What's the alternative? If AI is going to replace software engineers, there is no fundamental reason they couldn't replace almost all other knowledge workers as well. No matter the field, most of it is just office work managing, transforming and building new information, applying existing knowledge on new problems (that probably are not very unique in grand scheme of things).
Except for medical doctors, nurses, and some niche engineering professions, I really struggle to think of jobs requiring higher education that couldn't be largely automated by an LLM that is smart enough to replace a senior software engineer. These few jobs are protected mainly by the physical aspect, and low tolerance for mistakes. Some skilled trades may also be protected, at least if robotics don't improve dramatically.
Personally, I would become a doctor if I could. But of all things I could've studied excluding that, computer science has probably been one of the better options. At least it teaches problem solving and not just memorization of facts. Knowing how to code may not be that useful in the future, but the process of problem solving is going nowhere.
Mainly the various physical operations many of them perform on daily basis (due to limitations of robotics), plus liability issues in case things go wrong and somebody dies. And finally, huge demand due to aging population worldwide.
I do believe some parts of their jobs will be automated, but not enough (especially with growing demand) to really hurt career prospects. Even for those parts, it will take a long a while due to the regulated nature of the sector.
I agree with the hypothesis. My country has a significant shortage of doctors, and guess what the few doctors spend a large amount of their day on? Paperwork that used to be done by secretaries, whose salary would be maybe 1/3 or the doctor's. It's a massive waste of both money and doctor's potential, but somehow that's what the free market prefers.
Here's examples of idle power consumption of second hand mini-pc's i've tested, running Ubuntu, measured from the wall:
Dell Wyse 5070 with Pentium Silver J5005 ~ 5W
Fujitsu Futro S940 with J5005 as well ~ 7W
Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro with i5-10500t ~ 12W with two SSD's
In comparison, my Ryzen 7 server build consumes about 22W idle (before I added GPU), has 4x SSD and 4x RAM sticks. I like raspberry pi, but for most purposes an used mini-pc is a better choice.
Talking about building a server with a Zero 2 W is a bit of a stretch. I have some running as airplay and Spotify connect clients + some environmental sensors but much more would be pushing it...
No where in the thread was the "building a server" use case defined - the subject was always-on costs. That said, an RPi Zero works perfectly fine as a pihole (DHCP + DNS server), WireGuard node, a git mirror (running Forgejo), and many more use cases that are not CPU-bound.
Obviously, Raspberry Pis, SFF boxes, workstations and rack mounted servers all occupy different niches (with some overlap). Anyone confidently stating that one could fully replace anther with no context of the workloads is wrong.
The OP of the comment you answered was pretty much talking about how he uses his mini PC as a server and doing projects on it... and ofc a zero can do everything but at what speed? IOPS is disturbingly slow. I like the Zero for what it is but it's just not a good server fit.
I mean, I do projects on mine too. Without OP describing what the projects are; you're assuming they are CPU-bound.
Speaking of my projects - the RPi is perfectly capable of working as a web crawler (at a page rate that may surprise you) as well as a media download client & transcoder (again, simultaneously transcoding a number of streams that may surprise you).
Yes, the pi is perfectly fine for many projects, and in fact I have a couple of old pi's (even the original pi 1!) running tasks, such as listening sensors over bluetooth, pihole as DNS server etc.
The reason I prefer mini-pc's over pi is the x86 architecture and possibility to add more RAM. For maximum flexibility, I mostly run my self-hosted services inside virtual machines that I manage with Proxmox, and pi isn't ideal for that. Admittedly I found even the mini-pc's too limited due to lack of space/pcie slots for a GPU, and ended up with a custom desktop build. That allows me to experiment with stuff like self-hosted AI, and game remotely. Support for ECC RAM and more SSD's was a big plus too.
So, indeed it all depends on what and how much you want to do with the machines.
It's fine that it's enough for you and I applaud you. I was also not only talking about CPU but also IOPs some of us have more demand on what we call a server. I don't understand how you can be so defensive about a piece of hardware it's actually rather concerning and my zero w 2 does have problems with FullHD streams with high bitrates. It doesn't even have the io bandwidth to push more than one stream.
Add an SD card to that cost as well as an ethernet adapter, maybe wifi too? I'm not trying to bash on the Pi as option in all cases, just trying to note that in some cases, particularly hosting local services, it's likely not the simplest choice. Uses where I can see needing a Pi over a miniPC? Maybe 4k video playback, I'm not sure how well these x86 systems from 2011 can do that while some Pi's IIRC have onboard hardware for h265 decoding.
The RPi zero 2 is nowhere near powerful enough to be used for multiple purposes as any of the above machines.
It could probably run a single-task relatively well, like PiHole or something, but otherwise it's in a completely different performance category. Like an order of magnitude.
So 6W idle for J5005 would put it on the same level of efficiency.
You're right, the RPi zero 2's CPU is slower - but that doesn't matter for non-interactive tasks. I don't care that my cloud backup export cron job runs 5 minutes (or hours) longer on the Pi than on a Nuc; I only care it happens daily. For the CPU-/GPU-heavy workloads, the RPi Zero W is works as an orchestrator for the > 10W computer: powering it on and off as needed.
That's true. The US economy is still very strong by world standards.
In my country (Finland) even entry-level jobs that pay peanuts often have multi-round interviews, with applicants recording videos and taking psychological tests. It's all handled by recruiting firms, which make good money by filtering the masses of desperate applicants through meaningless tasks like this.
Even if the workforce is small, job market can still be highly competitive when the there are simply too few successful employers.
Housing is inexpensive in places where there are not enough jobs. Cities were born due to industrialization moving jobs to them, not because people suddenly wanted to become urban.
So, what individuals want has little to do with it.
Yep, collapse of farming is much bigger problem than the cooling itself. People live even in Siberia and Alaska / Northern Canada, but in much smaller quantities as it's harder to produce food. Europe has money to import food, or if it's not available, then take it by military means.
So, my bet is that in case of AMOC collapse Europeans simply elect authoritarian governments that will make some unfortunate developing countries colonies once again, and use them for farming. Given bad enough existential threat, things like rules-based order, human rights and democracy cease to matter, and the strong take what they want from the weaker parties. That's just how humans work.
What you're writing was true a couple of years ago, but right now six week bootcamp isn't going to get you a job at all in Western world. In my country even new grads with 5 year CS degrees struggle to find jobs, especially if they don't program on their spare time. Meanwhile doctors can pretty much choose their workplace, and earn at least twice as much as average dev.
I would never recommend any technical role in this field for anyone who has no genuine interest in it. Sales, project management etc might work better.
Seems like a cool project, but not something I would pay thousands of dollars for as a hobbyist gardener. By the looks of it, might work for smaller plants, but not much use in growing larger varieties of tomato or cucumber for example.
Really the only thing I would trust and want to automate is watering when I'm away, and that can be done much cheaper. The most burdensome part right now in my greenhouse is actually keeping the large plants in check, prevent them from growing too much by taking away right leaves/branches. The robot probably wouldn't do too much to help with that. Weeds are a problem outside, but that's way too large of an area to cover with this kind of robots.
Except for medical doctors, nurses, and some niche engineering professions, I really struggle to think of jobs requiring higher education that couldn't be largely automated by an LLM that is smart enough to replace a senior software engineer. These few jobs are protected mainly by the physical aspect, and low tolerance for mistakes. Some skilled trades may also be protected, at least if robotics don't improve dramatically.
Personally, I would become a doctor if I could. But of all things I could've studied excluding that, computer science has probably been one of the better options. At least it teaches problem solving and not just memorization of facts. Knowing how to code may not be that useful in the future, but the process of problem solving is going nowhere.