People who wish for the end of developers | Hacker News Reader

People who wish for the end of developers

3 pointshaebom4 comments

Recently—or perhaps since vibe coding became popular—I've been seeing an increasing number of posts claiming that fundamentals don't matter and that there's no need to study coding. I do agree that vibe coding enables rapid prototyping and helps many people discover an interest in programming, and I wholeheartedly support how it creates new opportunities. However, when I see blogs, news outlets, and media outlets portraying this as the end of the developer era—suggesting that studying development is now useless, that learning foundational knowledge is foolish, and that majoring in computer science is misguided—I find myself questioning their agenda. Is there some kind of fascination with watching developers become a modern Icarus, falling from the sky?

If course, majoring in computer science is now misguided. Because even as the art isn't obsolete, and developers will not disappear, there will be persistently more supply than demand just because of how much did the productivity increase. SWE will be just one of the multitude of qualifications that require a uni diploma and will not be at all more lucrative than any of them. Just run of the mill job that pays for a cheap condo rental, a used car, and such. Which all professions where there is no persistent, generational shortage, are.

Someone that is paid to install drywall is very much working a lot harder than any of us. Yet he's looked at every 5 minutes to make sure he's making progress. The progress is measurable (the room is drywalled or not). He is chewed out for his mistakes. There is no "PTO" let alone "unlimited PTO". Such a concept - can you imagine going to a drywaller while they are working and saying you don't have to do this now, in fact, we'll just pay you for the next month while you go on sabbatical.

Now just compare any of those points with that of a senior software engineer.

Now I'm not saying all drywallers are itching for us to lose our jobs, but part of that is they don't really know what our jobs are. But people are finding out, and resenting us.

You could say that with a lot of jobs

Which ones? And are those jobs hiring millions?

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