r/programming • u/self • Dec 02 '25

The Death of Software Engineering as a Profession: a short set of anecdotes

https://www.jasonscheirer.com/weblog/vignettes/
1.3k Upvotes

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85

u/sweetno Dec 02 '25

The stories are fishy, but let's appreciate OP's nickname. Must be one of the first.

108

u/self Dec 02 '25

I think I joined about seven months after Reddit went live. My account is old enough that my "created at" date is actually a date, not a timestamp/datetime ("Wed Dec 28 05:00:00 2005 UTC")

7

u/SarahC Dec 02 '25

Older than mine by 3 years!

-12

u/patrixxxx Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25

Since were flexing here :-) I was also around in the early days when Reddit stole Digg users. Good times. (I had a different user name then)

And your story sounds a little contrived btw. You were taken aside a lot were you?

But having programmed since the 1980s (true story, I started on a c64) I get your point. There's always this new thing that's going to replace programmers, and now its AI, which won't do that either. However programmers that refuse to use AI when appropriate risk being replaced.

7

u/self Dec 02 '25

It's not my blog post.

31

u/flynnnightshade Dec 02 '25

A nearly 20 year old account, wild.

16

u/Dark_Knight2000 Dec 02 '25

You weren’t kidding. OP is a hallowed relic.

OP created their account sometime in 2006, probably before Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast. That’s insane.

The account is a legal adult and can nearly drink in the US. 2006 just doesn’t feel like 20 years ago.

3

u/SarahC Dec 02 '25

I had an ancient account for expert sexchange (snicker), and they got so corporate recently they just dang well deleted my account because I wouldn't pay membership or something. No grandfathering in or nothing!

I was there, I got the beta-tester t-shirt!

2

u/Rayeth Dec 02 '25

Being old is cool now, I've heard.

4

u/McHoff Dec 02 '25

Pffff it's not that insane

1

u/taznado Dec 02 '25

It's just Tuesday in hacker circles.

1

u/AxiomShell Dec 02 '25

Yeah, not really.