Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

In a post about programming and AI, John Carmack argues that skills can remain rewarding after they become less necessary for practical work. His example is manually translating machine instructions into hexadecimal numbers: even programmers who still use assembly language generally no longer do that step themselves.

Carmack predicts that writing all code by hand may follow a similar path, becoming a craft people practice for enjoyment while other methods take over more everyday work. He explicitly says that transition is incomplete. His martial-arts analogy warns against assuming that mastery of an older method makes it the most effective choice. This is his view of where programming is heading, rather than a measured result about productivity or jobs.