Quoting David Abram
<blockquote cite="https://www.davidabram.dev/musings/the-machine-didnt-take-your-craft/"><p>I have been doing this for years, and the hardest parts of the job were never about typing out code. I have always struggled most with understanding systems, debugging things that made no sense, designing architectures that wouldn't collapse under heavy load, and making decisions that would save months of pain later.</p> <p>None of these problems can be solved LLMs. They can suggest code, help with boilerplate, sometimes can act as a sounding board. But they don't understand the system, they don't carry context in their "minds", and they certianly don't know why a decision is right or wrong.</p> <p>And the most importantly, they don't choose. That part is still yours. The real work of software devel
23rd March 2026
I have been doing this for years, and the hardest parts of the job were never about typing out code. I have always struggled most with understanding systems, debugging things that made no sense, designing architectures that wouldn't collapse under heavy load, and making decisions that would save months of pain later.
None of these problems can be solved LLMs. They can suggest code, help with boilerplate, sometimes can act as a sounding board. But they don't understand the system, they don't carry context in their "minds", and they certianly don't know why a decision is right or wrong.
And the most importantly, they don't choose. That part is still yours. The real work of software development, the part that makes someone valuable, is knowing what should exist in the first place, and why.
— David Abram, The machine didn't take your craft. You gave it up.
Simon Willison Blog
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/23/david-abram/#atom-everythingSign in to highlight and annotate this article
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