Comparing programmers to farriers is definitely strange on the surface. However I think it's quite unfair to reject the authors premise due to the ephemeral nature of some software. And I think it's downright arrogant to assume moving from horses to cars wasn't seriously challenging for his ancestor. But yeah, I would love to chat with the old man about what that transition looked like.

Also, AI adoption might look like it's moving fast for individuals, however I see many companies struggling to actually utilise it effectively. Business processes are slow moving political machines. Sure a large part of the software industry is ephemeral, indirectly providing capital value. However many jobs are still very tangible; embedded, backend web systems, networking etc etc. Instability in these systems absolutely results in tangible loss of value.

It will absolutely take decades before we figure out 'correct' AI usage at an industry scale. Heck, even frontier labs are still undecided about best practices.

P.S. ty for the article link, will read!