on ai and the alienation of software development.

May 18, 2026

It's not a secret that since the arrival of LLMs and coding agents some software developers are going through an existencial crisis. Nowadays all social networks are full of publications of professionals questioning the value of their work, the future of the profession and how this new technologies killed the fun and joy of programming.

In times of turbulence, it is always good to fallback and read some classics. I think there is one concept, developed at the end of the Industrial Revolution, that can explain quite well the current relationship between IT workers and AI companies/products. A concept that could explain (or put words to) the general discontent of a good portion of software developers: the alienation of work.

In short, the alienation of work consist of four aspects [1]:

  • First, the worker is alienated from the product of their labour, which is appropriated by the capitalist and confronts the worker as a hostile power.
  • Second, workers are alienated from the activity of production itself, which is experienced not as a fulfilling expression of creativity but as coerced, meaningless toil.
  • Third, this leads to alienation from their own human nature, or species-being (Gattungswesen), as free, conscious activity is reduced to a mere means of survival.
  • Finally, the worker is alienated from other people, as social relationships become reified and mediated by market exchange, fostering competition and indifference rather than community.

As we say in spanish: más claro, echale agua. (as clear as crystal)

For me the worst part (and somehow overlooked) is the last point. Tech communities and tech conversations are dying. Stack Overflow had its problems, but seeing the decline of a platform where problems where solved openly and collaboratively is a tragedy.

We are replacing public conversations with private chatbot sessions. What happened openly and collaboratively it is now enclosed in a private chat with a machine. We are replacing human-to-human conversations with human-to-machine interactions. We are no longer being nurture by the the multiplier effect of open discussions and that is just sad.

[1] Source: Wikipedia.