Jessica Kerr joins Kent by the fire to argue that AI didn't take the programmer's job, it split it in two. The part we loved, crafting code by hand, has been commoditized like IKEA furniture. What's left is harder and more human: understanding what to build, proving it works, and stewarding the living "symmathesy" of people, code, and agents all learning from each other. They get into accelerated learning, why play is a signal you're learning, the loop that "becomes a noose," and choosing excitement over fear while the ground keeps shifting. You can find more of Jessica’s thoughts on her podcast at: Machines of Code and Grace
This season of Still Burning is sponsored by WorkOS and Augment Code.
Listen to the audio version here.
That was fascinating! I love Jessica's thoughts on fairness in the small and in the large.
In most of the online communities I'm in, there's usually a small but very vocal group vehemently opposed to AI. In one community, we recently had to create a dedicated space for them to discuss their objections to AI because they were leaving drive-by negative comments on people's project announcements when AI was involved -- and the community has etiquette guidelines that say we focus on "making stuff" and "technical discussions", not "opinion pieces" and "venting".
I expect pushback against AI in non-technical communities -- like Jessica's kids are representative of that mindset -- but it still surprises me in the more hardcore technical communities that there are developers who refuse to learn about AI and experiment/play with it.
Regarding incentives, I started writing OSS way back in the early '90s and I did it for the fun of writing it and sharing it. It never occurred to me that OSS was something that should accrue compensation to authors/maintainers -- until GitHub Sponsorship became a thing! I get quite a nice stream of income from that now -- not enough to live on, but helpful -- but it doesn't change my incentive calculation on why I write & maintain OSS libraries.
great talk!