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Comment by pitched | Hacker News Reader

AI is not as big of a productivity boost as compilers were but it is not zero. Back then, SQL was created and marketed as something “managers could use”, another parallel to the current cycle. This whole hype cycle is something we’ve seen before and IMO, we should know better how to handle it this time around. It’s a bit disappointing to hear the same arguments every time.

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This has nothing to do with programming or productivity. I am addressing the fact that people like DHH and his fans are in the habit of framing the future as written and that you can either embrace it or get crushed. Embracing it is giving OpenAI, Anthropic, et. al your approval to keep on going. I'm not denying that AI can do the job a lot faster.

Keeping the comparison to compilers, people in the 60s refusing the transition weren’t crushed, their skills were devalued. The open models work well enough at coding to keep up without buying OpenAI or Anthropic products.

People who are expert at assembly are still extremely valuable.

But as a percentage, there are a lot fewer of us then there used to be.

70 years after the peak of assembly, that value probably comes more from supply than demand.

Given that we know he's literally a fascist (it's in all his political posts) that jives. "Embrace what we want or get mercilessly crushed" is a very fascist position.

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