There seems to be two kinds of people whenever this conversation comes up.

If I take an analogy of two kinds of people who visit Yosemite National Park, person A would refuse to see Glacier Point unless they embark on the long all day hike themselves, while person B would happily drive to the parking lot, get out, take photos with their families and admire the view.

Either person cannot understand the other's, and yet both people will go out of their way to make the other one feel guilty for their approach if pushed.

When they built the parking lot and the roads to get there, it probably upset a lot of people at the time (only speculating). Yet, the park invests and maintains the hiking trails just as well. So if anything, the park takes the very human opinion that you should take the option that works for you, because the view is worth it.

The people who are investing in machine learning are OBSESSED with efficiency. Where I would say, v1 of Co-pilot was entirely conceived as an AI system meant to help ME as a software engineer, claude code is entirely conceived and built to replace ME as a software engineer.

Where co-pilot was a choice that I made, and willingly enabled in my workflow, claude code was forced on me by my employer. In my entire long career, we were always given autonomy to decide what tools and systems we needed to get our jobs done. This was the first time it felt like a few invisible power brokers at the top decided for me.

Anyway, my point in all this ranting, is that, unlike national parks that go out of their way to be accessible for everyone, generative AI has firmly sided with one kind of person's life philosophy at the expense of the others, yet we all still have to work together. Change is hard for sure.

Couldn't disagree more. Here's how I look at it as a person who wrote my code by hand for 15 years. I'm the owner of my own small bootstrapped startup.

1. I've always been enjoyed delivering solutions more than the actual process of programming, and AI just helps me deliver more of that faster. And for the actual process of programming, I found a way of working with AI that makes it enjoyable. I've built my own AI agent coordinator and harness which works the way I want it to. I enjoy working with AI in that harness.

2. It is completely false that you cannot prompt the AI any better than anybody else. The likes of Terrence Tao can prompt ChatGPT to solve Millennium Prize problems in math. But I'm not a professional mathematician, so I cannot do that. Generally speaking, the more deep technical knowledge you have, the stronger prompts you can write because an amateur doesn't even know what to potentially improve. Actual real world productivity with AI is still strongly correlated with deep technical knowledge and experience, and I expect it to stay that way. This has nothing to do with AI capabilities, which I expect will keep gettinf better. This has to do with the fundamental definition of a problem requires expertise to handle it.

3. Jevons paradox suggests that the fact that building software has become cheap now may only increase demand, not decrease it. Sure, traditional software engineering jobs may not look the same. But AI has made it possible to build so many kinds of software that I would have never considered before. Like, for example, I built my own email client, which works exactly the way I want it to. Imagine every company starts building their own operating system, email client, and CRM. I can easily see that happening, and I can actually see it as a net positive as well as a fun thing to watch. And only an increase in job opportunities.

> No one hires me anymore because AI can do my job cheaper.

As someone who thinks AI is an incredible tool, I think your job is safe. Are there incompetent companies that are replacing people with AI? Yup... But also, I'm pretty sure most people don't want to work at companies with such poor management anyway? So in a way, I think AI is prefiltering incompetent management for us.

On you other two points: I kinda feel you, but I'm finding ways of enjoying my work with AI. It's been a bit of a shift and I'm still adjusting probably, but it feels like it's getting better. I never really enjoyed "typing" code, but the creative process of designing solutions and building the. And I never thought typing was the "building" part, it was just an unavoidable mechanical "obstacle" (not using the word obstacle as a bad thing necessarily, but idk it's just typing you know?)