Technology

People should only join the field if they're passionate about or at least enjoy it otherwise they will burn out fast. With that said, I don't think the field as a whole should be written off by those who enjoy the work

This part, I 1,000% agree with. I was actually in school for a CS degree because I had love for it, before I realized that a lot of people were in it because it was money, and it really surprised and confused me. Like buddy you're gonna have a better life if you go and find your thing that you have love for and do that instead.

think we just have different views on where AI is headed and what it is capable of. Neither job is going to be replaced any time soon by AI IMO, but I'm pretty certain a UPS driver will be replaced much sooner as it's a fundamentally simpler problem to solve.

Experts in the field don't agree with you. As of now, it's supposed to be easy white-collar mental work is the very first thing on the chopping block (accounting, paralegal, sort of simple stuff where you just have to have the right domain knowledge and not screw it up). That's not in the cards for AI currently but it's clearly on the horizon with no real earthshattering breakthroughs required. But pure-mental work that takes serious understanding and planning, something like software dev is next after that. It's far, far outside the capabilities of current AI programs yes. But I think depending on your multi decade career trajectory on nothing really changing in terms of new breakthroughs is not a real no-brainer if the priority is money and a comfortable life.

Stuff that involves interacting in the real world -- handling a vehicle that can kill people, there's no unit tests or way for someone to go in after the fact and fix it, you have to get off the truck and interact with an unpredictable environment with human rules that can't be broken down logically, or you have to physically put up framing or wiring or etc -- is actually supposed to be the last to go, after anything that's purely mental. I think it's hard to predict, as you said, but that theory makes sense to me.

I agree somewhat with your concern over the uncertainty of the world, but I figure no one really knows where we're headed so I might as well do what I love and make as much money as possible in the meantime.

This actually makes total sense to me. If you would be programming if it made $38k a year, because it is your art, then fuckin sounds great. There were a lot of people who did that way back in the day, before the whole money-function came into it, and they were content and they created a lot of the solid foundations for the computing world we have today (that will likely be around for a lot longer than Tailwind or Typescript will.)