AI makes all my old software instincts wrong. It's kind of a bracing exhilarating feeling when it isn't totally depressing
Depressing side:Having your primary skill set / craft be taken over by machines is an economic threat and and ego threat.Nail in the coffin for GOFAI, OOP, ontology, and all other attempts to put computational knowledge on a structured footing. Also death knell to visual programming languages, something I used to specialize in.Software slop is even worse than text slop. The latter can just be ignored; but software is where I live.At my age I should be settling into old habits instead of inventing new ones. The pace of change is exhausting for everybody, but especially me, I'm too old for this shit.
Exhilarating side:It's easy to make stuff, and its ridiculously easy to turn vague ideas into real software.It's not really the death of all the old powerful ideas of computation. something like them will have to be reinvented for the new world. I would hazard they are needed more than ever, it's just nobody knows what that means yet.In fact maybe this is what the Protocol movement is really about, now that I come to think of it.The thing I actually care most about – building better interfaces between human and machine knowledge – is a problem and task that won't go away. The design space just changed radically, but the basic goal is the same. This is actually great news because UI thinking has been stuck in a rut for like 40 years.Much as I might like to rest, it's probably better if I'm forced to learn new tricks. old