The Programmer Identity Crisis ❈ Simon Højberg ❈ Principal Frontend Engineer
October 10, 2025
In fact, if we are to trust the billion-dollar AI industry, the denizens of Hacker News (and its overlords), and the LinkedIn legions of LLM lunatics, the future of software development has little resemblance to programming. Vibe-coding—what seemed like a meme a year ago—is becoming a mainstay.Presently (though this changes constantly), the court of vibe fanatics would have us write specifications in Markdown instead of code. Gone is the deep engagement and the depth of craft we are so fluent in: time spent in the corners of codebases, solving puzzles, and uncovering well-kept secrets. Instead, we are to embrace scattered cognition and context switching between a swarm of Agents that are doing our thinking for us. Creative puzzle-solving is left to the machines, and we become mere operators disassociated from our craft.
Source: The Programmer Identity Crisis ❈ Simon Højberg ❈ Principal Frontend Engineer
The author’s use of “craft” and “identity” here really crystallizes something I’ve been thinking about: many software developers have built their sense of self-worth around writing code itself, rather than around solving problems or building products. When that activity feels threatened, an existential anxiety is palpable.
I’ve come to realize—though it took me decades—that I was never really interested in producing lines of code per se. I’m interested in building products and solving problems. The code is a means to that end. I think the distinction between systems engineering (where every line of code, every character indeed matters from the perspective of performance and security) and product engineering (where code is a tool to solve user problems) has only recently become clear, though I don’t think we in general recognize it.
What troubles me about the tenor of these conversations is the dismissive language—terms like “slop-jockey” deployed with obvious contempt.
I see this frequently, even from people I’ve traditionally respected. It makes good-faith engagement nearly impossible. If we can’t discuss these changes without resorting to sneering dismissal of people who work differently than we do, we’re not having a conversation about the future of software development—we’re just protecting our identities.
The question isn’t whether AI tools change how we work. They do. At least in many contexts and situations. The question is whether our value as software professionals was ever really about the typing, or about something else entirely.
