excellent, highly insightful article about the most serious challenge that programmers face to our livelihoods today
except, it's from 1974
all the problems described in it got worse, perhaps because back then we collectively didn't take the labor framing seriously :(
https://archive.scienceforthepeople.org/vol-6/v6n4/pushing-professionalism/
this one had crossed our radar a while back but we only just now find the time to absorb it fully
it does a really good job of situating the possible strategies and their drawbacks in historical context
Oct 24, 2026, 9:53 PM@ireneista this was a really neat read!
It does make me feel a bit better to the issues we're facing are not new ones; I'd been saying for ages how programmers are much closer to the factory line than the manager's office, and its nice to see firsthand sources from long before I was born echoing the same thoughts!
@Keyes yeah, absolutely!
@ireneista
> It is intolerable not because employee workplace control is less efficient (cf., Gerald Weinberg, who makes impressive claims that programmer control of the workplace is significantly more, not less, efficient2) but because employee control of the workplace threatens managerial authority. In this sort of situation, managers and employers will accept even a certain amount of inefficiency in order to re-enforce or preserve their dominance of the programming work activity.
Well, that's about as succinct an explanation as we can get for why management is rushing to adopt AI despite all the evidence that the quality is worse. Or conversely why they're so inclined to believe all the PR that AI can produce equivalent work as human workers.
@toolbear quite so. it's just ... exactly on-point.