The Guardian

The tech giants can’t afford to alienate their key asset: software engineers | John Naughton

Skilled coders have transformed Google and Facebook into world beaters, but recent scandals won’t help in retaining their services
One of Google’s massive data centres. Photograph: Google/EPA

Arthur C Clarke’s adage that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” may or may not be true, but what is definitely true is that computer software has magical properties. It’s pure “thought stuff”: a programmer has an idea; they encapsulate it as a string of symbols that are then fed into an inanimate machine. And then . And it obeys those instructions faithfully, unquestioningly and without tiring. Which is why being a programmer is a bit like being Napoleon – except that,

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