The Programmer Identity Crisis

I think "Identity Crisis" is a bit over dramatic, but I for the most part agree with the sentiment. I have written something in the same vane, but still different enough that I would love to comment it but its just way more efficient to point to my post. I hope that is OK: https://handmadeoasis.com/ai-and-software-engineering-the-co...

I liked your emphasis on individual diversity, and an attendant need to explore, select, adapt, and integrate tooling. With associated self-awareness. Pushing that further, your "categories" seem more like exemplars/prototypes/archetypes/user-stories, helpful discussion points in a high-dimensional space of blended blobs. And as you illustrate, it branches not just on the individual, but also on what they are up to. And not just on work vs hobby, but on context and task.

It'd be neat to have a big user story catalog/map, which tracks what various services are able to help with.

I was a kid in NE43 instead of TFA's Building 26 across the street - with Lisp Machines and 1980s MIT AI's "Programmer's Apprentice" dreams. I years ago gave up on ever having a "this... doesn't suck" dev env, on being able to "dance code". We've had such a badly crippling research and industrial policy, and profession... "not in my lifetime" I thought. Knock on wood, I'm so happy for this chance at being wrong. And also, for "let's just imagine for a moment, ignoring the utterly absurd resources it would take to create, science education content that wasn't a wretched disaster... what might that look like?" - here too it's LLMs, or no chance at all.

I can think of few truer identity crises than having a craft you have spent years honing and perfecting automated away.

I fully agree with that statement, but I dont agree with the premise that, that is whats happening currently.

That is actually a great idea, and I agree it would be very useful to have such a catalog/map!

I wonder though if the space is mature enough for such a map or if it would become to generic to say anything meaningful.

It's the explicitly stated goal of several of the largest companies on the planet which put up a lot of money to try to reach that goal. And the progress over the past few years has been stunning.

It's a pretty good trick if you don't look too hard at the details. Including how many users have been active for a year vs the weekly counts.

That is a very thoughtful piece. Thank you for posting it. I especially like the idea of that new mode of programming (or problem solving, whatever you call it) when people very much enjoy getting an LLM to do what they want.

This is both new and old, because it's the same joy (or dopamine hit) of making a machine do your bidding. Honing your prompts is not that different to honing your shell scripts. I think many people overlook this aspect.