alt Hacker NewsA few notable exceptions?
Are phones an "automation of existing jobs"? Maybe couriers (??), but most of what people use them for goes far beyond that.
What about the software used to drive trains or autopilot planes? We still have conductors and pilots, but now the outcomes are safer on average and more efficient.
Or something like Google Maps -- all that replaced was the paper booklet people used to keep in their cars, it's not like we used to employ 'navigators' to go out on a road trip.
Or something like Intuit QuickBooks: there's still an accountant in the loop, and if anything more accountants today than there were a few decades ago.
Certainly some software is essentially automatory in nature. But to characterize 'nearly all' as being such just betrays a lack of awareness for the rest of the field.
> That one is somehow deserving of sympathy and that of mathematicians is not
He didn't say that mathematicians aren't deserving, he was griping that people said this about SWEs. Do you think mathematicians are deserving but SWEs aren't?
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How did you manage describe a litany of automation while being fully unaware that is what you were doing? I mean you even said the word autopilot lmao. Yes, not all tasks in a job are fully automatable. iPhones, automating communication. Quickbooks and turbotax, automating business workflow steps.
The words and excels of the world, automating documentation and bookkeepery. It all makes some kind of existing thing we already do faster and more convenient, and often more efficient. Most software simply does nothing new. The thing you didnt manage to list which is the actually good example is games.
> Are phones an "automation of existing jobs"?
You seem to be unaware of the existence switchboard operators (people redirecting calls to the correct person) were hundreds of thousands in the US alone at some point.