alt Hacker News>my generation was the best, the smartest, most hard working with computers. We used to do "real programing", these youngsters aren't gonna achieve anything with their "spicy autocomplete"
If there's an ethos that emphasizes the boomer mindset it's this one.
>and I find it depressing that people are being forced to use it in order to keep their job
You know what, when numerical control systems started arriving in the machine shops in the 1960's, that's exactly and EXACTLY what machinists were saying. Now fast forward today, are CNC operators today much worse off than machinists doing everything by hand in the 1950s?
I don't even blame you for not seeing the picture of history repeating itself again, just because you're old doesn't mean you're also wise(no offense). Us newer SW devs we'll adapt and survive in the AI age, like humans always have, even if we missed the golden age of computers, 8-inch floppies, and dial-up internet. Nature always finds a way.
The bigger challenges for us will be the political, fiscal, societal, housing, economical, labor, state surveillance and fascism, we have to deal with now versus your generation. Being forced to use AI at work isn't gonna be even in the top 10 of our issues we'll face before retirement, so no need to pity us for this one thing.
I do agree with you on a spiritual level, that the constant worldwide economic chase for optimisations, efficiency and productivity in order to "make line go up", hasn't made many workers happier or wealthier, but that's not something I can control, but I do have to adapt to survive, and neither is it something that the AI tech bros invented, but a product of decades of deregulation, post-Reagan and post-Jack Welch capitalism gone wild.
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It's not about us older folk, but the computing environment itself. We're heading into a world of centralized control where your personal computer is mostly a "thin client" for a bunch of online services. Combined with omnipresent age/identity verification and you will basically need permission from someone to do anything interesting with a computer. Especially on the internet. This is in contrast to the 1990-2010 era where software was generally "buy once use forever" (plus kept working regardless of what politician you support online) and general purpose, open hardware was the norm. You could hook your homemade server up to the internet with a minimum of fuss and start running a service or forum or website or whatever.
There are plenty of bright kids out there, but they're going to be operating from a position of dependence on the OpenAIs, Googles, and Apples of the world if they want to ship a product.
That is not what the GP said at all. I am definitely not a Boomer, and I fully agree with them. They are lamenting the loss of control over your own general purpose computing system, and how our capitalistic society run by oligarchs is enforcing that through economic pressures. There is nothing in their comment that praises their hard work, intelligence, or claims younger people are incapable.
> "...EXACTLY what machinists were saying..."
I'm baffled by the stream of obviously hallucinated facts from AI promoters.