I always feel like an alien. There's a reading of Dave's OP not considered in this thread. He used the word "should": "several hundred thousand developers/software engineers should be replaced with AI and automated out of existence". Of course, there is a usage of "should" that's more of a prediction than a moral imperative. E.g. "We expect several hundred ...". But I didn't read it that way. I read Kass' 5 questions ([mis]informed or not) as an ethical stance. And Dave extended it to imply that those developers *should* be obsoleted, according to Kass' ethic.
Granted, many others are being obsoleted. But should they? Should they according to Kass' ethic? Something else like the one I forwarded? Does everyone have their own persnickety set of rules? A practical (though perhaps cynical or even nihilist) approach is to [in|ab]ductively arrive at what *should* happen based on what *is* happening, rather than stumbling into axioms of occult provenance. How and when to map is-should is the fundamental question, much more important than whichever individual rules might be adopted. On 4/20/26 7:53 AM, cody dooderson wrote:
I agree with Marcus. It is not just software developers that are getting replaced by AI. Book writers, musicians, lawyers and many other professions are seeing competition from AI. This article about an AI author just showed up on Hacker news, https://theamericanscholar.org/who-is-blake-whiting/ <https://theamericanscholar.org/who-is-blake-whiting/> . Apparently the books get very good reviews, but the author doesn't actually exist. I would speculate that almost any desk jockey profession is at risk. _ Cody Smith _ [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> On Wed, Apr 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM Marcus Daniels <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Dave writes: < It seems to me, based on fifty years working in business IT development, that several hundred thousand developers/software engineers should be replaced with AI and automated out of existence. > It's a growing list, and where it is weak, it mostly just a question of getting the token expenditure high enough while providing tools and grounding / embodiment. For sysadmin work, the main obstacle is having (something like) hands to open boxes, power cycle, and that sort of thing. The other day Claude Code set up a multi-architecture Kerberos server for me with NFSv4. Traditional software development is mostly done IMO. Also, building architecture is done. Claude Opus is surprisingly skilled at building plans. That will only accelerate IMO. Marcus
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