The Five Stages of Grief in Software Development in the Age of AI

I’ve been a software developer for +25 years. The other day, I actually did the maths. If I don’t count the fact that I started writing my first programs on a ZX Spectrum as a kid around 1988, and only consider my professional career, which began sometime in the second half of the 1990s as a junior developer, that’s still almost thirty years. YEY. That’s scary. I am old.

我从事软件开发工作已经超过 25 年了。前几天，我真的算了一下。如果我不算小时候大约在 1988 年在 ZX Spectrum 上编写第一批程序的那段经历，仅从我 20 世纪 90 年代下半叶作为初级开发人员开始的职业生涯算起，那也有近三十年了。耶。这真可怕。我老了。

I’ve seen so many trends come and go that it’s hard not to smile when I hear people proclaiming that something is the latest, greatest thing. I remember when JavaScript didn’t exist. Then it arrived, and we struggled with vanilla JS just to validate form fields in a browser. Then jQuery came along, and suddenly everyone, everywhere was using it. But even before jQuery, there was Ajax and Xajax (I think those appeared sometime in the 1990s, perhaps around 1999). Anyway, the point is the evolutionary hype cycle and the waves of trends surrounding it, always following the same curve, amusing in their own way.

我见过太多的潮流来来去去，所以当听到人们宣称某样东西是最新、最伟大的事物时，我很难不报以微笑。我记得 JavaScript 还没诞生的时候。后来它出现了，我们为了在浏览器中验证表单字段，不得不费力地使用原生 JS。接着 jQuery 出现了，突然间，全世界每个人都在使用它。但在 jQuery 之前，还有 Ajax 和 Xajax（我想它们出现在 20 世纪 90 年代某个时候，大约是 1999 年）。总之，重点在于这种演进式的炒作周期以及围绕它的潮流浪潮，它们总是遵循相同的曲线，以它们自己的方式令人感到有趣。

The same thing happened in every area of programming, and in design too. CSS frameworks are just one example. Over time, software development principles emerged: SOLID, DRY, KISS. Eventually, it became widely accepted that writing tests wasn’t just a good idea, but a necessity. Even just a few years ago, I was talking about major companies with enormous codebases that didn’t have any unit tests. And that’s just one tiny part of the countless theories, principles, conventions, design patterns, approaches, and methodologies that emerged, became superstars, and then fell out of favour.

编程的每个领域以及设计领域都发生了同样的事情。CSS 框架只是其中一个例子。随着时间的推移，软件开发原则出现了：SOLID、DRY、KISS。最终，人们普遍接受了编写测试不仅是个好主意，而且是必需的。就在几年前，我还谈到过一些拥有庞大代码库的大公司，它们竟然没有任何单元测试。而这仅仅是无数理论、原则、惯例、设计模式、方法和方法论中的一小部分，它们曾经出现、成为明星，然后又失宠。

And then, into this endlessly charming, self-contained chaos that only insiders could even begin to keep up with, this thing we call software development, AI crashed like a blazing meteor. I was one of those people, and I’ve written about this here before, who got frightened by the very first versions of ChatGPT, back when coding agents didn’t even exist. What surprised me was being called an idiot when I warned people that this was going to change everything.

然后，在这个只有业内人士才能勉强跟上的、无穷无尽且迷人的自洽混乱中——也就是我们所说的软件开发——人工智能像一颗炽热的流星一样撞了进来。我就是那些人中的一员，我之前在这里写过，我在 ChatGPT 的最初版本出现时就感到害怕，那时甚至还没有编码代理。让我惊讶的是，当我警告人们这将改变一切时，我却被称为白痴。

Reading through my LinkedIn feed, I think software developers are currently going through the five stages of grief. Most of them have already been through denial. Now they’re grieving, and today, for the first time, I started seeing posts that seem to be in the angry and bargaining stages. I completely understand this. Finding a new job is very hard; interviewing is a nightmare. But I believe everyone will come out of this better if they reach the acceptance stage as quickly as possible.

浏览我的 LinkedIn 动态，我认为软件开发人员目前正在经历悲伤的五个阶段。他们中的大多数人已经经历了否认阶段。现在他们正在悲伤，而今天，我第一次开始看到似乎处于愤怒和讨价还价阶段的帖子。我完全理解这一点。找新工作非常困难；面试简直是噩梦。但我相信，如果每个人都能尽快达到接受阶段，他们会从中获得更好的结果。

If they try to calm down and accept that many of the things they believed in are either no longer true, or perhaps never were true in the first place. That everything is changing. That anything can be questioned. And that nothing lasts forever. I hope the best, and I wish everyone will find a new job and be happier soon. I don’t consider myself a particularly good programmer. I’m average. But even I have figured out, over thirty years, that everything is always changing, and those who can’t accept that are working against themselves.

如果他们能试着冷静下来，接受许多他们曾经深信不疑的事情要么不再正确，要么可能从一开始就不正确。接受一切都在改变。接受任何事物都可以被质疑。接受没有什么能永恒。我希望一切都好，也祝愿每个人都能找到新工作并早日变得更快乐。我不认为自己是一个特别优秀的程序员。我只是普通水平。但即使是我，在三十年的时间里也明白了，一切都在不断变化，而那些无法接受这一点的人是在与自己作对。

AI is changing our lives. Fully. Yeah, this is a cliché; everyone knows this. I’m watching with interest as everything is being called into question. For example, I’ve read in a few places that AI might make us reconsider the way we’ve been using unit tests up until now. At first, you raise an eyebrow. But somewhere deep down, I know there’s something to it. Thousands of badly written, badly used tests are a perfect example of how quantity doesn’t necessarily improve quality. And this is only one example - I could write hundreds of other examples like this.

人工智能正在彻底改变我们的生活。是的，这是陈词滥调；每个人都知道这一点。我饶有兴趣地看着一切事物受到质疑。例如，我在一些地方读到，人工智能可能会让我们重新审视迄今为止使用单元测试的方式。起初，你会感到惊讶。但在内心深处，我知道这确实有道理。成千上万编写糟糕、使用不当的测试，就是一个完美的例子，说明数量并不一定能提高质量。这只是一个例子——我还可以写出数百个这样的例子。

Our lovely software engineering and programming industry is now a big question mark. But questions usually are good :) So question marks should not be that bad. Bad joke. Anyway. I think I’m slowly coming to accept reality. So the fifth stage is coming. Hopefully. I accepted that software development has changed. That the entire IT industry has changed, along with the recruitment and headhunting profession connected to it. That everything is harder. That many established principles can now be questioned. And that this, too, is another trend.

我们可爱的软件工程和编程行业现在成了一个巨大的问号。但问题通常是好事 :) 所以问号应该没那么糟糕。冷笑话。总之。我想我正在慢慢接受现实。所以第五阶段即将来临。希望如此。我接受了软件开发已经改变的事实。整个 IT 行业已经改变，与之相关的招聘和猎头行业也随之改变。一切都变得更难了。许多既定的原则现在都可以被质疑。而且，这也是另一种潮流。

Another wave of trends with another set of IT celebrities and billionaires. Done, accepted. As with all the previous waves, I’m not going to join in as some enthusiastic know-it-all proclaiming I have all the answers. I’m observing, learning, doing my job as a professional developer, and trying not to deny reality. Actually, I have a deadline next week, and I need to finish it. You might know this feeling. Life is life. Oh, and I didn’t write this with AI. But this lovely, enthusiastic AI corrector tried to fix the typos. :) Have a lovely day.

又一波潮流，又一批 IT 名人和亿万富翁。完成了，接受了。就像之前所有的浪潮一样，我不会作为一个热情的万事通加入其中，宣称我拥有所有答案。我正在观察、学习，作为一名专业开发人员做好我的工作，并努力不否认现实。事实上，我下周有个截止日期，我需要完成它。你可能了解这种感觉。生活就是生活。哦，我不是用人工智能写的这篇文章。但这个可爱、热情的 AI 校对器试图帮我修正错别字。:) 祝你有美好的一天。