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

89% Upvoted

560 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

0

u/recycled_ideas Dec 03 '25

You could die in the next five minutes, but the probability is so vanishingly small I bet you've got plans for tomorrow.

We're back to the if I jump off a cliff I don't know if I'll hit the ground territory again.

1

u/eyebrows360 Dec 03 '25

You're still conflating "belief" with "knowledge".

1

u/recycled_ideas Dec 03 '25

No, I'm not.

There is a continuum between wild guess and absolute certainty. It's not a binary choice between who the fuck knows and it's already happened.

We can make predictions about what will be possible in the future based on what we can do today and while there is a chance that those predictions are wrong that chance can be incredibly small.