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I dunno. There's also a good chance that you just end up being left behind like graybeards that only wanted to code in C and assembler.

I too am old enough to have seen a lot of unnecessary tech change cycles, and one thing I've noticed about this industry is no matter how foolish a trend was, we almost never unwind it.






> I dunno. There's also a good chance that you just end up being left behind like graybeards that only wanted to code in C and assembler.

All the people I know in the US with those skills make huge amounts of money- at least, the ones who haven't already retired rich.


Yes. The ones who maintain high risk system software that allows all these machines to be able to train LLMs, compile the systems software or maintaining systems that ingest 2% of the worlds traffic are the ones who are making a lot of money out of this.

Not the ones maintaining frontend web apps or "vibe coding".


I get paid a fuck load of money to write C. Your point is?

As for trends, I've been around long enough to have seen this cycle a couple of times...


> I get paid a fuck load of money to write C. Your point is?

My point is there aren't many of you, are there?

All things considered, keeping up with the industry trends is generally a more reliable career path.


Correct but we are never fungible. That’s the trick for a reliable career.

I’ve survived every single layoff season since 1995.


Ironically, Claude Code has me working in lower-level languages with more low-level tools than ever before, simply because of how powerful it is, particularly as a terminal tool. I've always been more of a GUI person, but now the editor I use most often is Helix.

If I've atrophied in certain aspects of my thinking, I honestly think I've more than made up for it in learning how to engineer the context and requirements for Claude Code more effectively and to quickly dive in to fix things without taking my hands off the keyboard and leaving the terminal.


Remaining skilled while those around you atrophy is never a bad decision



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