I know these kinda questions get asked a lot these days, but hear me out.
I’m a junior-going-on-medior software engineer, graduated last year and have been (more or less) teaching programming for four years.
In my search to find meaning in life, I stumbled into programming and found that there was a lot to learn. I loved it. That’s why I eventually chose to switch careers once I musterred enoigh resources to do so. I chose this job because I like learning and I want to keep learning for the rest of my life. I love the way how learning is an integral part of the programming community and how everyone encourages and stimulates it.
AI has changed the job of an swe, that much I understand. That is not a deal breaker for me, as long as there is still a lot of meaningful, worthwhile, marketable things to learn. I am using AI to learn things faster now, but there is an easy pittfall to actually learn nothing from AI. Some say we don’t have to learn anything anymore, I don’t think that is true, but then what is true?
How is AI affecting the learning aspect of this job? Is learning still an important part of the job? Is there still enough worthwhile things to learn? Is it still valuable to learn more?
I used to work in games as a contract coder for engines/tooling. I finished up in 2013 after 12 years and completely burnt out. Ended up moving into manufacturing. What looked like defeat then turned out to be the most move I even made. I cannot imagine how bad that scene is nowadays that the value of the work has been completely debased.
I think there will be another side where highly skilled coders will be more valuable than gold, but it is a while yet until we get to that space.
What kind of manufacturing? They asked, trying to mask their desperate attempt to switch careers.
It was just in food production, it isn’t a great field but it is consistent.