[simianparrot]

I'm future proofing my job by ensuring I remain someone whose brain is tuned to solving complex problems, and to do that most effectively I find ways to keep being engaged in both the fundamentals of programming (as already mentioned) and the higher-level aspects: Teaching others (which in turn teaches me new things) and being in leadership roles where I can make real architectural choices in terms of what hardware to run our software on.

I'm far more worried about mental degradation due to any number of circumstances -- unlucky genetics, infections, what have you. But "future proofing" myself against some of that has the same answer: Remain curious, remain mentally ambidextrous, and don't let other people (or objects) think for me.

My brain is my greatest asset both for my job and my private life. So I do what I can to keep it in good shape, which incidentally also means replacing me with a parrot is unlikely to be a good decision.

[paulcole]

Nobody who's been replaced by a parrot thought they were going to get replaced by a parrot.

Where's your espoused intellectual curiosity and mental ambidextrousness when it comes to LLMs? It seems like your mind is pretty firmly made up that they're of no worry to you.

[simianparrot]

In another comment I briefly mention one use case I have been implementing with LLM's: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42434886

I'm being vague with the details because this is one of the features in our product that's a big advantage over competitors.

To get to that point I experimented with and prototyped a lot using LLM's; I did a deep dive into how they work from the ground up. I understand the tech and its strengths. But likewise the weaknesses -- or perhaps more apt, the use cases which are more "magic show" than actually useful.

I never dismissed LLM's as useless, but I am as confident as I can possibly be that LLM's on their own cannot and will not put programmers out of jobs. They're a great tool, but they're not what many people seem to be fooled into believing that they are; they are not "intelligent" nor "agents".

Maybe it'll be a bit difficult for juniors to get entry level jobs for a short while due to a misunderstanding of the tech and all the hype, but that'll equalize pretty quickly once reality sets in.