I absolutely see your point here. At the same time you have to consider why one would go to these „extreme“ lengths to just pay for something. The simplest reason would be, because you otherwise wouldn’t be able to simply pay for something. One example would be a country where hyperinflation is the norm, where paying in dollars or in another major currency is not possible. Leaving you no other alternative to buy something or obtain payment for any work you sell. Another example is an organisation operating under a dictatorship, where paying for something is not simply possible, because you are not able to have a bank account. One additional example would be you trying to stay anonymous. Maybe you want to buy a sex toy in a country where this is illegal or just don’t want your spouse to know about this. (There is a moral question behind this, but there is a moral question behind everything, depending on location, time and context. Lets not get into that.) Maybe you bought crypto years ago and now want to buy stuff, without having to pay horrendous amounts of tax on any gains. Yet, I agree with you in that the setup above might be too complex and complicated for most people. Wishing you a great day ☀️

You are correct! The beauty of bitcoin is that you can buy some and still go on with your own life. Even if you just allocate a portion of your investment amount into bitcoin it will still grow.

I think the value of LLMs lies in the way it is used. I also get paid for coding, but would say coding is only part of what I am being paid for. Understanding what problem at hand and how we can embed a solution in existing systems is most of the work. That work is something no LLM will help me do. AI already helps me correct the messages and mails I write, which saves me time. AI helps me research about topics and concepts. It also proposes code for solutions. But in the end it is me who has to actively choose a solution and code it correctly to fit in the existing codebase. In case something breaks it will be my responsibility. I will not give that responsibility away blindly to am LLM. But LLMs have value, just like information on the internet does. Assembling all that information together is still a human task. So we might need less programmers, but the day an LLM is able to do my entire work, it will also be able to do the work of my manager and of his manager. And if the LLM is able to do that, it might be as well also do the work of the CEO. (Im exaggerating on purpose here). The point is, human thought and judgement has value while we create products for human as end users.

I very much agree with you. Code is just the representation of business or data flows, carefully defined and fought over by stakeholders, day after day, year after year. I see AI LLMs as a tool supporting code creation like IDEs, git, OOP, cloud tools also do. I dare to claim, that people with a clear mind, willing to understand any problem and solve it with care, diligently and make the solution clear will continue to work. We currently use code for this as a tool. In this sense I very much appreciate your carefully crafted response. You have disarmed a fool with thought and argument. Just like I would expect a developer to solve a problem. People review code to make sure it makes sense. And I mostly approve your arguments, just like you disagreed with the person you responded to. I too disagree with that persons comment. I find it nice to see how a developers work is embedded in reality and learns from reality. We will integrate AI, but should do it with thought, care and understanding.

Makes me think of why I left Germany

This is kind of a riddle. Whoever gets the better solution with better code in better time is the better programmer. Does it matter if ai was used or not?

As of now AI is a tool. I think the upsides and downsides lie in the way this tool is used. I would not like to give up my ai assistant, since the alternative is googling stuff or reading books. It saves me some time on trivial stuff I don’t have to memorise, but giving away my agency to it is a fools approach.