As someone who was recently fired for, among other things, being a stick in the mud about AI, I have some thoughts.

Try not to take work too seriously.

I drew a picture of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force saying, “It don’t matter. None of this matters.” and put that by my monitor in my office. Whenever I started to feel activated about some bullshit, I just glanced over at Carl. It calmed me down to be reminded that my real job is to simply not lose the job.

It’s a very bad time to be unemployed and anti-AI right now. Just tread lightly, ride out the storm, and let the inevitable reckoning eventually come to pass.

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RE autoscaling: effective distributed systems design isn’t really language-dependent. Java apps can scale just as well as ones written in Go. That said, I can see there being a case for Java apps not making it as easy to build that way. There’s definitely a lot of mainframe/monolith-oriented patterns in both the standard library and in enterprise Java culture.

As for the job market and career investment, I’d say this:

• Keep investing more deeply in what you’re good at. That’s your foundation and what sets you apart.
• Avoid chasing the “next big thing” based on speculation and trends alone.
• The next step in your career hinges more on your ability to think and design at higher levels than it does on lateral moves to another programming language.
• Explore languages and technology that you think are interesting, relevant, or can provide value or elevate what you’re already doing. The main benefit of doing this is to engage your brain differently and encourage change, improvement, and growth. This will indirectly improve your work and help your career.

I’ve written a lot of Java in my career and studied it in college, and I’ve written one app professionally and several hobby projects and utilities in Go. There’s a lot to like about it, regardless of its marketability on a resume.