Yeah it’s fucked, our job has been destroyed from a fun team-based intellectual activity to being a button pusher. I imagine something similar happened to tailors who became factory sweatshop workers.
No point crying about it or coping that some bubble will pop and the genie will go back in the bottle. I’m pretty confident that’s not happening, though in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated, that society will look very different and probably won’t happen in my lifetime (it will for one, I predict bring back tailors too).
So here’s my solution, leave the field. If what you enjoyed most was creative problem solving then moving to a field that enables that is the best solution. Yes the next Ruby on Rails app will involve even lesser creativity than before, but is that the situation for the next good aeroplane? Flying car? Small modular nuclear reactor. I suspect just button pushing for that won’t work nearly as well and that’s my plan anyway.
This is how I have been thinking too. Programming as a mass-market career is over the same way being a tailor, a blacksmith, a cobbler a carpenter, etc for the mass market is also over. Unlike programming, those profession enjoyed millennials of history so there is still some type of romantic idea of a "hand made garment" or a "hand made leather shoe", but outside of very small market for that, there is no economical value in those anymore. The fact that a person might have enjoyed sewing or woodworking as a vocation is incidental to people's need for clothes or cabinets.
I don't think anyone would care about "hand made software", arguably no one ever did. You need a tool to do X. The enjoyment of the person producing that tool is entirely incidental. You don't care if the corn you're eating was hand picked by a person who loved manual farm labor or by a combine harvester. Just like you wouldn't care if someone enjoys driving a combine vs a self-driving combine nor if someone enjoys directing self-driving harvesters or if they are self-directing.
> I don't think anyone would care about "hand made software", arguably no one ever did. You need a tool to do X.
I absolutely do. Perhaps this is a product of my first exposure to computers, but I vividly remember the early Macintosh computers coming on the scene. The care and attention to detail on every level of the machine was special. They were so different than everything before. And it inspired many developers to produce beautiful, weird, awesome software. Does anybody remember the Talking Moose? After Dark? Spaceward Ho! HyperCard? RoboWars? Heck, even MSWord 5.1a was an amazing piece of software whose grammar checker literally taught me grammar.
Now we have “software that does X”, but that X is so bland and enshittified nearly all the joy of computing has been erased. I love writing software. I love writing good and clever software. Perhaps the world no longer cares, but I do.
Agreed. I carefully choose the software I use because I believe the author poured in some domain specific knowledge and made a tool that is novel and carefully thought through.
That does not mean a clever user cannot use an AI tool to help produce it, but so far most of it is slop. Some clever users can build some gems though.
sashank_1509 · · focus · HN ↗
No point crying about it or coping that some bubble will pop and the genie will go back in the bottle. I’m pretty confident that’s not happening, though in the distant future some society will recognize that everything that can be automated should not be automated, that society will look very different and probably won’t happen in my lifetime (it will for one, I predict bring back tailors too).
So here’s my solution, leave the field. If what you enjoyed most was creative problem solving then moving to a field that enables that is the best solution. Yes the next Ruby on Rails app will involve even lesser creativity than before, but is that the situation for the next good aeroplane? Flying car? Small modular nuclear reactor. I suspect just button pushing for that won’t work nearly as well and that’s my plan anyway.
eddythompson80 · · focus · HN ↗
I don't think anyone would care about "hand made software", arguably no one ever did. You need a tool to do X. The enjoyment of the person producing that tool is entirely incidental. You don't care if the corn you're eating was hand picked by a person who loved manual farm labor or by a combine harvester. Just like you wouldn't care if someone enjoys driving a combine vs a self-driving combine nor if someone enjoys directing self-driving harvesters or if they are self-directing.
raddan · · focus · HN ↗
I absolutely do. Perhaps this is a product of my first exposure to computers, but I vividly remember the early Macintosh computers coming on the scene. The care and attention to detail on every level of the machine was special. They were so different than everything before. And it inspired many developers to produce beautiful, weird, awesome software. Does anybody remember the Talking Moose? After Dark? Spaceward Ho! HyperCard? RoboWars? Heck, even MSWord 5.1a was an amazing piece of software whose grammar checker literally taught me grammar.
Now we have “software that does X”, but that X is so bland and enshittified nearly all the joy of computing has been erased. I love writing software. I love writing good and clever software. Perhaps the world no longer cares, but I do.
smashed · · focus · HN ↗
That does not mean a clever user cannot use an AI tool to help produce it, but so far most of it is slop. Some clever users can build some gems though.
Spiritual_Grape · · focus · HN ↗
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