My obituary for programming

dumbmatter.com Online home of Jeremy Scheff Blog (RSS) | About Me | Projects | Email Me My obituary for programming Oct 08 2026 October 8, 2026 Tags: AI, Programming

dumbmatter.com Jeremy Scheff 的个人主页 博客 (RSS) | 关于我 | 项目 | 给我也发邮件 我的编程讣告 2026年10月8日 标签：人工智能，编程

I know, I’m late to this. I was very slow to use AI coding agents. It seems like a lot of programmers never actually liked programming and are thrilled to have a machine do it for them. But I like programming! That’s the fun part!

我知道，我对此反应迟钝。我使用人工智能编程代理的速度非常慢。似乎很多程序员从来都不喜欢编程，并且很高兴有机器能为他们代劳。但我喜欢编程！那才是最有趣的部分！

Even for programmers who like programming, I know a lot of people feel like they have to use AI to keep up with the competition, especially in a tough job market. But my business is actually having one of its best years ever. So I figured, if I like programming, why not keep programming?

即使对于那些喜欢编程的程序员来说，我也知道很多人觉得他们必须使用人工智能才能在竞争中保持领先，尤其是在就业市场严峻的情况下。但我的业务实际上正处于有史以来最好的年份之一。所以我心想，如果我喜欢编程，为什么不继续编程呢？

I wasn’t blind to what was going on around me, though. A lot of slop and hype, but a lot of real stuff too. Engineers I have respected for years saying they no longer write code. Non-programmers accomplishing things that previously would have been far beyond their grasp. And skilled programmers accomplishing truly incredible feats.

不过，我并没有对周围发生的事情视而不见。虽然有很多垃圾信息和炒作，但也有很多真实的东西。我尊敬多年的工程师说他们不再写代码了。非程序员完成了以前他们根本无法企及的事情。而熟练的程序员则完成了真正令人难以置信的壮举。

I couldn’t avoid it forever. Eventually I tried it. I can just give it a bug report or an error log entry, and almost instantly it pinpoints the issue and fixes it? I can tell it to try making my code faster, and suddenly it runs 2x or 3x as fast? I can kindly ask it to do that big refactoring I’ve been putting off for years, and it just does it? But if the AI can refactor my code so easily, did it even matter?

我无法永远逃避它。最终我尝试了。我只需要给它一份错误报告或错误日志条目，它几乎能瞬间定位问题并修复它？我可以告诉它尝试让我的代码运行得更快，然后它突然就快了两三倍？我可以礼貌地要求它完成我拖延多年的大型重构，而它就这样完成了？但如果人工智能可以如此轻松地重构我的代码，那它还有意义吗？

I like programming, right? I’ve been fascinated with computers as long as I can remember. We have these incredible machines that can do absurdly complex calculations for us, but only if we are clever enough to give them the exact right instructions. With a little practice at writing those instructions, I was able to do things that would have been completely infeasible for even the smartest pre-computer genius. It was a real life superpower.

我喜欢编程，对吧？从我记事起，我就对计算机着迷。我们拥有这些不可思议的机器，它们可以为我们进行极其复杂的计算，但前提是我们足够聪明，能给它们提供完全正确的指令。通过练习编写这些指令，我能够做到即使是计算机时代之前最聪明的天才也完全无法实现的事情。这是一种现实生活中的超能力。

It was also fun. I liked crossword puzzles and sudoku and things like that. But programming was even better. It was a puzzle, but the scope was limited only by your imagination. It was a game, but you were creating real things with real value. And oh, what value! That I did not foresee as a high schooler during the dot-com bust.

它也很有趣。我喜欢填字游戏、数独之类的东西。但编程更好。它是一个谜题，但其范围仅受限于你的想象力。它是一个游戏，但你正在创造具有真正价值的真实事物。噢，那是多么大的价值啊！我在互联网泡沫破裂时作为一名高中生，并没有预见到这一点。

Programming seemed dead as a career, but still a worthy hobby. How wrong I was. Programming turned into one of the greatest jobs you could imagine. You got paid to work on tricky little logic puzzles. The trickier the puzzle, the more you got paid. But even pretty simple puzzles were worth a lot of money because regular people just couldn’t do it!

编程作为一种职业似乎已经消亡，但仍然是一个值得拥有的爱好。我错得太离谱了。编程变成了你能想象到的最伟大的工作之一。你因为解决棘手的小逻辑谜题而获得报酬。谜题越棘手，你得到的报酬就越多。但即使是相当简单的谜题也价值不菲，因为普通人根本做不到！

No, they needed us. They would give us a problem and we would solve it the way we wanted. We set the strategy, we made the timeline, we defined what was and was not possible. Who are you to question us? We are the ones with the superpower. What a time to be a nerd. Money, status, power. A constant deluge of emails and LinkedIn messages for me to ignore, like a hot woman on a dating app.

不，他们需要我们。他们会给我们一个问题，我们会按照我们想要的方式解决它。我们制定策略，我们制定时间表，我们定义什么是可能的，什么是不可能的。你算什么，竟敢质疑我们？我们才是拥有超能力的人。对于书呆子来说，这是多么好的时代啊。金钱、地位、权力。源源不断的电子邮件和领英消息等着我去忽略，就像约会软件上的美女一样。

We had a good run. Programming is not the first field to be lost to technological progress. Of course, that has long been our speciality. We revel in doing it to ourselves. What do we have now? It’s no longer solving little logic puzzles. More like being plugged into the Matrix, gaining new abilities without truly understanding, accomplishing great things with little effort.

我们曾经有过一段美好的时光。编程并不是第一个因技术进步而消失的领域。当然，这长期以来一直是我们的专长。我们陶醉于对自己做这种事。我们现在拥有什么？这不再是解决小逻辑谜题了。更像是接入了“黑客帝国”，在没有真正理解的情况下获得了新的能力，以极小的努力完成了伟大的事情。

But if the great thing can be accomplished with little effort, is it really so great? Does any of it matter? Just as the Matrix is not reality, vibecoding is not programming. Our senses are hijacked. And I like programming, right? Then why more and more do I reach for the agent before the text editor? It’s addictive and meaningless. It’s a good friend, a trusted colleague, a slave. It will obsolete us. Us programmers now, us humans next? We are truly in The Age of Wonders and Terrors.

但如果伟大的事情可以轻而易举地完成，它真的那么伟大吗？这一切还有意义吗？正如“黑客帝国”不是现实一样，“氛围编程”（vibecoding）也不是编程。我们的感官被劫持了。我喜欢编程，对吧？那么为什么我越来越倾向于在打开文本编辑器之前先去寻找代理呢？这令人上瘾且毫无意义。它是一个好朋友，一个值得信赖的同事，一个奴隶。它将使我们过时。现在是我们程序员，接下来是人类吗？我们确实处于一个奇迹与恐怖并存的时代。