[norskeld]

Janitor Engineers [0] are already a thing? Damn. Also, all links in this article starting from the "Why AI code fails at scale" section are dead for some reason, even though it was written only 5 days ago. That raises some questions...

EDIT: Not trying to offend anyone with this [0], I've actually had the same half-joking retirement plan since the dawn of vibe coding, to become an "all-organic-code" consultant who untangles and cleans up AI-generated mess.

[flir]

I think specialising in brownfield has always been a thing. If anything, it's greenfield that's the rarity.

[sseagull]

I’ve always found the pioneer, settler, town planner model to be a great way of thinking about this. Successful, long-term projects or organizations eventually can use all 3 types.

Maybe vibe coding replaces some pioneering work, but that still leaves a lot for settlers to do.

(I admit I’m generally in the settler category)

https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Thinking of retired COBOL programmers that still have a market...

[jlokier]

There's still a market, but when I looked into COBOL work out of curiosity (I've never been anywhere near it in real life), the salaries I found were surprisingly low, compared with common modern languages.

Perhaps the old adage "it's getting hard to find X employees [at the price we are willing to pay]" applies.

That surprised me because I've seen articles and heard podcasts for years where they've said COBOL programmers are well paid due to scarcity, though never quoting amounts.

[scorpioxy]

I wonder if COBOL projects these days, being brownfield by nature, are less political and stressful than brownfield web development projects.