Software engineers don't get to be Luddites about AI

Many software engineers are righteously angry about AI. It’s understandable to be upset that the skills you built your professional identity around are getting automated away. But software engineers are the last people in the world who should be complaining about this. If you live by the sword, you will perish by the sword1. Software engineering has always automated industries From the very beginning, software engineering has been about automating other people’s work. Every single commercial software program2 is valuable because it takes over some task you would have to pay a human to do. The engineer who built VisiCalc, one of the first pieces of personal commercial software, agonized over the potential of the spreadsheet to put bookkeepers out of work. Here is a brief list of industries software engineers have automated away3: Video rental stores Business directories and encyclopaedias Typesetting companies Travel agencies Record stores Typing pools Data-entry Trading-floor runners…