I'd agree to a point, except that at its most base level farming, at least the agricultural variety, can be "dumbed down" to plant things and water them (unless you give them Brawndo cause it's got what plants crave), grow, harvest,..., Profit. Almost anyone can start from a couple seeds and grow something in a garden with about 2 minutes of instruction.
Software Development is a more 'high skilled' beast just because it can't be "dumbed down" in the same way. I mean yeah you could say 'you write some code' but that doesn't explain anything. Explaining how to program takes a bit more effort on the part of the teacher and the student. You really can't make a 5 year old understand programming (growing) code with a couple minutes of conversation in the same way you can have them understand 'farming' vegetables by telling them to plant a seed and water it enough (but not to much) each day. I know I'm super oversimplifying but that to me has always been sort of the crux behind why people tend to thing farming is a low skill occupation.
I'm not disagreeing just sort of pointing out where I think the idea of farming as a low skill job comes from.
However, a garden with a few plants is to farming as 'print "Hello World"' is to software development, and I was definitely doing the latter at 5 years of age without any trouble.
I'm too young, but older farmers have suggested to me that it was television portraying farmers in a not so intelligent light that brought on that reputation. Wikipedia hints at this as well: 'Starting with The Real McCoys, a 1957 ABC program, US television had undergone a "rural revolution", a shift towards situation comedies featuring "naïve but noble 'rubes' from deep in the American heartland"'[1].
Agreed on all counts. Was just explaining why I believe the division to be a thing. People have no real concrete concept of what programmers DO. But they can abstract farming down to growing a bean in 1st grade.
Software Development is a more 'high skilled' beast just because it can't be "dumbed down" in the same way. I mean yeah you could say 'you write some code' but that doesn't explain anything. Explaining how to program takes a bit more effort on the part of the teacher and the student. You really can't make a 5 year old understand programming (growing) code with a couple minutes of conversation in the same way you can have them understand 'farming' vegetables by telling them to plant a seed and water it enough (but not to much) each day. I know I'm super oversimplifying but that to me has always been sort of the crux behind why people tend to thing farming is a low skill occupation.
I'm not disagreeing just sort of pointing out where I think the idea of farming as a low skill job comes from.