"Every year, more novices are programming," coined by Alan Freedman, author of this encyclopedia. The job of programming is very misunderstood, because it is actually easier to write a program in a high-level language than people might think. However, novice programmers often start coding without fully developing the logic beforehand. This lack of experience can create a maze that cannot easily be traversed later. See
programmer and
debug.
Things Are Getting Better and Worse
There is AI software that aids in debugging human-coded programs, which offers some relief when changing executables written years ago by programmers long gone. At the same time, AI is increasingly doing the coding. However, debugging errant AI-coded programs may be not be easy and is sometimes impossible as more and more software is written by machine and not humans.
Not More, But Fewer
As more software is coded by AI, this law may have to be changed to "every year, fewer novices are programming!" See
AI programming and
laws.