Isaac Askew: Welcome to Never Rewrite. I'm Isaac Askew. Jeffrey Sherman: And I'm Jeffrey Sherman, and today we're gonna revisit John Henry. For those of you who don't know, John Henry is a American folk hero. He probably existed, and it probably more or less happened that he was working on the railroad ⁓ in the Appalachians of Virginia, and he the railroad had him do a test, not a test, a fight. against a steam drill where to see who was more eff effective, John Henry or the steam drill. And John Henry i in all versions, John Henry beats a steam drill, ⁓ and that but he dies afterwards. The more realistic version is he wrecks his health because he is swinging ten pound hammers against a steam drill. ⁓ and it just it he he hurts him he Isaac Askew: Hm. Okay. Jeffrey Sherman: you know, hurt something internally and he dies soon after. If you listen to the Johnny Cash version of John Henry, he dies immediately after, and the steam drill blows up. So the steam drill also dies, which is no great loss. But the the the core of the story at this core of Americana is it's the dignity of work versus capitalism is going to replace you with a machine because it's cheaper. Isaac Askew: Okay. Mm. Hmm. The dignity of work is an interesting way to phrase it. Jeffrey Sherman: Yeah, it's you know it the idea that you're gonna work har you you c you get a job and you can work hard at your job and you can be the best because John Henry is the best hammer swinger that ever was or could be because it's American folklore. Right. He was a probably a real person and he's sure he was a great hammer swinger, but best that ever could be, who knows? But folklore. He he is a hammer swinger, he is the best hammer swinger, he gets paid really well as a hammer swinger. Isaac Askew: Yeah. Jeffrey Sherman: And capitalism comes and says, We've made a machine that's going to take your job, and he fights the machine and he beats the machine, and then he dies ⁓ of exhaustion, basically. No as a developer In twenty twenty six I I will say to you it is a good time to revisit the story of John Henry because the capitalists have spoken and there is a machine now to take your job. Isaac Askew: Hm. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: And like the story of John Henry, you can still beat the machine. Like you were at a phase you you know, no human is going to beat a machine drill today. But we are still in a phase where you can work hard and beat that drill. And it may or may not kill you may or may not have to work yourself to death, but you can still do it, right? You we are still at that cusp. Isaac Askew: All right. Jeffrey Sherman: But also we know how the story goes. Right. Yeah. I i if you think you're going to keep beating the steam drill, or that the steam drill is going to keep exploding or it it's time to change. And so that's where I wanted to look at today of like what was John Henry doing and why you know the real story is it it's John Henry had a really good job for a black man in pre Civil War Virginia. And he really couldn't get a better job. ⁓ but thankfully we are not ⁓ suffering from those specific defects ⁓ of time. ⁓ th we don't have those specific strikes against us, right? We aren't dealing in an incredibly racist age. We can go get different jobs. Well Yes that that argument Isaac Askew: Mm. This has changed. This has changed. Jeffrey Sherman: Yeah, I I would have bought that argument ⁓ more six years ago. But it is a less it's certainly less than pre Civil War Virginia. Right. You can go get a new job. You you are not stuck, this is not the only I mean, maybe but could you get a better job than a programmer? I don't know. Isaac Askew: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. First things that I think of actually there's two things if I can keep track of them both. When you were telling the first part of the story, I just thought about ⁓ marathon running, right? ⁓ the original marathon thing was yeah, like apparently runs that length, twenty six point two or what is it? and then Jeffrey Sherman: Hm. ⁓ the original marathon. No, it's just twenty six. The the two they added later in the Olympics. Isaac Askew: ⁓ well twenty six or whatever. And then like he just dies as soon as he delivers the the letter. ⁓ and everyone like I remember talking to people who were marathon runners or or like people people were ⁓ marathon runners that try to convince other people to to join the marathon with them and they're like they quote that story and I'm like, Well the guy dies at the end, so like why wha that's not a great argument for me. But yeah, I was just thinking about like somebody performing in a feat and then just dying right after 'cause it that's just you know, it reminded me of that. Jeffrey Sherman: Yeah, that's not a good story. Isaac Askew: ⁓ but the second thing w ⁓ I was thinking of is like when you phrase it as like the dignity of work. And I think this is where I see a lot of the community torn online. There's a bunch of subreddits on this that are very fun to watch. And some of them are like AI dangers, and some of them are accelerate. And accelerate is like the concept that we're just gonna keep getting better and faster and things are just gonna keep improving. And the AI dangers and the other ones are like about how, you know, we're gonna get taken over and make something Jeffrey Sherman: Mm-hmm. Isaac Askew: either things that just destroys our jobs or ⁓ you know an intelligence that replaces humans and then tries to kill us and you know like all the they're both very extremes. And then the the the accelerate community if you don't buy into everything they say or you have any kind of doubts or uncertainties, they call you a Luddite and say, you know, like that's like a a s a slur for them, like a Luddite like, you know, which is kind of ironic considering the history of Luddite. Jeffrey Sherman: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they i the i Luddites weren't really anti technology, they were anti capitalism more, where the i i y i if if you are working in a mill and you're weaving cloth and the owner of the mill buys a machine that lets you weave cloth a hundred times faster, the Luddites thought that they should probably get paid more. And the mill owner was like you should get paid less. Isaac Askew: Yeah. Right. So exactly. So like capitalism says you're gonna get paid less, but the accelerate community is like, ⁓ now what's gonna happen is it's gonna replace all the need for work and then we're gonna get universal basic income and that's where I start laughing. and they're gonna take care of us, you know. ⁓ Jeffrey Sherman: Yeah, no, that's not gonna happen. And that could ha The economics may work out, but I guarantee you that's not gonna happen. Yeah. Isaac Askew: They're not gonna give you money. One hundred percent. They're gonna replace you and then you're gonna be stuck at, you know, whatever th other thing they can't automate yet. paid as little as possible. ⁓ that, you know, that's just the way capitalism works. But it is just funny to see like I I see the point of the idea of like there's there's a lot of awesome literature about finding the meaning in work. Like if you don't have work, or even people who retire are like they're like, what do I do now? And they sometimes come back out of retirement. Jeffrey Sherman: Mm-hmm. Isaac Askew: ⁓ because they get bored. Like they need something to do. Now that doesn't mean people should work. Right, I'll go ahead. Jeffrey Sherman: Right, my grandfather ⁓ my grandfather never had any hobbies. He worked from like ten or years old or so, helping out his parents with it with a pickle stand. ⁓ and he worked to the literally the day he died at ninety five 'cause they didn't have anything else to do. So they just well I guess I'll just keep working. Isaac Askew: Mm-mm. Right. And that that's a the when there's a choice, that's awesome. Like if you want to go back to work or you want to tinker, that's great. ⁓ it's just the idea like I love the idea that Accelerate community is going for, which is like, ⁓ cool, we can automate work and then like then we can explore art and this other kind of stuff, which I think that sounds great. Like in a dream world, sure, you know, utopia. Don't think it's gonna plan out that way, but there's many things that I want to do that I can't do because I have to go to my day job and spend time on that first. And if that was automated Jeffrey Sherman: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Isaac Askew: by AI because I am a programmer, then and then like because of that I can play guitar. ⁓ I would love that. Jeffrey Sherman: Right, this is something that I'm discussing at work, where i if you take a prototypic ⁓ stereotypical day where I used to program four hours and do other things like meetings and whatnot for four hours, and now I program for one hour, and most of that is you know w looking at the agents and check correcting the results and and feeding it on. And now I've got this three hours of I don't know what I'm doing, but it's broken up into tiny little increments. It's not like Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: ⁓ I could get my job done in five hours now because I I have it. It'd be like, no, no, it would still take all eight hours. But now I have all this in this dead time, this waste. ⁓ we were talking about it kind of like in a lean production system where now, because I'm not programming, I've got all this waste in my day and I don't know what to do with it. Like I don't know how to get the waste out of my day. ⁓ But one thing I said is if I was paying for the AI, if I had brought the AI to my job. Isaac Askew: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: And I had taken something that took me four hours, now it takes me one, and now I've got all this waste time sprinkled through my day, I would feel totally fine s sitting with my feet on my desk, 'cause it's my personal desk at my house, ⁓ feet on my desk reading a book and waiting for the AI to finish and be like, Well, yeah, it's you're you're paying me to get this done and I'm getting it done and I have invested in a tool that's getting it done faster for me. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: So you have no reason to complain. But it's not, right? They these tools are generally too expensive. So I am not bringing this tool. My employer has brought this tool. And so my employer can reasonably say, Well, we we're paying for this tool, so we need you to get we need to get more out of you. Isaac Askew: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Kinda reminds me of the XK C D comic where they're like there's people sword fighting on the desk and they're like, Hey, what are you guys doing? It's like, ⁓ don't worry, our code's compiling. 'Cause back in the day you had to wait. Well d yeah. Yeah. Jeffrey Sherman: I I I have actually I I said that recently, like a few months ago. I'm like, wow. I'm I'm gonna go goof off 'cause my code's compiling and I haven't said that in almost twenty years. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Exactly. It's been a long time. ⁓ but there's something to be said too about the space. And maybe this just sounds like an excuse to the CEO or whatever. But I just know that like I and I I've talked to Rebecca about this a few times, where like if I just take a break for a moment, 'cause I'll get really into my work for a bit, I'll just like, you know, you get in the tunnel, you zone in. ⁓ there's sometimes where I get diminishing returns just working. And if I go for a walk, like I just force myself to go grab the mail real quick. Jeffrey Sherman: Is it? Mm-hmm. Isaac Askew: or ⁓ run an errand, ⁓ then something will come to me. The moment I'll just take a break from the concept. Okay, I this has even happened just like at night just taking a shower too, or like I give myself a break, then I'm like, ⁓ okay. It's the Eureka moment. If you're always focused on building, you don't give space for the Eureka moment. So I think I'm not saying, ⁓ you know, we need three hours of space to talk and have fun. You know, I can't make that pitch. Jeffrey Sherman: ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. I need three hours of space and three day weekends. But Isaac Askew: Right, right, exactly. ⁓ yeah. But I'm just saying there is something to be said for a little bit of a break while the thing's building it. You can go, Well, it is going that route. I wonder if there's a better way. You know, and just like you could even be discussing while it's building like the the idea is like you can have it doing things asynchronously. You can have it building things while you're in the meeting, right? Before you couldn't do that. ⁓ and then you can have a meeting talking about things and then you could have it building it one route and if you decide that's the right route, great. It did it. by the time you get out of the meeting it's done, maybe. If it's not, then you can correct it. Jeffrey Sherman: I I I would like to point out that i if you come away with this as AI means that you now get to spend more of your day in a meeting, every kind of developer is going to hate you. Both the Luddites and the Boosters. They will all be like, No Yeah. Isaac Askew: Yeah. No, I nah I'm just giving an example of like the fact that you're away and it's working. ⁓ so if the meeting is that, you know, ⁓ we're gonna go a different route, ⁓ no worries, because you didn't lose any work from your perspective, your hourly perspective or whatever, because you can go back and cancel it and do a different route. Or if that was the right way, you can go back to your desk and it's done. Cool. That entire time we were figuring out if this is the right path or not, we had it working on the path we thought was right, we were right about it and now it's done. Jeffrey Sherman: Yes. Isaac Askew: So it gives you more time to collaborate and understand the problem. Why not wasting not wasting time, but like yeah. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: Right. But back to the actual topic 'cause we're now off topic. ⁓ w we've moved from John Henry and the dignity of work to how to squee yeah, AI give puts waste into your day, how do you squeeze the waste out? Going back to you know, the what does it mean as as a developer, a lot of it is to me, you're gonna have to change what you do. And that's okay. R i i in the big and the small sense. Like I'm a developer and I write code, and if I now have AI, I'm going to ⁓ write less code because the c the AI is gonna do it and I'm Now I'm going to be freed up more and I'm going to spend more time thinking about how the system is actually running running in production. Like the go looking back on my career, it v you very much used to be that there was people who ran stuff in production and developers handed that stuff over to them. ⁓ and if you you have never had the joy of having someone reading over a telephone a stack trace to you ⁓ who is Definitely not a great English speaker and they're trying to r they don't know how to say these words because they don't they're not real words and they're trying to say like you know, the EXT ⁓ blah blah blah blah blah blah blah exception. And the next line is and it's at com dot blah dot org and ⁓ god, he's gonna read a whole stack trace to me. He doesn't know what any of this means and he's got to read every word to me, and I'm on a phone. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: That is brutal, and this is why we now have DevOps. And I think that's is part of the same ev evolution of you know in a perfect world, John Henry would have been like, ⁓ well I know how to I know how to make that steam hand steam drill, you know. Some engineer might know how to use a steam drill, but I know how to punch holes through t mountains. So I'm gonna sit I let me be behind the wheel of the steam drill. ⁓ and I'm gonna make the steam drill Isaac Askew: Right. I'm gonna use my experience to optimize what the engineer thought was needed, but as on the field with me swinging the hammer every day, I know the best way to do it. And there's actually a better way we can modify the drill and like that kind of thing. Jeffrey Sherman: Right, I can modify this drill and you still need a shaker. The the shaker is the anyway, the we're getting into actual lore of how the John Henry thing goes. ⁓ but like you in theory, John Henry should have become the guy who ran the steam drill and then gave feedback on how to improve the steam drill. Instead he died fighting the steam drill. And that's sort of where developers have to become is okay, you don't write code. You don't y I never wrote I mean I did once in college as a class. I wrote assembly. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: But after I did it as an experience of aren't you glad you have compilers? Yes. Yes I am. Right now it's another step backwards, because the goal is not to write code. The goal is to run software. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, you were saying we were off topic and I was and we tried to guide it back. But I thought it was all kind of related, right? So especially because the again, the phrase I go back to, again, like how you use the term dignity of work, that's the same concept here of whenever we're working at our desk and then taking a break and letting it work for us versus guide it. It it still explores to me this kind of philosophical concept of Jeffrey Sherman: Yeah, that's related. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Isaac Askew: Do I need to work? Is it okay to not work or to take breaks? ⁓ is my life my work? Is the thing you that is this new technology replacing me or can I adapt with it? ⁓ I think all that is still kind of related to this you know, this ⁓ ballad, if you will. ⁓ and I think that there's an interesting thing to be said about like I know in this case the guy like works until he dies, right? ⁓ just to to beat it. And I don't really know necessarily you could play both sides here. Is he a hero? Or was it just like showing that, you know, trying to beat the machine is a futile effort and it was a waste and the guy ⁓ was a loser for doing it. Jeffrey Sherman: Well I don't think was a look I mean, part of the reason that John Henry stands out is he dies. If he beat the machine, it didn't die. It would just be another case of, ⁓ well, this technology's not ready. And everyone would have shrugged it off, and five years later they would have come back and beat John Henry for sure because he would have been five years older and the machine would have been better. But it it's because he dies that he becomes a hero. Isaac Askew: Right. Mm. Right. Yeah, well I don't jive with that. Yeah. Jeffrey Sherman: No, I like the I I struggle with this. Right, like if you w most Americana stories you you look at them now and you're like I I don't really like I get it, but also Isaac Askew: Because the the funny part about this is I didn't know this story or the song or anything. We talked about this like a couple of weeks ago before the show. I didn't know about this and you're like, Well, how do you not know about this? And as you were telling me it, I thought, ⁓ wow, that was what a waste of life. I didn't think hero at all. I thought, okay, you're trying to fight a machine. In every case that's always been a losing battle and you didn't prove much, other than that, yeah, even though because like you died at the end. So the machine kept going and you didn't. Jeffrey Sherman: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Isaac Askew: So you lost. So you're not a hero, in my eyes. ⁓ yeah. Right, yeah. It yeah. It was a waste. So the the the lesson I take from it is don't try to fight change, but just try to to work with it and incorporate it. But also don't be d naive. Like it the Jeffrey Sherman: Yes. He lost, yes. ⁓ I agree, he's not well he may he may be heroic, but he he it was a waste. Mm-hmm. Isaac Askew: the same kind of concerns, like the the thing that you want to do to prove yourself, I'm better than the machine. That the it's the fear of losing your job to it. That's a real fear. Right. And so I think that's kind of the thing it speaks to more is like the fear of being replaced. So let me write this tale to show the power of the human spirit. But again, it didn't sell it super well because the power of the human spirit will fail in the end. Jeffrey Sherman: Well, there there's two problems, I think, from the from where we sit. Right. There's the the core thing is John Henry's story is John nobody k the railroad owner, nobody was paying John Henry to swing a hammer. Right? The story's about the dignity of work and John Henry swinging this hammer, but really nobody was paying him to swing a hammer. They were paying him to help build dig a tunnel through a mountain. And that y is the fundamental misconception that Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: Like that we are that resonating with both of us of he he the ⁓ nobody wanted him to swing the hammer. There there was no that wasn't the thing he was really doing. He was that was his tool to get to it get it done. And the other thing is, w you're gonna eventually gonna run out of tunnels. Right? John Henry was being paid to swing a hammer to dig a tunnel, and not in John Henry's lifetime, but there's very, very few tunnels being built in America right now. Isaac Askew: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: Because we've built all the tunnels we need. And that will also happen to anything else. So even if he made the step of ⁓ I'm not a hammer swinger, I'm a tunnel builder. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: In the back of his mind, he needs ⁓ you know, in this case, developers, if you take the step back of, ⁓ I'm not a coder, I am producing software, take a step back. Eventually, we're gonna run out of software that we need, probably not in our lifetimes, but eventually all of the software will be written. And there won't need be this need to do what we do, because you know, you know, with two or three meta levels back, you know, like people say, ⁓ we're gonna have general advice. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: ⁓ A GI or whatever it is. But eventually y whatever you do is not going to be necessary anymore. Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that I think that is the kind like the bigger thing to think about. The question, like it's we get comfortable, especially me in twenty ten, with the idea like, ⁓ people need tech roles. I I in my lifetime I had never thought at that moment that would run out. And then now AI comes out, does a pretty good job, it's getting better. And then I'm like, ⁓ what is my this is the first time in my career that I've questioned Jeffrey Sherman: Mm-hmm. Isaac Askew: What if I don't n people people don't need my skills here anymore? What do I do? How do I pivot? And I think that's the kind of fundamental question here, yeah, Safir. Jeffrey Sherman: That's the fear. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, I think we are both old enough that in our lifetimes we will still be needed. But in our children's lifetimes Huh? Like in our children's li Yeah, like w we will be able to continue on as something recognizable as a programmer for our lifetimes. I am not certain that our grandchildren would. Isaac Askew: In some form or fashion, yeah. In some form or fashion, yeah. Yeah, it'll probably look very different. Jeffrey Sherman: It would be very, very different. Isaac Askew: 'Cause I can't imagine people with the punch cards decades ago thinking about right now. Well, maybe s maybe a little bit, 'cause there were some novels that were out at the time that kind of anticipated it. But it seemed to be more in the science fiction kind of realm at the time. Jeffrey Sherman: Right, but that's the that's a great way to close it is remember, literally two hundred years ago, they had looms using punch cards, and punch cards evolved into computer programming, which is where we are today. So yes, it's all gonna change. No, there ⁓ well, I don't want to say no, there are no punch card driven looms in the world. I doubt there are, but gff who knows? But this all started with the machines, the machines that the Luddites hated, right? Isaac Askew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jeffrey Sherman: They it's still an evolution of these machines. It's been going on for four hundred years, if you want to ex really stretch the analogy, and and we're still doing it. We're still programming machines. Isaac Askew: Yeah. All things are the same under the sun. Yeah. This is just another retelling. Jeffrey Sherman: Yeah. Not nothing new under the sun. Thank you all for listening. I'm Jeffrey Sherman. Isaac Askew: I'm Isaac Askew, and this is Never Rewrite.