Comment by gregjor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gregjor | Hacker News Reader

I can’t tell if a lot of programmers fear losing their jobs because, deep down, they don’t have much confidence in their skills and value, or if they actually want to get replaced by a supercharged autocomplete.

Just a year ago HN was full of existential dread over no code/low code tools. How many jobs did those cost?

Going farther back in history it was outsourcing that would put programmers on the street.

I can remember way back when we got told that software building blocks would just snap together like Legos, making software development child’s play.

Why do we tech professionals keep predicting some new thing (or old thing getting a second wind) will make us obsolete? It’s like a mass case of imposter syndrome.

You can see in the headlines what actually threatens developer careers: bad management and greed. Look at the approx 150,000 people laid off in tech since last year and tell me how many lost their jobs because of a chatbot. Or no code tools. Zero.

Read David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs. If you recognize what you do in his descriptions, you have reason to worry.

> Just a year ago HN was full of existential dread over no code/low code tools. How many jobs did those cost?

> Going farther back in history it was outsourcing that would put programmers on the street.

These two trends actually created a lot of jobs.

No-Code tools are great to solve the first 90% of the problem. Often, the remaining 10% requires code to properly express. Now, with these low-code/no-code tools, you don't simply write code against a well known framework or runtime but a completely proprietary API/plugin interface that's barely documented and can break at any time. As an added bonus, if the no-code/low-code startup goes under, you now have a worthless plugin and no way to even export or run your no-code workflow!

As for outsourcing, I know people who rewrite offshored code for a living. It's the majority of their contracts. They built this niche by being systematically undercut by foreign body shops. They got started by getting contacted by the companies who initially went with offshored programmers to see if they could take-over the project when they realized it just wasn't ever going to work.

I agree with everything you wrote. I carved out a good freelancing business fixing abandoned and almost-finished code. Some from outsourced developers, some from users trying to use low-code solutions.

“It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine — a gun — which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.”

— Doctor Richard Jordan Gatling

Yet armies did not get smaller. WWI, 40 years after the Gatling gun, saw more soldiers die from infection and disease than from gunfire.

Technology has made militaries more efficient and multiplied the number of bullshit jobs in the sector. Projecting forward we can maybe expect to all work bullshit jobs, rather than facing unemployment.

Damn what an extremely stupid quote lmao, not your use of it but the original quote itself

The idea that programmers will be replaced is absolutely ridiculous. Being from the business side, I've never worked on a software project that didn't have unforeseen elements, hyper-specific requirements, unnecessarily complicated legacy code to deal with etc. The idea that I would have to deal with a chatbot to sort it out would make me blow my brains out. I don't need some macro understanding of all available code synthesized in a bot, I need micro understanding of our specific needs, environment and the office politics of deadlines and demands. It's great if a chatbot can support the programmer but no manager will stake his success on a chatbot just getting it right.

As a programmer, my job is not to write code, but to think. To find solutions to problems. As long as AI can't think, I am fine.

As long as you define what it is to think right?

I’ve actually found chatgpt to be really helpful with the “thinking”. Maybe it’s just the talking through the problem which helps but it gives me a few good pointers each time I’ve had a chat with it about an issue.

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