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> Writing hand crafted code for the sole use of an individual never happened.

It seems bizarre in a way to see this sentiment on hacker news.

as an economic activity. i made my own crappy todo apps for fun too but I never once got paid for it.

now that I can get a machine to do that instead has the world fundamentally changed?

it is still wrong. Lots of people created and still create software that just themselves use as competitive advantage in their area of work.

Also hard to overstate the sheer impact of a tool like Excel, which in many ways is an ad-hoc programming tool so intuitive that anyone can learn to use it. Even though it sees more jeer than celebration, and is often something techies seek to liberate users from, it's likely one of the most economically impactful inventions of the 20th century, already delivering many of the things we hype AI for.

Entire businesses run off Excel spreadsheets.

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