[abcde666777]

Let's cut through some of the noise here. We only talk about these things behause we fear becoming obsolete and losing our livelihoods.

Using the scarf example - nobody's paying you to knit it. Knitting it probably won't put food on your table. Maybe for tribal humans that kind of thing did, hence the psychological reward wiring, but not now.

Here's a reality: we do all become obsolete. It's called aging. I don't know how exactly to fit that into that puzzle, but my brain told me it's a relevant reference point, somehow.

A hiring company just wants you to make the thing with an optimal balance between quality and efficiency.

As I see it, one has a few options. A common one is just hoping everything will be okay. Often that turns out to be the case.

Another one is to proactively 'adapt or die'. Master the new way of making the thing even if it tastes bitter. Harder to do with age, but in some sense the obvious choice if you want to be competitive.

Speaking of, I think we often forget that - the world is one big competition for resources and survival. Happiness is a luxury, but we've converted it into a requirement.

I'm not saying I like any of this - I want to be secure for life following the same old patterns I've already learned as well.

But I consider that thought a comforting fantasy to be eyed with suspicion.

That said, thankfully, AI is still pretty good at enshittifying things, so I have a suspicion that one may not need to always adapt that enormously. I work with a lot of legacy software, and have seen that a lot of companies are full of old school tech debt for which hands on programming is still a must have.

Claude code or what have you is a little limited when you're writing code for obscure software packages which nobody knows the name of anymore, but on which some companies still depend for their core business logic.

Will it all dry up eventually? Sure. But slower than we expect methinks.

[soanvig]

Wonderful comment.