Comment by namrog84
2 hours ago
Ive felt like most of my software career has always been focused around automating my own job away and I've always loved it.
And nothing has changed for me except my standards are higher, I have better and more thorough testing, and I can iterate and do significantly more.
Throughout my career ive actually worked from some assembly work to higher level language. PowerPC-> x86 assembly. From c++ to typescript. And now with agentic work im still having the time of my life. It's actually resolved some of my personal focus and attention problems too.
I still push plenty of code to github and if only agents read it and it goes uncredited thats fine with me. Since its not like any of us ever really got publicly credited working at most corporations beyond an immediate team anyway. There are no credits on the big software I've contributed too.
The tools and scripts I build now have shifted to help human and agents work better together. Let agents do what they do better and help empower humans to do what they are better at still.
For the foreseeable future I am still quite optimistic and energized about continuing to do useful and productive work.
> Ive felt like most of my software career has always been focused around automating my own job away and I've always loved it.
Yep, this is pretty much exactly what I was trying to say.
And to the rest, I wholeheartedly agree. My ability to build and ship has been multiplied and continues to grow and I absolutely love it. There are growing pains and things are changing quickly but I find it exciting and energized as well.
It's only fun until you succeed and get fired!
Throughout the history of computing the number of developers has been climbing as has the demand. In that time the ability of 1 developer has increased, on average, to be able to accomplish more in the same amount of time/effort. Will the industry change? Undoubtedly, but automated out of a job? I doubt it. More companies will find it financially viable to hire a full-time developer who can do what would overwhelm a single person in the past, or hire a small team that can execute at the level of a much larger team.