alt Hacker NewsQuite the gap.
The legends the article talks about are legends because they either started a project that blew up in popularity and/or solved a demanded problem with original code.
For most people writing software for a living that is gone. Its been gone since I started writing software 20 years ago. The goal post has moved. Its no longer about solving any problem. Its about hiring.
The distinction is massive. Most of the people doing this work will never encounter an important problem to solve or write original code. Instead they will use tools and modify templates. There is still some troubleshooting there, but no originality. Its like being a plumber. Plumbers still make good money, but they aren't engineers. Now, with AI being pushed on everybody even becoming something like a plumber is becoming a distant gap for the next generation.
The most clear exception are hobbyists, which has always been there as an exception through my years writing software. The only real distinction between most of these hobbyists and the legends is obscurity. The very real distinction between the hobbyists and less original professional is time spent practicing.
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I agree with you. There's a saying in Korea and East Asia: 'Open source is a moat.' This might sound difficult, but it means that if you're trying to sell a product, its quality or UX/UI basically needs to be better than what's already publicly available in open source — and that's not easy.
As the era becomes increasingly advanced, the cognitive cost of making a single project public keeps rising. But if you try to use an LLM to share or assist, there are many people who say LLMs are bad.
It's a difficult problem
In a previous post I lamented that my I should no longer call myself a software developer - after all, I write my own code!
Maybe there should be a distinction between software creators and programmers.
> “… will never encounter an important problem to solve or write original code.”
I’m sure you’re right. Though, let me add, there are a lot of minuscule problems in the small business space. Not fame and fortune level, but gratifying nevertheless.
As my brother said once with exasperation: "I got into this business to write code, and now I'm just an integrator."
Reminds me of when Jensen Huang recently compared Linux to OpenClaw and showed this ridiculous GitHub star comparison. To me these projects are incomparable.