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by voidUpdate 14 days ago
What if I don't want to automate away the part of my job that I actually like doing? What if, in my job as a programmer, I actually want to do programming?
2 comments

That’s fair. I do think, however, that the software industry may become a bit like the clothing industry: there will still be an artisanal market for people who want human-made software, but to be honest I wouldn’t expect it to remain the mainstream option.
Well I can say for sure I'd rather wear long lasting, tested (second hand), human made clothing rather than Shein Slop
Sure, and I don’t disagree, but goods and services still need to scale to billions of people. Most people aren’t going to start knitting their own clothes, or have the time to, just like most companies probably won’t rely on fully hand-written software if cheaper automated alternatives are good enough. What you want or enjoy is one thing; the reality of society is another.
>won’t rely on fully hand-written software if cheaper automated alternatives are good enough.

By this logic, all non-outsourced development should be dead already.

People who demand programmers start using LLMs in their work don't understand that it is essentially like asking programmers to start doing accounting or HR. Something fundamentally different from what they love to do..
Theyre asking programmers to become managers, asking another entity to do the work for them and check in every now and again to see how it's going
Actually they are asking programmers to become managers in addition to programmers. Because when the LLMs stops working, they are expected to take over.

So I think programmers who are asked to use LLMs should demand their job descriptions to be changed to that of managers, and should ever deny responsibility if the LLM stops to make progress. Thus let the organization be responsible to actually find a version of AI that works, just like how it was responsible to find competent programmers to work under the managers before.