The new normal involves fewer and fewer humans in the loop. So it's not just that things are changing and we need to adapt, I think the world will be able to get by with a lot less labor (more capital though). It's not like we're losing a fun hobby, it's a living. It's ikigai but more importantly it's food in the table.

Some seem to think we'll just get 10x as much done. But I just don't think there's that much more stuff that actually needs doing. We won't build 10 Google Mapses, and there aren't 9 other apps that have the utility of Google Maps.

(Please debate me on this as I don't want to be right.)

> Grief is exactly what many engineers (not just programmers) are going through right now. They (we) are going through the process of coming to terms with the death of something we loved - not a transformation, but death - and figuring out what comes after that.

Very well put.

A large part of that "what comes after" is grappling with the next hard question: after the death of the craft we loved, are we - our skills, our intuition, our problem solving - even needed anymore?

Even if we still are now, will there be a time when there also won't be a place for us?

I think this is true for some programmers. For others like myself, the change and constant radical improvement is what we loved about technology in the first place. I'm essentially living the dream I had when I was 5 and saw Wargames for the first time. Sure, it was fun to program by hand but now we have AI, which allows us to do even more amazing things and we're very early in the curve there.

> We're being asked to adapt, but perhaps we should just accept that things are not going back to what they were, look around, and decide not to do the things we used to love in a new way that we cannot love

I would love to take this path but unfortunately I have to make money to pay my bills and afford to eat. I don't know how I would afford to keep my home without continuing this career, as mangled as it is now thanks to AI