Grief and the AI split
blog.lmorchard.com
Grief and the AI split
1–10 of 404 posts
Re: Grief and the AI split
#2This sounds right to me:
> Before AI, both camps were doing the same thing every day. Writing code by hand. Using the same editors, the same languages, the same pull request workflows. The craft-lovers and the make-it-go people sat next to each other, shipped the same products, looked indistinguishable. The motivation behind the work was invisible because the process was identical.
Helps explain why some people are delighted to have AI write code for them while others are unhappy that the part they enjoyed so much has been greatly reduced.
Similar note from Kellan (a clear member of the make-it-go group) in https://laughingmeme.org/2026/02/09/code-has-always-been-the... :
> That feeling of loss though can be hard to understand emotionally for people my age who entered tech because we were addicted to feeling of agency it gave us. The web was objectively awful as a technology, and genuinely amazing, and nobody got into it because programming in Perl was somehow aesthetically delightful.
Re: Grief and the AI split
#3There are far more divides than just that one.
For instance, the ones that look at it from an economics perspective, security perspective, long term maintainability perspective and so on. For each of these there are pros and cons.
Re: Grief and the AI split
#4There are far more divides than just that one. For instance, the ones that look at it from an economics perspective, security perspective, long term maintainability perspective and so on. For each of these there are pros and cons.
all this so people like us can do a job that wasn't that hard to begin with and was actually very comfortable all things considered, just a tiny bit easier in a way that isn't even measurable.
Re: Grief and the AI split
#5The divide is a matter of perspective.
I'm a 23+ year dev; among the highest level ICs in my org.
It's still craft, its just that the craft is different. I don't write *.ts, *.cs files anymore; I write *.md files that other devs are using, that we're using as guardrails, that ensures that we minimize the slop while increasing speed and basically lift every developers level up by several notches.
I went from building one kind of framework/platform level artifact to another type of framework/platform level artifact.
If one's perspective is that it's just a shift in what "craft" means, then it's still craft. I'm still building systems; just a different kind of system.
Re: Grief and the AI split
#6[dead]
Re: Grief and the AI split
#7There are far more divides than just that one. For instance, the ones that look at it from an economics perspective, security perspective, long term maintainability perspective and so on. For each of these there are pros and cons.
all this so people like us can do a job that wasn't that hard to begin with and was actually very comfortable all things considered, just a tiny bit easier in a way that isn't even measurable.
> a job that wasn't that hard to begin with
The more experience I get the harder the job seems tbh
Re: Grief and the AI split
#8Strong agree. Needs another pass or two at editing though, some painful LLM-os sticking out there :'(
Re: Grief and the AI split
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
all this so people like us can do a job that wasn't that hard to begin with and was actually very comfortable all things considered, just a tiny bit easier in a way that isn't even measurable.
> a job that wasn't that hard to begin with The more experience I get the harder the job seems tbh
Have you gotten to the part where you barely even get to write code anymore and just manage people's expectations full time yet?
Re: Grief and the AI split
#10[dead]
Yep it's not 'result chasers' but people who want to get credit while avoiding real work. And when their stuff breaks they are always too busy with something else or moved on to another project.