I was on a particularly miserable job, where the boss would pull people off the project, in order of competence. When it got down to two of us, I ended up doing twice the work because my "helper" would look up answers, call friends, and use a GUI tool to edit disk partitions. They all overlapped and I ended up redoing all his work. It was ridiculously easy and accurate on the command line.

He learned squat. I don't know and I don't care if Claude is better at partitioning disks nowadays.

I can't say at this point if a life of learning beats a life of button-pushing, though my own choice was and is obvious. And I am glad of the opportunity to learn from people like Larry Wall, and to share whatever I've accomplished and how I've done it, with others on the journey.

I also get an inkling that the core of life is in the learning and growing. We somehow got into a world of troubles, equipped with the brains and strength to solve problems. It's not just in a Twilight Zone episode. A Nice Place to Visit [0] where one finds that our vision of heaven, where all is done for us, and nothing goes wrong; no challenges and no problems to solve, is in fact hell.

After all, what would a Creator want for his/her creations? The ability to create on their own. Else, one "creates" by getting the machine to do it (I know, it's never "just right" and needs human work, but isn't that exactly what billions are being spent on?) until ...

"There's nothing left to do."

And I'm still driving long distances and doing the dishes.

People used to do those things, and after hundreds of years, machines still can't do lots of "simple" things right

And where's my damn exoskeleton? Empower ME! Please!

Give me the machine's muscles rather than giving the machine my brain. Secret: it has some flaws.

[0] A_Nice_Place_to_Visit