> software engineering is the only industry that is built on the notion of rapid change, constant learning, and bootstrapping ourselves to new levels of abstraction
replyNot sure I agree. I think most programming today looks almost exactly the same as it did 40 years ago. You could even have gotten away with never learning a new language. AI feels like the first time a large percentage of us may be forced to fundamentally change the way we work or change careers.
One may still write C code as they did 40 years ago, but they still use the power of numerous libraries, better compilers, Git, IDEs with syntax highlighting and so on. The only true difference — to me — is the speed of change that makes it so pronounced and unsettling.
replyIt's true, unless you have always been working on FOTM frontend frameworks, you could easily be doing the same thing as 20/30/40 years ago. I'm still using vim and coding in C++ like someone could have 30+ years ago (I was too young then). Or at least, I was until Claude code got good enough to replace 90% of my code output :)
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