On 1/26/08, Stefan Monnier
* Say "computers are cheap but programmers are expensive" whenever explaining a correctness or productivity feature. This is true only if talking to people in high-income nations.
Is it? Maybe you're right.
Yes -- consider the OLPC project (and its competitors). In some developing nations, $200 for a laptop is still a *lot* to pay (the laptop I'm typing this on cost $1400, purchased on a government grant, and that purchase was treated as nothing.) Labor is a lot cheaper in those places. And there's not much in the way of big government funding (whether for universities or companies) to pay for any of it.
But historically, computers have been available at all kinds of price ranges, so people chose the price point that fit them. So, for the last 15 years or so already computers have been chosen (in the wealthy countries) to be cheaper than programmers.
Is there any reason to think that the same forces aren't at play in lower-income nations? After all, cheap (typically second hand) computers are easy to come by.
Not with the same amount of computing power that computers that run modern application tend to have; a lot of places don't even have reliable *electricity* (so in that case, lots of people and limited machines could be *good*, if the machines aren't working all the time), etc. I don't really know enough to give a more complete answer to your question. But my original point is that saying labor is always expensive and hardware is always cheap by comparison is a culturally biased statement, at least right now, on January 26, 2008. Cheers, Tim -- Tim Chevalier * http://cs.pdx.edu/~tjc * Often in error, never in doubt "I eat too much / I laugh too long / I like too much of you when I'm gone." -- Ani DiFranco