alt Hacker News> There will still be fine programmers developing software by hand after AI is good enough for most.
This fallacy seems to be brought up very frequently, that there are still blacksmiths; people who ride horses; people who use typewriters; even people who use fountain pens, but they don't really exist in any practical or economical sense outside of 10 years ago Portland, OR.
No technological advancement that I'm aware of completely eliminates one's ability to pursue a discipline as a hobbyist or as a niche for rich people. It's rarely impossible, but I don't think that's ever anyone's point. Sometimes they even make a comeback, like vinyl records.
The scope of the topic seems to be what the usual one is, which is the chain of incentives that enable the pursuit of something as a persuasive exchange of value, particularly that of a market that needs a certain amount of volume and doesn't have shady protectionism working for it like standard textbooks.
With writing, like with other liberal arts, it's far from a new target of parental scrutiny, and it's my impression that those disciplines have long been the pursuit of people who can largely get away with not really needing a viable source of income, particularly during the apprentice and journeyman stages.
Programming has been largely been exempt from that, but if I were in the midst of a traditional comp sci program, facing the existential dreads that are U.S and Canadian economies (at least), along with the effective collapse of a path to financial stability, I'd be stupid not to be considering a major pivot; to what, I don't know.
Replies
Things that won't be automated anytime soon, like plumbers or electricians.
Or double down on applied ML?
> This fallacy seems to be brought up very frequently, that there are still blacksmiths; people who ride horses; people who use typewriters; even people who use fountain pens, but they don't really exist in any practical or economical sense outside of 10 years ago Portland, OR.
Did you respond with a fallacy of your own? I can only assume you’re not in or don’t have familiarity with those worlds and that has lead you to conclude they don’t exist in any practical or economical sense. It’s not difficult to look up those industries and their economic impact. Particularly horses and fountain pens. Or are you going by your own idea of practical or economical?
There may not be many people whose professional job is using a typewriter, but there are still tons of writers.
No job is special, even though many programmers like to think of themselves as so. Everyone must learn to adapt to a changing world, just as they did a hundred years ago at the turn of the century.