Re: Too many programmers ?
 

We had similar numbers for our team in terms of response in interest of Programming. This really went down, and there's really only been 2 or 3 people involved since then.

I really believe our problem is that we spent more time "doing" than "teaching". People stopped coming over when they did not understand what was happening, which is the general nature of things. Programming is more informational than other committees, and it should be taught as much as possible. Experienced programmers should not be touching code, but guiding. Take a look at this idea from Malcolm Gladwell's book (Outliers), quoted from Derek Sivers.

Managed properly, Programming can have as many people work on code as possible. For the best example of this, I like to look at Mozilla. They are one of the largest Open Source projects, and still manage to organize their enormous code base. One of the reasons why their applications rarely have security flaws is due to the fact that more experienced programmers are generally reviewers, while contributors from all around the world write code. Also as important, they have set up a very efficient code versioning system with Mercurial. I recommend doing something similar. Our team uses GitHub, allowing us to track changes everyone makes, and review code before it is pushed.

There is always something to do, or something to try with Programming. It's not confined by tools, but contribution. Good this year!

Re: Too many programmers ?
 

This idea isn't completely true. As I said in my post above, it's all about organization and the structure code is committed. Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, have thousands of programmers. We have the same resources these companies do. It is more than possible.