We mourn our craft: The end of hand-coded software

The software industry is experiencing a profound cultural shift that few are willing to name out loud. In a deeply personal post titled "We mourn our craft," developer Nolan Lawson captures what many senior engineers are feeling but haven't articulated: the grief of watching their profession transform into something unrecognizable.

Lawson doesn't mince words about the current state of affairs. He describes how AI tools have consumed every piece of code and writing he's ever produced, only to have it repackaged and monetized by others. The role of programmer, once that of a creator and craftsman, has been reduced to "a glorified TSA agent, reviewing code to make sure the AI didn't smuggle something dangerous into production."

What makes Lawson's perspective particularly compelling is his refusal to either celebrate or resist the inevitable. He acknowledges a harsh reality that younger developers already understand: AI coding tools work, and they work well. "They can write code better than you or I can," he writes, "and if you don't believe me, wait six months."

This creates an impossible situation for senior developers. Abstaining from AI tools on moral principle might feel right, but it comes at a steep professional cost. While junior developers leverage AI to produce code at unprecedented speeds, senior developers clinging to traditional methods find themselves increasingly marginalized. "Your junior colleagues will eventually code circles around you," Lawson warns, "because they're wearing bazooka-powered jetpacks and you're still riding around on a fixie bike."

The economic pressure is equally brutal. When younger developers using AI tools can produce ten times the output at half the salary, the math becomes inescapable for employers. For developers with mortgages, car payments, and families, the choice becomes less about principle and more about survival.

But beneath the practical considerations lies something deeper: genuine mourning for a craft that's disappearing. Lawson writes poignantly about the future when we'll look back on the era of hand-coding as something quaint and archaic. "We'll laugh and explain to our grandkids how silly it was that we typed out JavaScript syntax with our fingers."

Yet this laughter will mask a profound sense of loss. The post captures the tactile joy of coding that many developers feel but rarely express: "We'll miss the feeling of holding code in our hands and molding it like clay in the caress of a master sculptor." The late-night debugging sessions, the satisfaction of solving a particularly thorny bug at 2 AM, the pride of signing one's work with a GitHub repository—these experiences are disappearing.

Lawson draws a powerful analogy to blacksmithing tools found in archaeological digs, suggesting that hand-coded software will become a curio for future generations. "Our craft, as we have practiced it, will end up like some blacksmith's tool in an archeological dig, a curio for future generations."

The post concludes with an invitation to grieve together. "Now is the time to mourn the passing of our craft," Lawson writes. "We are the last of our kind, and those who follow us won't understand our sorrow."

This mourning isn't just about job security or professional relevance. It's about the loss of a creative practice that many developers have dedicated their lives to mastering. The craft of programming, with all its frustrations and triumphs, is being transformed into something fundamentally different—and many of us are still trying to process what that means.

Lawson's post resonates because it names the unspoken grief that many senior developers feel. In an industry obsessed with progress and innovation, there's little space to acknowledge what we're losing. The sun rises, the sun sets, and the technology continues its arc across the sky regardless of our protests. But that doesn't mean we can't pause to mourn the passing of something we loved.

For those who have spent decades honing their craft, who have found joy and meaning in the act of creation itself, this transition represents more than just a change in tools or techniques. It represents the end of an era, and perhaps the end of programming as we've known it.

The question that lingers isn't whether AI will transform software development—that transformation is already well underway. The question is how we, as an industry and as individuals, will process this loss while adapting to a future that looks increasingly different from the past we've known.

As Lawson suggests, perhaps the healthiest response is to acknowledge the grief, to mourn what's passing, and to find ways to preserve the human elements of creativity and craft even as the tools and techniques continue to evolve beyond recognition.