My personal emotional reaction to these changes is very similar, as a 40-something year old programmer. I wrote my own take on it (
https://medium.com/@kannanvijayan/talking-to-the-computer-5c...), didn't submit it to HN though.
I was genuinely considering whether or not I still liked programming - the excitement and risk of technical failure had dropped off. Most failures were for other organizational and process and management reasons. I respect the value of executing those aspects well, but I have no interest in becoming fluent in solving that class of problems. It just bores me. I want to build big beautiful, complex, intricate machines.
The agentic tools are, for me, a step up into tackling broader projects I had put on the shelf as "not doable without investment". I can self-fund my ideas now. Things I anticipate would have taken about a decade or so to play around with and build out as a sole developer, I'm taking on as a sole developer.
But that said, I do appreciate that we can't be sure of what exactly this churn will produce. The other factors that go along with the technical achievement aren't too rosy.
I was genuinely considering whether or not I still liked programming - the excitement and risk of technical failure had dropped off. Most failures were for other organizational and process and management reasons. I respect the value of executing those aspects well, but I have no interest in becoming fluent in solving that class of problems. It just bores me. I want to build big beautiful, complex, intricate machines.
The agentic tools are, for me, a step up into tackling broader projects I had put on the shelf as "not doable without investment". I can self-fund my ideas now. Things I anticipate would have taken about a decade or so to play around with and build out as a sole developer, I'm taking on as a sole developer.
But that said, I do appreciate that we can't be sure of what exactly this churn will produce. The other factors that go along with the technical achievement aren't too rosy.