Observations:

* I made the classic mistake of assuming the present was permanent. It never is anyway, small changes always ruined the present. The accumulation of small changes over my career has changed the way I work probably as much/more than AI has changed it this year, if you can believe that.

* I discussed the family budget with my wife, and made a plan to halve our income requirements. It will require a race in the short term, but allows a coast later on. This is key for me - almost all my tension regarding this phase is about the future earning potential of our household. If that goes away, who cares how work changes?

* I made the other classic mistake of not remembering how much I have changed and adapted over time. The breadth of things I have worked on is pretty remarkable, and the things I have learned to do are crazy. While things are changing fast now, they aren't changing quite as negatively or immediately as some claimed they would. There's room to adapt.

* I stopped assuming I had to work the way people said I should. Aside from CEO mandates, there's a ton of wiggle room in how you produce code. I read changesets and make manual adjustments to the pattern, etc. I write my own parts when I want to. I specify a design that I want rather than asking for whatever the AI wants. I get to own everything but the typing that way, and my RSI is improving dramatically b/c of it.

* I use AI to set up programming challenges when I feel disconnected. It sets up a tangible problem, and acts like a coach only when I need it. I use this to preserve the feeling of sharpness. Earlier this year I challenged myself to write, in C, from man pages only, a "ping" and "traceroute" clone. I did so on a flight back from a work trip.

* And I started reaching out to friends to hang out more. It's hard to doom about AI when your friends and you are having a beer and playing Container or Captain Sonar. Life has always been what's "out there" not what radiates from your monitor.

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rogerrogerr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Really appreciate it. You sound like a great friend to hang out with.

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teekert 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

From a recent post here on HN, my agent stored it without the URL, it exists just as text for me to get philosophical with, I do that with insights such as above, so here is a quote:

Derek Thompson, in "I Know Why the Mathematicians Weep": "If intelligence becomes less uniquely human, we may come to value more highly what remains uniquely human: our capacity to relate and to care for one another".

Funnily my bot was called Cladius van der Bot, nice name ;)

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throw-the-towel 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, but who's going to pay me for my capacity to relate? How am I going to convert that into rent?

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pianopatrick an hour ago | parent | next [-]

There are whole industries around that. Getting paid to relate is basically what teachers, trainers, coaches, therapists etc. do all day.

People could learn things on their own but still pay teachers

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yoz-y 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

Teachers get paid?

Trainers, coaches, therapists… yes.

	▲	pianopatrick 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Teachers do, in fact, receive paychecks.

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rbtprograms an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

i dont meant to come across as too harsh, but that is something that you will have to figure out. if companies are less inclined to give salaries for technical skills, then its on us to figure out how our current skill sets become marketable.

even the job of freelance engineer is customer relation. how good are you at extracting product requirements? understanding a clients workflows? these take relational skills and are often what freelancers are paid for, beyond the ability to produce code.

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teekert 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's about as specific as we can get atm I guess. I have no idea, I just know we VALUE human connection, there is unique human value in it. We value each-other.

Maybe we just sit around campfires and tell stories as the billionaires warm their hands on their burning data centers.

Don't forget that everything anybody owns is just a system we invented, my house, my garden, only a piece of paper that we all accept keep others from it.

We can reinvent ourselves. Idk, to me this is a comforting thought. But I agree it's still lacking. It's not simple, discussing things online helps develop language and vision around it.

	▲	card_zero an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Speaking of inventiveness: I was listening to a history of hip-hop, and I started imagining an alternative past, with LLMs arising in the 80s, and AI inventing rap and rap culture. That fantasy is instructively ridiculous, AI doesn't invent things, it isn't cultural.

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patcon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Agreed. This human is the ray of sunshine I needed :)