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Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot I hate about this statement.

First, the pervasive assumption that there is no skill involved in food preparation is wrong. While the floor may be higher in a kitchen operated by an executive chef, there is a noticeable difference between a badly-made Big Mac and a well-made one. Execution matters.

Next, at this point "IT" is so broad as to be almost meaningless. In this discussion, we're talking about programming.

Finally, you're holding up Michelin starred chefs as being inherently better than all other chefs. The Michelin star program is skewed towards one particular end result; to put it in technology terms, it's like grading your business solely on a narrow set of SLOs rather than a holistic understanding.

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Hate it all you want, the vast majority of "programmers" aren't working on anything novel, meaningful or hard. For the vast majority of people it's just a job, it's not a hobby, it's not a passion, it's not something they dream about, it's just a thing that they have to do 8 hours a day to make money and go do stuff in the real world. They don't want to think about it on walks, they don't want to cry about it, they don't want to dream about it and solve problems in their fucking sleep

AI is liberating them because it automatise 80% of their work, and there is nothing wrong about that. Most people work on projects that won't even exist in 10 years, let's stop pretending we're all working on Apollo tier software... Coding isn't a craft, it's not an art, it's a job in which you spend the vast majority of your time fucking up your eyes and spine to piss code for companies treating you like cattle.

For every """code artisan""" you have a thousand people who'd be as excited about working in a car factory or flipping burgers, it just so happens that tech working conditions are better

There is nothing wrong with people wanting to just be able to afford food, shelter, and comfort.

However, if people are writing software that other people rely on, there has to be some expectation of quality. Software that controls a machine responsible for keeping someone alive, for instance, should function reliably.

Relying on AI to vibe-code such software is dangerous at best.

Well, I don't know about you but everything I have written for money has been new (novel), interesting to me, and of value for the organisations I worked for. I would not want it to be otherwise, and I never saw it as a Mac job.

In other words, for the vast majority of people: work (code) or starve to death.

> First, the pervasive assumption that there is no skill involved in food preparation is wrong. While the floor may be higher in a kitchen operated by an executive chef, there is a noticeable difference between a badly-made Big Mac and a well-made one. Execution matters.

I worked fast food in high school in the 00s, like many folks here, I bet.

The line and product at a fast-food restaurant is heavily optimized. The patties used by a typical US quick-serve restaurant are designed around processes for optimal cook times per patty.

It really doesn't require much skill to assemble a burger at McDonald's these days outside of minimal training most unskilled people can pick up easily.

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