I don’t want to do twice my workload. I’m old enough to have learned that the faster and more efficient you are, the more demands they pile on you, and the net result is more stress, more expectations for the same pay. AI doesn’t solve unreasonable demands, shifting requirements and looming deadlines, does it?
And still, writing code is not even the bottleneck, the thinking, meeting stakeholders, figuring out technical problems is. What would I do with a machine that spits out bad code.
I guess I’m not cut out for a field where the only metric that counts is how many tickets and lines of code one can churn out in an hour any more.
In my 20+ years in the tech industry, the most important thing I have learned is that writing code is the least significant part of being a software engineer.
You write code once, but then it's modified endlessly. Supporting and using and improving the code is the majority of the work. LLMs are terrible for that. They tend to write code that isnt easy to read and modify. They don't plan for future use cases. They often paint themselves into a corner with successive modifications, and lose context as the project grows.
Don't worry about your job just yet. We are a long long way from replacing people.
If you want more spiders from him (actually, a spider-man), in a fantasy setting, I recommend Spiderlight. Just a fun novella that feels like a D&D campaign, works great as a palate cleanser.
I find his writing style really enjoyable, to the point that I really need to dive into his entire repertoire now.
It’s not gonna collapse. It can only grow bigger; the entire world economy runs and depends on the internet.
Rather, what will happen is a bunch of us will willingly stop participating and stepping away from the technological singularity. A bit like the Amish, this time not for religious reasons. Let the urbanites enjoy their AI-generated virtual realities, with work, sex, and food from the comfort of your phone, competing for fewer and more bullshit office jobs creating more addictive apps; I just want to live on a farm with solar panels, grow tomatoes and write code for fun.
You can still share via torrents, but Soundcloud seems to be the main place, as it has been for almost 20 years now.
On a separate note, I must say that starting to read your comment, I was sure it'll be going towards "Back in 2000 I cudda made a song outta that... Now, in 2025, I just use suno"
Every example I thought "yeah, this is cool, but I can see there's space for improvement" — and lo! did the author satisfy my curiosity and improve his technique further.
Bravo, beautiful article! The rest of this blog is at this same level of depth, worth a sub: https://alexharri.com/blog
The best essay I read last year described how there are two types of artists: those born with great talent, that usually create their masterpieces in their early 20s and coast for the rest of their life, and those that take most of their adulthood before finding their voice, peaking late in their 40s and 50s. The author used Picasso as an example of the former, and Kurt Vonnegut for the latter.
Gave me the greatest impulse to explore my creative drive like nothing else before, after spending my 20s lost in a daze. I know you’re joking, but if you aren’t, do not lose hope yet.
> You put more effort, you take responsibility for stupid people's decisions, and then you get a disproportionately small reward
On that I disagree. Managers might have to take responsibility for bad decisions, sure, but get a disproportionately larger reward than those under them. It's certainly less stressful at the bottom of the ladder, but don't expect to get much praise or monetary reward, and you're the first to go as soon as something goes wrong. There's a reason why late-stage companies are full of middle managers, and few people actually doing the work.
> don't expect to get much praise or monetary reward
Yeah so I figured out that if I have a bullshit busyjob for €100k and my option is to actually start working my ass off and maybe double the salary in absolute best-case scenario, then fuck that. But I admit that my position might be exceptional.
> and you're the first to go as soon as something goes wrong.
I live in Europe so I assume I'd survive even a big fuckup as long as I'm following my manager's orders, even if HQ is American. Also, when there are bigger layoffs, they specifically by law must let go in the order of new hires to old hires, which means that I'm not in immediate danger even if they cut workforce.
The biggest danger is someone discovering that I mostly play video games at work and then giving me lots of useless tasks just to keep me occupied.
And still, writing code is not even the bottleneck, the thinking, meeting stakeholders, figuring out technical problems is. What would I do with a machine that spits out bad code.
I guess I’m not cut out for a field where the only metric that counts is how many tickets and lines of code one can churn out in an hour any more.
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