Comment by cpursley
7 days ago
Exactly, I think one of the reasons programers are becoming so depressed over these AI agents is that they’re finally realizing that it was never really about the code, but about the outcome - and btw, this cold hard fact applies to the pre-LLM era.
This occurred to me years ago when I was talking to a friend’s wife, who is a very intelligent and accomplished attorney. She was legitimately surprised when I explained that they were multiple programming languages, and technology stacks behind the software that she uses on a daily basis.
Even my wife, a teacher who is very tech savvy (she’s the one who insisted I try ChatGPT after brushing it off) reminds me on the regular that she doesn’t care about how any of it works just that it doesn’t “glitch” when she’s in the middle of a class. Which has always been good for me to remember when I get off into the weeds yak shaving.
I do think code-as-craft should be respected in its own right. I'm very much a craftsman coder. It makes sense how I could clock so many hours over all these years.
But what I do "at work" isn't the same as my personal pursuit and embracing that different framing positively has made me more at peace and also better at the work job.