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Comment by heynowletsgo | Hacker News Reader

Finally some damn sense on this topic. The whole "programmers will be automated away" is just a scare tactic to slow down the automation of what can be automated. People scared and afraid and attacking what they perceive as the enemy. Lots of things will be automated, automating will not be one of them.

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I've often found that making broad statements about what will or won't happen in a hypothetical future often leads one to embarrassment.

Example: "mankind will never set foot on the moon...how absurd!"

ok, yes, but cut me some slack. when i said that, i was stuck on the side of the road next to my model T with three flats and i was reflecting on the poor quality of leather they'd used in the tires.

That's true, but I draw the line at people creating a higher life form, and that's what it would take to replace programmers.

Alternatively, we'll have flying cars and fusion in 20 years.

As programmers, we are the automaters. Programming is precisely taking ill-specified tasks and automating their completion by a computer.

technically, that's business analysis and it's part and parcel of most day-to-day programming jobs. Automating processes does not inherently require typing logical statements into a text file - only our current conception of "how to tell a machine what to do" requires this.

And not everything is worth automating. There are still people working in retail, maintaining industrial machines, negotiating loans, and agricultural workers.

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