“Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers (via)
Well this is awkward. Literally yesterday I wrote “the hard part of software engineering was never writing the code.” I concede that that way of describing what’s happening to the software industry is a bit lazy and exaggerated.
Nobody knows how the AI revolution will play out in the end, but it is clear many aspects of work and life will be transformed—including programming.
This definitely feels true to me. My day to day is already completely unrecognizable compared to a year ago and I wouldn’t have known how to even begin describing the nature of my job now if you’d asked me to only a few months ago.
If coding is easy, how come programmers were in high demand, and have demanded large salaries for years (even before ZIRP)?
This is answerable though, in terms of economics. How hard a skill is isn’t what determines its price. It’s true that a very small proportion of the labour force is willing to put up with solving abstract symbolic logic puzzles for 40 hours a week, but the main reason software engineers are so highly paid is more because the marginal cost of scaling software is effectively zero than anything to do with the work itself. Lots of jobs are harder and pay less.
I have met many programmers throughout my career, and very few of them want to talk to stakeholders, much less customers (exceptions are freelancers and founders, especially of software development shops). And, “having clarity on the priorities” boils down to “just tell me what to do and don't switch it up every two days
Relatable.
Whoever you are, don't outsource your understanding, judgement, empathy and taste to AI.
This feels like the most important takeaway for this moment. What drives me more crazy than anything else these days is people trying to pass off AI generated output as their own. It’s lazy and inconsiderate to ask someone to read piles of slop on your behalf, but that’s not even what I hate the most about it. It’s the abdication of our unique human ability to relate to other humans that gets me. I wish people would stop pretending like generated AI output could ever replace human interaction.