Ignore the humanities at your own peril

I can't begin to tell you how often I was met with disdain when I told my colleagues that I studied history. "That's not even a real science!"

Correct, but that doesn't hurt my feelings. Computer science is also not a science, there are very few true "sciences" out there. Get over yourself, and stop feeling better than other people just because of something you did at uni that others didn't do.

But I digress.

Even considering the fact that the field of history isn't a real science, that doesn't mean that it's not important to study it!

Studying history will make your eyes bleed because you learn that humans are basically idiots who make the same mistakes, over and over again.

Problematic fact is that many developers have not studied history, and I can tell. They think their jobs are safe, that they are on the good side of a non-existing line. That they have more in common with the billionaires, that they are important in this awful late-stage capitalist system.

Enter the LLM-era.

Slowly, some developers are starting to notice something. That their well paying job isn't as safe as they thought. That their work isn't as necessary as they thought.

They might even have thoughts that have an awful lot in common with the OG Luddites. But...being a Luddite is a faux-pas in their mind because that would mean they are anti-technology?! And they're not!! Most definitely not. Unthinkable.

I present you, this guy:

His point is valid, but I find it hard not to be infuriated by it.

Why?

Because he's goddamned late to a party that has been started about....checks notes ... over 2 centuries ago?!

Ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the goal has been to deskill labour, scale up production, lower the wages of the people working in said production, making fewer people ever so much richer. I think they even teach this shit in school, although they probably put a more neutral spin on it; don't wanna depress the kids right out of the gate.

Another layer of my anger stems from the fact that, as a software tester, for the entirety of my career I've been told that "testing can be automated" by many a developer. But now that's it happening to developers itself it's suddenly a problem.

NOW THEY'RE WAKING UP.

Bruh, I'm so mad.

The reward for scaling up the speed of work has always been....more work. Like, BRO, your entire job as developer is literally automation. You know, making things scale and...speeding them up? How dumb are you for not seeing this?

And I can't even with this "I am not anti-technology" quip that so many people use. Technology IS NOT NEUTRAL. Again: get your head out of your ass. Technology can be wielded for many purposes, by humans, with agenda's.

So far "the agenda" of how technology was being wielded by companies (and the rich assholes behind those) has largely worked in favour of developers. They've been coddled with massages, Nintendo Switches, free food, gyms at work. They were well paid. That's because, apparently, there was a time when that was worth it for companies.

Not because you were special. You just thought you were special, and that's the problem.

And now, that time is over.

The developers are finding out that they aren't special, that it's now their turn to be sacrificed on the great altar of capitalism like so many people before them, whose job was automated away BY DEVELOPERS cooperating with companies whose agenda it was to lower costs, get rid of those pesky humans.

Slowly, developers are connecting the dots, seeing the patterns. They are intelligent enough for that. Too bad that up to this point they felt safe, thinking that it wouldn't happen to them....Oh how the turntables.

And now? Panic, I guess?

Or....let it burn.

But yeah, ignoring history doesn't work out so well for you now, does it? Perhaps...have a little more respect for people who have walked a different path in life? Empathy? Sympathy?

Whatever you do, ignore the humanities at your own peril.