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Al-Khwarizmitoday at 3:02 PM1 replyview on HN

I remember that. I studied CS in that period and some professors were convinced that software development was going to become an unskilled job, analogous to bricklaying, and that our goal as future CS graduates should be to become managers, just like someone that studies a university degree about making buildings is intended to become an architect and not a bricklayer.

I never believed it, though (if I had, I would probably have switched degrees, as I hate management). And while the belief was common, my impression is that it was only so among people who didn't code much. The details on how it would happen were always highly handwavy and people defending that view had a tendency to ignore any software beyond standard CRUD apps.

In contrast, if I had to choose a degree right now, I'd probably avoid CS (or at most study it out of passion, like one could study English philology or something, but without much hope of it being a safe choice for my career). I think the prospects for programmers in the LLM era look much scarier, and the threats look much more real, than they ever did in that period.


Replies

ghafftoday at 4:18 PM

The bigger issue is that so many people have jumped into CS because programming (not the same thing I know) has become seen as this thing that will earn you big bucks.

Of course, some level of computer skills is important in most professions at this point. But logic suggests that CS (and programming) compensation will level out at a level comparable to similarly skilled technical professions.