My obituary for programming

Why it matters

This piece is a link-blog entry pointing to Jeremy Scheff's essay, which he frames as an obituary for programming as a career built on puzzle-solving. Scheff argues that programming once offered an unusual arrangement: practitioners were paid handsomely to solve tricky logic problems, and because clients could not do the work themselves, developers held the authority to set strategy, timelines, and the boundaries of what was feasible. Coding agents, in his view, dissolve that arrangement. His distinction is between two types of programmers: those who take satisfaction in delivering working systems, for whom large language models are a continuing benefit, and those whose enjoyment came from solving the underlying problems directly, for whom the loss is genuine and personal. The post matters because it articulates a cultural and emotional dimension of AI-driven change in software work, moving beyond productivity debates to questions of identity, autonomy, and why people entered the field. It also reflects a wider conversation about how automation reshapes not just tasks but the meaning professionals attach to their craft.