It always did, we just had the norm that in a liberal democracy, we put that to the side for our dealings with people. Same thing as religion -- a huge deal that shapes people's values and attitudes about the most core aspects of life -- and there was a norm of "no politics or religion" in polite conversation.
I believe that this is your opinion, but my own opinion (having also tried them, and used multiple generations of B&W ones before this) is that the screens look just fine, and that the slight downgrade of contrast isn't a big deal at all.
Yes, I replaced a B&W Sage with the Libra Colour, and used them for a bit side-by-side. Contrast (not sharpness) of B&W text is slightly worse with the color one, but not by so much that you'd notice it if you weren't comparing them next to each other. The resolution of actual color is worse, but obviously you can't get color at all on the B&W one, so hard to argue that this is a downgrade.
Unless you're a real contrast freak, I think most people would be slightly happier with the color than the B&W; but it's definitely not worth paying extra for.
It's true that developing junior devs is challenging (but it always was), but that's not what this is about: This is about the kind of not-that-good, mid-ass programmers who make up the silent bulk of the industry. The ones who have 20 years of experience, but who you still wouldn't trust to write fizzbuzz.
Those people are doomed. Which is fine in a lot of ways, but will be devastating for their economic prospects.
Talented people should still be worried, the problem is not the developers, it's the type of work the industry can support. There aren't that many jobs that require above average software capabilities, and you're competing with all those people who just got shafted out of their mid tier positions but actually had talent. Hopefully there will still be enough roles for all these excellent engineers.
In the same way there is only so much artisan hand crafted furniture to sell, you're a lucky craftsman if you can make a living doing that these days.
I think the article actually _does_ call that out, noting that the reason for some of these things is due to how wealth propagates through society, even noting the minimum wage specifically. (But it does bring to mind the Agatha Christie quote about never imagining she'd be so rich as to afford a car, nor so poor as to not have a maid.)
Also, though, I think some of the weird poverty-culture stuff of the Netherlands is just a culture thing. Netherlanders are absolutely rich enough to buy paper towel if they wanted to, it's just a cultural thing that they don't. And air conditioning is a whole cultural hot button flashpoint issue for reasons that have nothing to do with money.
That meeting that you spent an hour in to understand the requirements? You don't need that meeting if you're not writing the code. That sync up with the QA engineer you did to hand it off to them? Don't need that meeting if you're not writing the code. That half hour you spent installing vim extensions? Don't need 'em if you don't open vim anymore.
There are engineers whose jobs go well beyond coding, of course. Staff engineers and principal engineers have had their jobs radically change because of AI, but not because it's writing all their code.
But there are also a lot of engineers -- your standard mid-level engineer, or even senior engineers at a lot of orgs with title inflation -- whose job is almost entirely about delivering code, and who spend all day either writing code or engaging in scaffolding around code-writing activities. Let's not pretend that automating away that code writing is a 15% boost.
In some number of cases, the business partner who would have passed you the requirements will just generate the code themselves.. I’m shocked shin some engineers don’t see a massive disruption coming..
Oh, some of us see a massive disruption coming, just maybe not in the way you think.
Talented, experienced devs leaving the field out of disgust would be pretty disruptive.
Crumbling, faulty technical infrastructure with unmanageable heaps of AI slop that no one understands would definitely disrupt businesses.
Skill atrophy, and an entire generation of "developers" that have never actually written code will be disruptive when something breaks and no one knows how to fix it (this isn't a hypothetical, I'm seeing this phenomenon in a lot of large enterprise groups).
The total elimination of novel solutions, new ideas and new approaches to development and the resulting industry wide stagnation won't be disruptive, but will certainly be a drag.
> Crumbling, faulty technical infrastructure with unmanageable heaps of AI slop that no one understands
Replace "AI slop" with "legacy code", and you've got basically any large enterprise today.
The timescales are different though: it takes years if not decades to accumulate classic legacy cruft, while LLMs can spew up huge amounts of incomprehensible spaghetti in seconds.
Sure, but why doesn't said business partner just give a requirement to the AI to do the business partner's own job? Since it is hypothetically superhuman at fulfilling requirements at such a point...
PMs seem pretty easy to replace. In fact, given any single role to fixate on, it's probably replaceable
> In some number of cases, the business partner who would have passed you the requirements will just generate the code themselves.. I’m shocked shin some engineers don’t see a massive disruption coming..
It’s because you are engaging in first-order thinking. You imagine the immediate result which is that software engineers are replaced.
If you engaged in second-order thinking you would realize that if software engineers can be replaced, _any_ work can eventually be automated. So why stress about it, we’ll figure out a replacement for capitalism. It seems like the world is starting the slow swing to the left so eventually the problem will be solved.
Of course might be those engineers you mention are engaged in no thinking.
>> How are you going to prompt the LLM or validate its output if you don't understand the requirements?
> Your PM can write the ticket, and your QA can test the output.
If your PM can write the ticket and your QA can test the output, why not cut out the middleman by having the PM write the coding agent prompt(s)?
And if your PM can write the coding agent prompt(s), why not cut out the QA group by having the PM write the verification prompt(s)?
And if your PM can write those prompts, why not cut out the PM and have your CSRs write the feature request/verification prompts?
And if your CSRs can write the feature request/verification prompts, why not cut them out and have the organization's customers write the feature request along with acceptance prompts?
And if customers can write those prompts, why would they pay you?
> And finally: Why bother making new software at all when AI can just do the thing you wanted done, directly?
In many ways, the "save costs by LLM-ing everything" mindset is the same logical fallacy companies fell into in the 90's/00's with regard to outsourcing. The end-state was rationalizing outsourcing call centers, then production system support, then software development, then project management, then...
Once the outsourcing raptor came for the accountants (who wrote the cheques) and remaining management (who cashed quarterly bonus cheques), outsourcing became "less appealing."
I feel like all you need to know about how seriously to take this is that they cite that ancient early-2025 METR study, and describe it in the text as "recently one even found..."
Same thought - 80% through reading it occurred to me to check the citations. A few items from 2025 and most well before that.
So much has changed since late 2025 one can’t really draw any conclusions from this.
In fact, I’m guessing things will continue to move so fast that by the time one were to execute a survey of developers, many of the responses and findings are no longer relevant.
Your point really goes both ways, we really don't know anything about how LLM usage is affecting anything. No one knows, it's the wild wild west, which is whatever. But I think no one can really draw conclusions from what's happening in tech right now.
Reminds me of COVID and how everyone was fighting over early trends during that time.
The whole point of the 2025 one is that they found the self-reporting to be significantly inflated, which is why self-reported surveys like this one are hard to trust.
Yes, but their newer write-up discusses that (and shows that the self-reported numbers have gone up radically, in a way that suggests that even if there is some inflation, the numbers are almost certainly positive if you deflate).
They also have an update -- linked from the original study! -- explaining that it's out of date and no longer reliable, and explaining why they had to cancel a follow-up study because it was understating productivity gains (but also was showing wins for the people who carried over from their previous study): https://metr.org/blog/2026-02-24-uplift-update/
The authors of this paper decided to ignore all of METR's follow-up data and discussion, and to report only the ancient number from early 2025 (a time when Windsurf was state of the art). And then, rather than apologizing for it, and caveating it as a number not to be taken seriously, they described it as a study done "recently."
That's either shockingly dishonest or incredibly out-of-touch.
> shows that the self-reported numbers have gone up radically, in a way that suggests that even if there is some inflation, the numbers are almost certainly positive if you deflate
Or the hype machine is even stronger, making people inflate those numbers even more.
If I wanted to be uncharitable, the question of "how much slower you'd be without AI" compares against people's AI-less productivity from 2026, which could have become much less than 2025 AI-less productivity, if hypothetically AI use makes people helpless and deskilled.
It's not a scam. Connecting to the grid has enormous value, and keeping the grid up has real costs. A model where your generation pays you retail prices doesn't make sense.
California's current net metering system, which is more reflective of the true benefits and costs of solar to the power system, has been incentivizing people to add storage to keep their solar rather than get paid big money to feed back midday low-value solar, which is a big win.
> Yet in most locales it's illegal to disconnect from the grid.
That's kind of ... required?
Otherwise you have a bunch of people who are off the grid until the sun doesn't shine for a week and they run their batteries down and then they all try to connect simultaneously and collapse your grid.
Most places I know of don't care if you never connect to the grid--you get your exemption and get on with life.
However, once you are connected to the grid even once, the grid operator has to size things for the worst case when everybody is connected to the grid and drawing power and work things out for stability when everybody disconnects and they have to back off generation. At that point, the grid operator is well within their rights to demand that you comply with cooperative regulations like making a request to connect/disconnect from the grid itself.
It is illegal to discontinue your relationship with your local electrical utility. As in, completely disconnect from the grid, cut the wires and never look back.
As the previous poster said, charging for the “privilege” of connecting to the enormously-valuable grid would be a little bit defensible if having a connection were not legally required in most places.
It is illegal for the utility to disconnect you for nonpayment. There is nothing requiring you to connect to the utility.
In CA, the requirement is that the building either be connected to the electric grid or demonstrate that it has a code-compliant alternative power system capable of meeting all of the buildings expected power needs. The issue is that most residential solar installations aren't capable of meeting all needs except possibly in the summer.
The problem is that there are two different costs associated with running an electrical grid. The first one is a variable usage cost tied to generation and is what everybody thinks about. The problem is that there is also a second constant capital cost to simply maintain your connection to the grid.
In the past, the variable usage generation cost was much greater than the capital cost of maintenance. Solar generation (and decades of energy efficiency programs) breaks that.
The solution is to split electrical bills explicitly into the two parts (variable and constant). The problem with that is that a bunch of people installed solar with the expectation of an amortization schedule of much, much lower electricity bills since most of the cost was bundled into the usage cost which solar would reduce. If you change that billing, the amortization of that solar system goes right out the window.
The secondary problem is that this is politically dangerous because the people you are upsetting are homeowners who have some money and vote fairly reliably.
Furthermore, it is not illegal to COMPLETELY disconnect from the grid. As long as you follow the building codes, you can have the utility come out and completely disconnect the wires and you're good to go. You will likely have to demonstrate some local electrical system within the bounds of your local building codes. However, it is not uncommon for houses in the less populated areas of California to not be connected to the grid at all.
What is NOT legal is leaving those wires connected to the grid and toggling your connection on and off. If you are on or even possibly on the grid, you are expected to cooperate, and you have to help pay for the grid.
Since all we’re doing is opinions, and all opinions are equal.
It’s a scam.
All that money we’re coughing up for rooftop solar and batteries at home would be better spent investing in grid scale electricity generation, of any technology.
That way the best ideas generate more profit than the lesser ideas, and market discovery can solve problems.
Maybe governments could incentivise renters and home owners alike by discounting tax liabilities on new power generation investments. Or share holders could be offered discount rates. I’m open to ideas.
Rather than government picking winners, which seems to have a terrible track record.
Therefore, I posit my opinion is more valuable than yours.
> All that money we’re coughing up for rooftop solar and batteries at home would be better spent investing in grid scale electricity generation, of any technology.
In my city we literally can't buy any more grid scale solar. We rely on the county for transmission, we're buying all we can, and we're maxed. So you either get solar installed or you're paying some of the highest rates for electricity in the country.
I'm installing the max balcony solar the law allows the day it's legal. It's the biggest no-brainer every, it'll pay itself off in ~2 years in my case because it's knocking out the most expensive part of my power bill.
It really wasn't. Early streaming (like 2012-ish, after cord-cutting was possible but before it was mainstream) had Netflix and Hulu as the two major services, and so anything that was on streaming was on one of those two. But lots and lots of stuff just wasn't on streaming at all.
If you subscribed to Netflix back then, you probably subscribed to both the streaming and the disc-mailing plan, because there were enough things you couldn't get on streaming, so getting the discs was important to fill those gaps.
The truth is that there was a lot more available in the early days of Netflix than there is now, which with some rose-tinted glasses may very well make it seem like Netflix had everything.
It wasn't until studios caught on to the fact that streaming was going to significantly eat into cable subscription revenues that they began pulling their licenses so they could start their own streaming services.
Having everything was part of the marketing. It was just a complete lie. Everyone had that moment with Netflix where they realized every movie is in every category and there isn't nearly as much on there as it seems.
I remember ads that exaggerated things that suck about rental stores. One of them was about all the cool movies being thrown out and replaced with 30 copies of Pony Adventure 4. They never explicitly stated that Netflix will always have the solution to those problems forever, but they implied it as hard as they legally could.
It really was. Hulu was seen as “the worse netflix”, was launched significantly after netflix already had a critical mass, and its launch was seen as the beginning of the end for streaming as a one stop shop.
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