[philosophical mode ON, please don't take too seriously/personally if you care to engage]

You may have seen the regular stream of youtube videos in your feed with the hook that reads something like "humans will be obsolete in two years" or "software development as a career is over".

I disagree, and furthermore, that's a psyop! Don't believe the hype!

You may have seen the endless stream of technical articles here complaining about the craft going out of coding and devs being reduced to AI slop pull request reviewers.

I scoff at these devs, have they no agency? I also choose to believe they are part of the psyop even if they are real people with real experiences because their articles get boosted with a purpose.

And what do I believe the purpose is? What is the psyop? I think it is many-pronged.

We developers are quite powerful in society, and it is useful to humble us from time to time. It is useful to keep us compliant. Having us accept a dire fate makes it easier to tamp down wage inflation (which helps pay the AI tab in the short term, BTW!).

Also, regarding cycles and generations, having AI pump out an ocean of tech debt creates busy work for future generations to unravel. This make-work aimed at maintaining and fixing things is useful in that it keeps people steadily employed and controls the rate of new development and technological advancement.

Sometimes I muse when I hear stories about AI vendors' ability to "turn up/down" the intelligence factor on coding agents. Is this a fine tuning of the slop error factor getting it just where they need it to be?

I observe in my career that getting developer tools paid for by corporations has been a bit like getting blood from a stone. Yet suddenly, corporate america is in a rush to put this super costly _subscription-based_ tool in my hands. What gives?

Yes, latest fad/bubble/craze. A few sillycon valley tech bros are trying to make a computer god superintelligence to worship and control, maybe, ugh I guess probably some of them.

But, from a metaphysical standpoint, one can argue there is a "spirit" to every age. This age's spirit seems obsessed with management. And, there are high level leaders who are obsessed with managing the human population with ever-increasing fidelity. So of course AI will be the latest finance/technology/information system that is released along those lines.

It's your choice how to proceed, as with all things use your free will. I will observe you do everyone you know and all of your descendants the most good if you constantly strive to have the highest aims.

In my opinion, 'slop' creates an unacceptable crisis. Slop will continue the wheel of wasted energy and potential that we are in now. To break this cycle, developers need to be obsessed with controlled code, zero bugs, and human-led software design.

What does any of that mean in practice? How? The answers come from our community, from thought leaders and taste makers. We need to develop industry standards to judge one another by and then hold one another accountable.

As to you personally and your passion problem, I get it. I am feeling the same. I hope you have a small personal project, maybe never to be shared, that you can at least retreat to when your energy is low.

I recently stayed up late and upgraded the build system on mine, just some busy work I knew I needed to get done and which let me ply some new devops techniques I learned. It felt really good to be reminded that I could be productive and clever even in a low energy situation. And my week improved after that.