People like this will create a net increase in software jobs. Once his software makes enough money so he doesn't have to sit in front of a computer, he will employ someone. It will initially be a gig fixing slop. https://www.slater.dev/2025/09/about-that-gig-fixing-vibe-co...
People in the trades have a ruthless pragmatism that SV has forgotten.
about a year ago I shared this on /r/AskProgramming:
"...a Pull Request is a delivery. It's like UPS standing at your door with a package. You think, "Nice, the feature, bugfix, etc has arrived! And because it's a delivery, it's also an inspection. A Code Review. Like a freight delivery with a manifest and signoff. So you have to be able to conduct the inspection: to understand what you're receiving and evaluate if it's acceptable as-is. Like signing for a package, once you approve, the code is yours and your team's to keep."
The metaphor has limits. IRL I sign immediately and resolve issues post-hoc with customer service. The UPS guy is not going to stand on my porch while I check if there's actually a bootable MacBook in the box. The vast majority of the time, there's no issue. If that were the same with code, teams could adopt a similar "trust now and defer verification" approach.
The article has a section on Modularity but never defines it. I wrote a post a few weeks ago on modularity and LLMs which does provide a definition. [1].
The article expresses what a lot of us are feeling. I appreciated the read.
It conflates purpose with outcome. I don't accept the premise that software's purpose is to "automate away other jobs". That may be an outcome, but software's purpose is to enable completely new possibilities. Think bicycles of the mind.
The Apollo guidance computer didn't replace astronauts. It made the missions possible in the first place because no human can continually correct the spaceship trajectory every 250ms for 10 days on end.
We're not receiving some cosmic karma. We're more like cotton pickers after the cotton gin. Someone still has to plow and plant.
I agree on principle. But there is going to be a painful transition where people are still reckoning with the new capabilities so I understand where all the fear/sadness is coming from.
Tbf I think the golden days of being a software dev are over even if the AI were to stagnate and never improve. The spectre of AGI is enough for higher ups to demand more output which will in turn require more hours to be put in by devs. A project that required 2 months will now be allotted 3 weeks because "Agentic coding increases productivity".
The formal engineering disciplines are not defined by the construction vs design distinction so much as the regulatory gates they have passed and the ethical burdens they shoulder for society's benefit.
