Every generation of engineers believes they experienced the "real" era when things were understandable / meaningful. The people who mastered punch cards probably felt the same way when keyboards took over. The people who wrote in assembly probably felt the same way when C came around.
Abstraction didn't start with AI. It's been a defining feature of computing since the beginning.
For most developers, writing code has never been the point. Rather, it's been a tool: a means to build something useful, solve a problem, support a family, etc. The craft evolves and so must we.
Posts like this expose the risk in tying one's identity to a specific version of the game. When the rules change, it's a loss. That's human! But the deeper skill - judgment, taste, style, etc. — hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it matters more when raw output becomes cheap.
We can mourn the loss of forced difficulty, or we can choose new challenges. No doubt that's harder when one has spent decades mastering a specific skill, but it's still a choice.
The magic was never the machine. Rather, it's the _agency_.
Every generation of engineers believes they experienced the "real" era when things were understandable / meaningful. The people who mastered punch cards probably felt the same way when keyboards took over. The people who wrote in assembly probably felt the same way when C came around.
Abstraction didn't start with AI. It's been a defining feature of computing since the beginning.
For most developers, writing code has never been the point. Rather, it's been a tool: a means to build something useful, solve a problem, support a family, etc. The craft evolves and so must we.
Posts like this expose the risk in tying one's identity to a specific version of the game. When the rules change, it's a loss. That's human! But the deeper skill - judgment, taste, style, etc. — hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, it matters more when raw output becomes cheap.
We can mourn the loss of forced difficulty, or we can choose new challenges. No doubt that's harder when one has spent decades mastering a specific skill, but it's still a choice.
The magic was never the machine. Rather, it's the _agency_.
And that’s still available!