{"id":100931,"date":"2026-05-19T01:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T05:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=100931"},"modified":"2026-05-18T10:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T14:51:16","slug":"qotd-software-developers-as-wizards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/19\/qotd-software-developers-as-wizards\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Software developers as wizards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Is it weird that AI coding assistance is not giving me identity fracture? <\/p>\n

A lot of software developers are feeling disoriented and threatened these days. Programming by hand is clearly going the way of the buggy whip and the hand-cranked auger. Which is how we’re finding out that a lot of people have their identities bound up in being good at hand-coding and how it feels to do that.<\/p>\n

That’s not me. It’s not me at all<\/em>. Rather to my surprise, I don’t miss coding by hand, not any more than I missed writing assembler when compilers ate the world and made that unnecessary. (That was in a couple years back around 1983, for you youngsters.)<\/p>\n

Maybe the fact that I’m not feeling any of this disorientation disqualifies me from having anything to say to people who are. On the other hand … if you can learn to emulate my mental stance and be completely unbothered, maybe that would be a good thing?<\/p>\n

So. If you’re a programmer, and you’re feeling disoriented, try this on for size:<\/p>\n

I like being a wizard. I like being able to speak spells, to weave complex patterns of logic that make things happen in the world. Writing code is a way to manifest my will.<\/p>\n

Yes, I’ve piled up a lot of arcane knowledge over the 50 years I’ve been doing this. But languages of invocation, they come and they go. Been a long time since I’ve had any use for being able to program in 8086 assembler, and that’s okay. I have better spells now, and these days some rather powerful familiars.<\/p>\n

What I’m inviting you to do is think of yourself as a wizard. Not as a person who writes code, but as a person who is good at assuming the kind of mental states required to bend reality with the application of spells.<\/p>\n

And if that’s who you are, does it matter if the spells are painstakingly scribed in runes of power, versus being spoken to an obedient machine spirit?<\/p>\n

It’s all one; it’s all the manifestation of will. Arcane languages come and go, machine spirits appear and then diminish to be replaced by more powerful ones, but you? You are the magic-wielder. Without you, none of it happens. <\/p>\n

Same as it ever was. Same is it ever was. And so mote it be.<\/p>\n

ESR, the social media site formerly known as Twitter<\/em><\/a>, 2026-02-17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is it weird that AI coding assistance is not giving me identity fracture? A lot of software developers are feeling disoriented and threatened these days. Programming by hand is clearly going the way of the buggy whip and the hand-cranked auger. Which is how we’re finding out that a lot of people have their identities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,41,15],"tags":[1506,1235,92],"class_list":["post-100931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","category-technology","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-esr","tag-software"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qfV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100931"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102552,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100931\/revisions\/102552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}