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I have no idea why the lump of labour fallacy is still so ingrained in people. AI which is not AGI or whatever sci-fi panic people have on twitter, is a slightl

I have no idea why the lump of labour fallacy is still so ingrained in people. AI which is not AGI or whatever sci-fi panic people have on twitter, is a slightly fancier autocomplete, and thus it's a productivity tool. Nobody has been replaced by their debugger or their intellisense, even if it makes coding 10x or 100x easier. It just means software development gets faster and cheaper. On net if anything that'll likely mean programming jobs expand, as software is still incredibly absent from many sectors of the economy. If tomorrow mom and pop stores start using AI to build themselves simple websites and come online and enter the online economy that'll likely vastly mean more customers for the software industry overall. I wouldn't be surprised if we have 10x as many indie game developers in a few years because these tools enable them to enter the market, which is good for virtually everyone working in the industry.

scaramanga 4y ago
Yes, in the past, the "toolbag" metaphor was used to sell us extremely expensive productivity tools like IDE's and the like. But as any developer who doesn't use them and still makes a perfectly fine living has realised, it was a hype-train setup by a small group of people that was used to accumulate wealth. But the end result was very modest or zero improvements in actual productivity. Now these things are practically given away for free to drive people towards websites where you can be sold software you won't ever own (SaaS/cloud) which was the next hype-train that was setup by a smnall group of people and that was used to accumulate wealth. But the end result was very modest or zero improvements in actual productivity. Here we are on the next hype train. And I think you've very much spotted the pattern. What these things are good for is driving up demand for new products and services that have increasingly marginal, zero, or sometimes even negative effects on human wellbeing overall.

scaramanga 4y ago

Yes, in the past, the "toolbag" metaphor was used to sell us extremely expensive productivity tools like IDE's and the like. But as any developer who doesn't use them and still makes a perfectly fine living has realised, it was a hype-train setup by a small group of people that was used to accumulate wealth. But the end result was very modest or zero improvements in actual productivity. Now these things are practically given away for free to drive people towards websites where you can be sold software you won't ever own (SaaS/cloud) which was the next hype-train that was setup by a smnall group of people and that was used to accumulate wealth. But the end result was very modest or zero improvements in actual productivity. Here we are on the next hype train. And I think you've very much spotted the pattern. What these things are good for is driving up demand for new products and services that have increasingly marginal, zero, or sometimes even negative effects on human wellbeing overall.