Two days ago, a colleague posted on LinkedIn that more people should read "Who Moved My Cheese?". That reminded me that I’ve had the book sitting on my pile of unread books for about two years now. It was originally recommended to me by another colleague. And then I didn’t think about it again for almost two years. Anyway.
That LinkedIn post was ultimately the trigger for me to read the book yesterday. That’s really quick to do, since it’s only about 100 pages long (physical German edition) and written in very accessible language. And now I can wholeheartedly recommend the book myself as well. Especially for people working in IT, and perhaps even more specifically in software development. In this context, I see the cheese as an analogy for the knowledge that software developers apply today. Against the backdrop of AI, this knowledge will have to adapt. Not because I believe that software developers will become obsolete anytime soon. No, quite the opposite. But the way we work will have to change. Because LLM-based tools will fundamentally change the day-to-day work of software developers.
That brings us back to the cheese. The cheese won’t disappear entirely; rather, the path to the cheese will be redefined.
And yes, the core message of the book can really be summed up in two sentences: Things change. Learn to adapt. And these two sentences can be applied to almost all areas of one’s life.
And in this context, I came across a comment yesterday that I find very fitting:
I admit to pangs of this, but it's really never made any sense because the implication is that the profession is now magically closed off to newcomers.
Imagine someone in the 90s saying "if you don't master the web NOW you will be forever behind!" and yet 20 years later kids who weren't even born then are building web apps and frameworks.
Waiting for it to all shake out and "mastering" it then is still a strategy. The only thing you'll sacrifice is an AI funding lottery ticket.
Source: comment in Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind” | Hacker News (Archive-Link: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind” | Hacker News)