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Comment by julianlam | Hacker News Reader

> Just a few years ago, AI essentially could not program at all. In the future, a given AI instance may “program better” than any single human in history. But for now, real programmers will always win.

For how long? Do I get to feel smug about this for 10 days, 10 weeks, or 10 years? That radically changes the planned trajectory of my life.

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These posts are just programmers trying to understand their new place in the hierarchy. I'm in the same place and get it, but also truisms like 'will always win' is basically just throwing a wild guess at what the future will look like. A better attitude is to attempt to catch the wave.

TFA's author is literally saying it may happen. He's using AI so he already caught the wave. He's augmenting himself with AI tools. He's not saying "AI will never surpass humans at writing programs". He writes:

" At this particular moment, human developers are especially valuable, because of the transitional period we’re living through."

You and GP are both attacking him on a strawman: it's not clear why.

We're seeing countless AI slop and the enshittification and lower uptime for services day after day.

To anyone using these tools seriously on a daily basis it's totally obvious there are, TODAY*, shortcomings.

TFA doesn't talk about tomorrow. It talks about today.

To be fair, the author phrased his point poorly in a way that invites confusion:

> "But for now, real programmers will always win."

"for now ... always", not a good phrasing.

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