The idea that C is a smol language that can be completely understood by one person is one of those myths that need to be put to bed. C is riddled with complexities and footguns, especially but not exclusively around undefined behavior.

The ones complaining about "slop" are the ones going on vibes now.

The point is, new technology arrived that allowed developers to do much more. Existing programmers hemmed and hawed about it because it threatened their egos, making easy what they once found very difficult. But the sensible engineers adopted the technology.

AI may not be deterministic, but on small to medium-sized tasks it produces more correct code, more reliably, faster than a human developer does. By any objective measure, not adopting it is professional irresponsibility.

Before he died, Tim Bryce had been trying to convey, since decades ago, that the document-and-diagram person is the real smart one in the room, the one contributing actual value. The programmers are just translators, turning those specifications into something a machine can execute. What's more, because they arrogate to themselves more value to the organization than they can actually justify, and because they resist discipline and organization, they're usually a liability to the company, and to society at large. Why does the TV and every device attached to it need a separate remote? Why don't they all just adopt a universal standard? It's programmers' fault. (No, really, that is a thing he said: https://patch.com/florida/palmharbor/amp/28237018/the-proble...)

Bryce was absolutely right. Now, with AI, there's barely any need for programmers anymore—just people who can describe the information systems the business needs. He'd be laughing his ass off had he lived to today, as the people who to whom every business had been beholden just watched their value drop to zero.

There's just no value anymore in being an obsessive technician anymore. There's no value in being a nerd. And here's a secret: the people you thought used to value you, secretly resented you and wanted you gone. Tim Bryce just said the quiet part out loud.

AI has freed you to focus on what's really important: being convincing in business meetings and charming at cocktail parties. Y'all need to go grind on your social skills, because AI won't be coming for those for a while yet.

AI is being built by an SV cult (or a confluence of several such cults) who want to build the fucking Omnissiah, with little regard for profitability. When the investors start demanding a return, they reason, they'll just ask the Omnissiah how to make money.

Robot friends enable you to get much more done faster and more accurately, that if you call yourself an engineer you're a damn fool not to make use of them.

"...And when everyone's a plumber... no one will be!"

* a particular person is possessed of intelligence you respect, certainly not unintelligent compared to the norm and maybe have what is considered high intelligence

* that same person is way less intelligent than you, cannot do the same cognitive things that you do, and is prone to falling into traps that you have some resistance to

An example: there is a phenomenon called the "breakfast question", wherein people below a certain intelligence threshold, purportedly cannot reason about hypothetical scenarios that are not the case, and so cannot answer questions like "What would you do if you didn't have breakfast this morning?" But I'm not talking about that here. Rather, I have reason to believe that there is another, much higher intelligence threshold than the putative breakfast-question threshold—perhaps one standard dev above the mean or so—below which people are unable to reason about the phenomenon of exponential growth. One sign of being below such a threshold is that the person keeps getting entrapped in multilevel marketing schemes. They fizzled out of Herbalife, so they get into Vemma. Vemma doesn't work out for them, so they get into Aboa or whatever the next one is called. People who get involved in one, crash out, learn the dangers and never get involved in that shit again don't count; they're borderline cases at worst. It's the ones who are repeatedly burned that definitely do not have the cognitive chops to bellyfeel the way exponential growth works and realize that the whole business model is a scam. They keep sticking their leg in the bear trap because they don't know better; they can't know better.

I have friends and relatives like this. They're not stupid people. But the scam works because it's set up to operate on principles that are just beyond their physical capability to understand. There are probably scams that are hidden from my understanding for the same reason—perhaps certain highly sophisticated financial instruments. Or Anthropic's IPO (whoops did I just say that out loud).