kjur

Experience gives perspective. Programming is not dead, and never will be. It's late September 2026. Sometime in September 1976, just after I entered college, I wrote and ran my first serious program. I have now been a programmer for literally 50 years. And man, I have seen it *all*. Punched cards to glass ttys on minicomputers to workstations to the earliest micros. I've written business software, communication programs, development tools, games, language implementations, kernel device drivers, graphics libraries, a few critical pieces of infrastructure, and all manner of odd programs for which there is no taxonomy. Coded in a score of languages some of which are now forgotten. I've run over 70 open-source projects and contributed to at least as many more. Along the way I noticed a few things, and wrote about them, and that made me famous. But I'm not here to write about that today. I'm here to write about what it means to be a programmer and a technologist with the Singularity upon us. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told "programming is over". You kids may think this is a new claim that came into the world with LLMs. Hah! There's been that kind of talk at every step function in the quality of our programming tools. I first heard it when compilers were replacing hand-hacked assembler in the early 1980s, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if somebody said it earlier when in-memory code replaced plugboards. One constant amidst all this change is that the intentions in a user's head do not magically turn into executable instructions that a computer can run. Another constant is the mindset of the people who specialize in bridging the gap between wish and algorithm. A programmer is a programmer is a programmer - the tools are secondary. "But it's different this time!" some people will say, "AIs are superhuman now!" So? What did you think the optimization stage of a compiler was, chopped liver? We've been relying on tools that exceeded human capabilities all along - we built them precisely because our meatbrains could not otherwise keep up with the demands of the job. It's been a hell of a ride, that 50 years. I've succeeded and failed and succeeded again. Done a lot of work I'm proud of. Built at least a few things that look like they're going to last. None of that goes away because, hypothetically, an AI might have made me faster. The work is never done, even if the tools can talk to us now. Because intentions still have to be communicated; people who specialize in that and develop right mindset to do it still have a major advantage over people who don't. If you're feeling depressed because you spent years or decades developing hand-coding skills that are obsolete now? Buck up. You still have the most important asset - a mind that knows how to think that way. I'm facing the winds of the Singularity with a smile. Because 50 years and I'm still standing - still shipping code that people can use, still learning, still refusing to be paralyzed by the pace of change. The best therapy for your uncertainty? Get to work on something.