Maybe 20 years ago I read a book on Henrietta Leavitt who was a 'computer' in the 19th Century. Her and many other women did (mostly hand) calculations for a living. She analyzed photographic plates of stars. She discovered Cepheid stars. After I read that I thought 'Holy Shit'. That's what I do for a living - the moral equivalent of long division by hand on 20 digit numbers all day long - and someday this is going to be automated. People will one day say - I can't believe people coded by hand for living - how tedious. I just didn't think it would happen so fast.

That said, I have loved writing software for 40 years, but I too have lost some joy. I am retired now and am having trouble finding joy in my personal projects. I use the LLM's to write functions for me and I do the rest (and I like not having to deal with minutia any more - but one time I loved taking apart binary files by hand and getting paid well).

I liken it to too many choices. If you have 2 cars to choose from, you can feel good about your choice. But from 40, you are always saying, Hmmm, maybe I should have gotten that 17th choice instead of the 26th.

Back then. A C compiler, a linker, a manual and a couple books. Get to work. Create something by your own hand.

Now when I find the right project, usually music related, and it get's under my skin, I get those old vibes and I love it.

I guess I'm glad I'm out of the rat race - but in all honesty - I little envious too of the younger gen who embrace the new tech. Yea - I wish I had it back then!