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I see your concern, but don't think it's anything to be worried about. Is an electrician's job at risk because homeowners can purchasing wiring and outlets from a big box store and tap a new outlet in their home? Are mechanics worried about people who do oil changes at home?

There will always be a demand for skilled labor, but the definition of "skilled" is going to continue changing over time. That's a good sign, it means that the field is healthy and growing.



My fear, perhaps ill founded, is that the "electricians" of the machines will just age out like COBOL devs. Highly sought after and in demand, yet work no one new is learning to take over.

A large percentage of the current software workforce, professional and open source, are people who learned these skills casually growing up rather than explicitly in school as a career. I'm not sure this demographic exists in any meaningful numbers in younger generations.

Will there be enough people to maintain our foundations when the only ones who understand them are the ones formally educated? What happens to the actual number of people even interested in a computing career path when they didn't grow up with "classical" computers?

I am happy to be totally wrong here, it's just the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.


My concern is not really about jobs! It's about the "thoughts you're able to think"

I guess whether you think this is real or not is a similar question to whether you think the iPad/iPhone thing is real

Did that happen, or not? (honest question)

The irony is that if it did happen to a certain person, that person won't notice it

Personally I do think it's very real, because thoughts are correlated with what's "ready at hand", what you can accomplish in an environment


You can think whatever you want, despite what Paul Graham says. No one is required to pay you for the thoughts you think though


Usually in many countries, insurances won't pay if something went bad by not being done by a professional electrician or mechanic.




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