentials. We haven't seen this model of certification move to programming in general. We probably will as these new training hubs form and begin to monetize through being a body shop rather than through fees. A few Guilds will become popular and their certs will have more value. Via small networks potential programmers will flock to these services and the phenomena becomes self-reinforcing. Guilds may specialize around certain subjects, as guilds did in the past. These Guilds will recognize their power and monetization opportunities and take a greater and greater role across the entire value chain.
The scalability of online training means vast numbers of potential programmers can be filtered out and stratified into various skill levels and specialties, much like a MMORPG across a vast virtual world. Programmers will gain experience points by being apprenticed on projects that have been bid out. Each project can be thought of as a quest. As new skills are required the Guild can bring on new training and integrate it into the game, quickly creating pools of new subject matter experts. This will be cheap labor and will be highly profitable. Masters will evolve that can access large pools of labor. Specialized tiger teams can form to solve difficult problems, all mediated by these new training Guilds as the Game Master controlling their Game World.
Virtual economies can evolve around code and skills. Each Guild may evolve their own infrastructure, code banks, tools, styles, networks and processes that will make bootstrapping new projects even more profitable. Instead of GitHub we'll see Guild Hubs. Instead of the Amazon Cloud we'll see Guild Clouds. Instead of Frameworks we'll see Guild Frameworks. These will not be open as they will be used as a competitive advantage as the open source community is compelled by game mechanics to become part of a Guild.
Will guilds, like in the Renaissance, be formal parts of the government having government enforced powers and benefits? It's not hard to imagine, especially if privatization becomes more popular. But even without the government picking winners, through market forces very powerful actors can emerge by controlling the supply of a necessary good.
Will this happen? Who knows. That's why it is a prediction :-)
2) Agreed.
3) Sorry you feel that way. I think the emphasis on building things rather than people is a central subject of our times.
4) Lots of people are more qualified than I to speak on those subjects. And have. What are your thoughts?
Showing one controller action or model method will not compromise your application security.
I'm not saying people should put their application to github, just asking them to use real examples in their articles (like I did with MessagesController#create)
I wouldn't be. Some of the most secure software in the world is fully open source. Having millions of eyeballs looking and touching your code is a lot more secure than having 5 ego-driven devs who think they know security.
"Bill, you are really inspiring me to increase my concern for the critical issues of economy and technology. You are a gift to the world. thank u."
Wow, Gates has really cleaned up his public perception.