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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.

Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:

(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future

(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore

While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:

(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use out software and derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, and you can't fight to make it matter”

I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.

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