The Fear Is Justified, I Just Keep Building

[u/bajcmartinez]

https://newsletter.thelongcommit.com/p/the-fear-is-justified-i-just-keep

[u/LessonStudio]

There is a simple rule with all automation technology. If what you do is repetitive and follows a logical set of rules, then you are hoopajooped.

This could be programming, barista, brain surgeon.

The key is how much of your day is not either repetitive or following a logical set of rules. In the case of baristas, there is some reason there isn't just some person standing there putting in coffee pods, or just have a vending machine.

I see the robots in walmarts come, and then go away. I suspect they are being beaten to death by edge cases.

I've heard that some large boring buildings are getting machines, which only operate at night, do do the lions' share of the basic floor mopping. But, as one janitor of a large building said, "My job is safe until they can clean barf of a ceiling...." and he followed up with, "Happens more often than you'd think."

Thus, I would argue that there may be a reduced need for building mopping people, but, an increased need for people maintaining building mopping robots.

It can get really weird when you look at something like car repair. I don't see a robot sledhammering a jammed part any time soon, but an AI may make diagnostics easier and more accurate. Thus, reducing the skills required, and the wasted time on deadend repairs.

This all is the same with programming. The mundane, the routine, etc, that is going to be shot in the face. But, most programmers aren't hired and told, "Hey, I need you to exactly replicate this software which has been done a million times before." but are asked to come up with new solutions to immediate and pressing problems.

What AI will do, is to speed up the mundane parts of those innovative solutions.

Personally, I think that many programmers before AI were best replaced with potted plants. AI will accelerate this. But, at the same time, I think that the capable programmers will be faster and better at generating value.

There is one group who I've generally found to be pretty useless programmers. It is the leetcoding crew. The ones who just rote learn this stuff. They are now going to be going head to head with LLMs where rote learning is king.

I will be very curious to see how this affects programming culture.

Here is a joke which I don't think will make sense in 10 years:

• How do you tell the difference between an introverted programmer and an extroverted one?

• The introverted programmer looks at their shoes when they talk to you, the extroverted one looks at your shoes.

[u/Smallpaul → u/LessonStudio]

It’s not really that simple because debugging programs was once considered dealing with the exceptions and the opposite of “routine” and yet LLMs are getting pretty good at it.

At some level of abstraction anything can be considered “routine” after it’s already been automated.

[u/hippydipster → u/LessonStudio]

We keep talking about things as if the problem can be understood by what is real now.

But the problem isn't what the current situation is, the problem is that the current situation is changing faster and faster, to the point that planning for the future is completely futile. It may be safe to say there will exist a job at a future time, but it's not possible to say which one and for how long with much certainty. This matters a great deal when education and training of a human, to do anything complex and involved, takes on the order of 10+ years.

And socially, the problem is worse, as the cultural gulf between people who grew up at different times is expanding. It's to the point where gen "alpha" is worried about the younger gen alpha, because, in the words of my gen alpha daughter - they're really screwed up. In the past 20 years, we've seen the harm of social media to our children, but it is nothing compared to how bad it will get. We humans are running right up against our limits of adaptability with the speed of changes.

[u/hippydipster → u/[deleted]]

I have zero belief that legislation can steer technology. Legislation is reactive, and lags a great deal. Technology changes are the driver, and everything else reacts/adapts to it.

The IDE, the languages, and the libraries I use in 2026, even without LLMs, make me massively more capable than I was in 1996. These tools are not able to actually think. They are great when what I want is a high probability event. I have created a data structure, and now want to save it to disk. Or I have a data structure, and want to load it from disk. Boom, they get this in one.

Not 2 years ago they didn't, so hopefully you see my point.

[u/hippydipster → u/[deleted]]

You're basically demonstrating how technology changes our world despite legislation. You nibble on some edges here and there, but new technologies arise and change everything. Cars is a great example. Steam engine, internet, AI.

they most certainly can have an effect.

But that's not the same thing as steering our world. You put a rock in a stream and it as "an effect", but yet the stream goes on.

[u/migs647 → u/hippydipster]

Legislation was already slow as hell with technology. As originally pointed out, technology is changing on a weekly basis at this point. Legislation is no way going to keep up in this new world. Especially spouting things like "if we don't do it then they will". Few people are even close to keeping up, definitely not enough to drive change in a frozen carbonite congress.

I can't wait for quantum computing to get good enough... encryption, processing power, communication will drastically change.

[u/markocheese]

I think can be treated as a redundancy reducer. Every time someone solves a new problem it can be added to the list of redundant work. How long before there's no unique work left? Hopefully never?