I agree that we do have different definitions of the word "industry".

For instance I do not consider my immediate employer to be part of the software industry. We certainly do not sell any software - we advertise apartment rentals. The company was founded by real estate entrepeneurs who wanted to get into the web. The largest department in the company (sales) is filled with real estate people - they come from real estate, work with people in real estate, and if they leave for other jobs, they leave for real estate jobs. Our most successful competitors leave piles of free magazines lying around outside of grocery stores. How are we in a traditional software business?

That company was, of course, bought by eBay. But is eBay part of the software industry? Not by any concept of the software industry 20 years ago! eBay doesn't sell software, or services, or anything, really. Its main competitors when it started were antique stores, second hand shops, and flea markets. It is a completely new type of business, which happens to be enabled by software.

So yes, overall I'd consider the web to be a new industry. Sure, it was created by improvements in software. But the closest historical analog to the web is the catalog business. (The analogy is actually quite close.) Which is about as far from software as you can imagine!

In reply to Re^4: Where are future senior programmers coming from? by tilly
in thread Where are future senior programmers coming from? by tilly

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