This was beautiful. I also appreciated the backlink to Peter Welch’s spiritual ancestor to this essay, which I had forgotten how to find, and had the joy of reading again.
> You knew. And you signed off anyway. Because the alternative was losing the job, and the job was the mortgage, and the school fees, and the visa, and the version of yourself who'd fix it later once things stabilized.
I felt the pang in my bones reading this. All of us peons are just wading through this brave new world trying to do what we know is right but ultimately having no choice but to give in to life's needs.
When I heard the repetition of an insignificant detail like the USB stick, I caught a whiff of Claude, and soon enough Pangram confirmed my suspicions: 26% AI generated.
At least I'm glad the ship paragraph doesn't light up as AI, that would have been a travesty...
The USB stick hints at a big problem in our trade though: how do you "reboot" your IT infrastructure if it literally burns to the ground? I'm not talking about Google-scale systems (which still couldn't restart from scratch IIUC but they're actually working on it?) but only about SMEs.
How does a medium-sized SME were all the payrolls depends on Sara and her USB stick do if, literally, their servers do catch fire.
You've got backups, then what? How automated is the reinstallation of your typical SME's infra?
The closest I saw to that scenario was some documentary where some little trading firm had just time to fetch the backup hard drives before leaving the building on fire after a plane crashed into it on 9/11. The CEO (I think it was the CEO) was explaining that had he not grabbed a HDD with the backups, the company was done (not that I advice onsite/offline backups on HDDs that you must not forget to grab when the shit hits the fan as a solution btw).
I understand the "just drink the cloud kool-aid" angle: but are SMEs typically doing that?
How many SMEs out there are depending on Sara's knowledge of the USB memory stick and how to use it?
I've definitely seen similar things. And I'm sure many of you did too.
I think one thing that has changed permanently is coding by hand has become unnecessary. Programmers had edge over others because they knew the spec and syntax. Now that field has been leveled.
You still need to know the syntax but not the nitty gritty details and you don't need to be able to code a java's lambda's anonymous override or streams anymore. Just knowing it "somewhat" is enough.
But that's all that has changed.
What has not changed is the requirement for "systems" thinking and the general good practices. In fact, that has become even more important because earlier we were forced to think in existing patterns (editing pre-existing code), but now with coding agents, it can very easily duplicate the logic in its own module and call it a day.
So we need to be the forcing function here with our systems thinking and guardrails.
Archive link as the site seems down - https://web.archive.org/web/20260507003341/https://www.stvn....
Lovely writing!
> ... to which they nod before moving on to a lighter topic, like whether we're going to nuke Iran or not.
> There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came.
> AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did.
Love the sarcasm, it carries a cynical form of experience :)
This was beautiful. I also appreciated the backlink to Peter Welch’s spiritual ancestor to this essay, which I had forgotten how to find, and had the joy of reading again.
This is absurdly well written.
I don’t know how someone takes the familiar anxiety around AI replacing developers and turns it into something this beautiful and funny.
Once again, the programming industry has robbed literature of a potential Nobel Prize candidate.
As another commenter implied, the title a reference to this - https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks. Which is an incredible read as well
> You knew. And you signed off anyway. Because the alternative was losing the job, and the job was the mortgage, and the school fees, and the visa, and the version of yourself who'd fix it later once things stabilized.
I felt the pang in my bones reading this. All of us peons are just wading through this brave new world trying to do what we know is right but ultimately having no choice but to give in to life's needs.
> anxiety around AI replacing developers
For the benefit of people who don't absorb the entire article (spoiler alert):
>> … AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. …
When I heard the repetition of an insignificant detail like the USB stick, I caught a whiff of Claude, and soon enough Pangram confirmed my suspicions: 26% AI generated.
At least I'm glad the ship paragraph doesn't light up as AI, that would have been a travesty...
If it’s Claude - I’d love to see the prompts. This doesn’t read like AI to me. Lots of active voice. Shorter sentences.
Not saying those are signals of human writing but in my experience AI writing is verbose.
Can we not pretend that AI can meaningfully classify whether something was written by AI?
26% AI generated? What does that even mean? How is Pangram arriving at that figure?
You may be right. But this feeling is mine. Haha.
The USB stick hints at a big problem in our trade though: how do you "reboot" your IT infrastructure if it literally burns to the ground? I'm not talking about Google-scale systems (which still couldn't restart from scratch IIUC but they're actually working on it?) but only about SMEs.
How does a medium-sized SME were all the payrolls depends on Sara and her USB stick do if, literally, their servers do catch fire.
You've got backups, then what? How automated is the reinstallation of your typical SME's infra?
The closest I saw to that scenario was some documentary where some little trading firm had just time to fetch the backup hard drives before leaving the building on fire after a plane crashed into it on 9/11. The CEO (I think it was the CEO) was explaining that had he not grabbed a HDD with the backups, the company was done (not that I advice onsite/offline backups on HDDs that you must not forget to grab when the shit hits the fan as a solution btw).
I understand the "just drink the cloud kool-aid" angle: but are SMEs typically doing that?
How many SMEs out there are depending on Sara's knowledge of the USB memory stick and how to use it?
I've definitely seen similar things. And I'm sure many of you did too.
Many houses of cards?
> How does a medium-sized SME were all the payrolls depends on Sara and her USB stick do if, literally, their servers do catch fire.
The SpecOps guys have the following bit of wisdom on offer: "Two is one and one is none".
And a backup you haven't verified you can restore from isn't one.
Good read.
I think one thing that has changed permanently is coding by hand has become unnecessary. Programmers had edge over others because they knew the spec and syntax. Now that field has been leveled.
You still need to know the syntax but not the nitty gritty details and you don't need to be able to code a java's lambda's anonymous override or streams anymore. Just knowing it "somewhat" is enough.
But that's all that has changed.
What has not changed is the requirement for "systems" thinking and the general good practices. In fact, that has become even more important because earlier we were forced to think in existing patterns (editing pre-existing code), but now with coding agents, it can very easily duplicate the logic in its own module and call it a day.
So we need to be the forcing function here with our systems thinking and guardrails.