alt Hacker NewsI think I understand what the author is trying to say.
We miss thinking "hard" about the small details. Maybe "hard" isn't the right adjective, but we all know the process of coding isn't just typing stuff while the mind wanders. We keep thinking about the code we're typing and the interactions between the new code and the existing stuff, and keep thinking about potential bugs and issues. (This may or may not be "hard".)
And this kind of thinking is totally different from what Linus Torvalds has to think about when reviewing a huge patch from a fellow maintainer. Linus' work is probably "harder", but it's a different kind of thinking.
You're totally right it's just tools improving. When compilers improved most people were happy, but some people who loved hand crafting asm kept doing it as a hobby. But in 99+% cases hand crafting asm is a detriment to the project even if it's fun, so if you love writing asm yourself you're either out of work, or you grudgingly accept that you might have to write Java to get paid. I think there's a place for lamenting this kind of situation.
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I agree. I think some of us would rather deal with small, incremental problems than address the big, high-level roadmap. High-level things are much more uncertain than isolated things that can be unit-tested. This can create feelings of inconvenience and unease.
Spot on. It’s the lumberjack mourning the axe while holding a chainsaw. The work is still hard. it’s just different. The friction comes from developers who prioritize the 'craft' of syntax over delivering value. It results in massive motivated reasoning. We see people suddenly becoming activists about energy usage or copyright solely to justify not using a tool they dislike. They will hunt for a single AI syntax error while ignoring the history of bugs caused by human fatigue. It's not about the tech. it's about the loss of the old way of working.
And it's also somewhat egotistical it seems to me. I sense a pattern that many developers care more about doing what they want instead of providing value to others.