The last time my family was replaced by technology
- ID
- 30722
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 30 Sep 2026, 9:06 PM
- Fetched
- 01 Oct 2026, 8:10 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://manuel.darcemont.fr/posts/the-last-time-my-family-was-replaced-by-technology/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 3.5
- Created
- 01 Oct 2026, 8:11 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
A personal essay by @mdarcemont recounting that his great-great-grandfather was a farrier in Mandres-en-Barrois, a small village in rural France, who retrained as a mechanic when cars arrived, and whose family kept the same purpose — helping people get around — across generations. He draws a parallel to developers anxious about AI, arguing that many chose the work for the making and problem-solving rather than the code itself, and closes with 'be willing to let go of the how to hold on to the why.' The piece carries no data, tooling, or measurements; its only hard signal is engagement — 259 points and 538 comments on Hacker News.
Why it matters
There is nothing here that changes what you build, install, or pay for — it is an analogy from one family's history, not evidence about AI displacement, and the author explicitly says it proves nothing. The one usable datum is the reaction: 538 comments on a post with zero technical content means displacement anxiety is a live topic among developers right now, so if you are making hiring, retraining, or career decisions, treat that as sentiment to plan around rather than a forecast to act on.
Discussion angle
The essay's advice is to drop the 'how' and keep the 'why' — ask the room to name their actual 'why' in one sentence, then ask what specific 'how' (writing code by hand, reviewing PRs, debugging) they would give up first if AI tools kept improving, and whether their current job title would survive that trade.