There's an interesting comment below the blog from someone named Alex (not me):

> As a proponent of discipline, I see things a bit differently. You’re coming at it from the perspective of “In software, we automated X, and now X is no longer a problem, therefore, we should just keep automating as far as we can”. That’s one pattern.

> I’m seeing from the perspective of: “There’s no way to automate everything, and professionals always need discipline, so let’s start with that, and then see what else can/should be automated”. My pattern is from looking at the history of every other industry in the world.

> Discipline is the rule, not the exception. When cars crash, we test and license people, and issue citations for people who visibly break the rules, and increase driver education. We don’t ban manual transmissions (not enough automation!), or install breathalyzer interlocks in every vehicle. Self-driving cars may solve our remaining problems, someday, but that’s a long-term solution.

> Similarly, it may be possible in software to automate our way out of many classes of bugs (I’m skeptical), but that’s a long-term solution. Discipline is something we can adopt today.

> Two points you didn’t really seem to address:

> First, there’s diminishing returns on technology as preventative measure. Manual refcounting is way better than malloc/free. Automatic refcounting is quite a bit better than manual refcounting. Tracing GC would be a little better than that. Every problem is like this. When you’re down at the “malloc/free” level, advocating for discipline seems silly. (Why not just fix the bad tech first? It’s not hard to improve on.) But once you’re up to about the ARC level, discipline is clearly worthwhile. You don’t need to wait for a perfect tracing GC to advocate for social solutions.

> When there were only 10 cars in the whole state and no roads, licensing and education are probably not high on your list. But once you’ve got an Interstate Highway System, you need licensing, and education, and laws against drunk driving. Nobody in 1965 said “People are dying in car crashes — we’ve got to automate this by developing self-driving cars ASAP!” You look at the limiting factors. At some point, more technology is a huge cost, in time and money, and a social solution would be cheaper and more effective.

> Second, you seem to be using “discipline” to mean only an internal personal strength of will, but that’s not really what the word means. Yes, we know that relying on willpower alone doesn’t scale. The goals are quality and accountability, and in almost every other field, we accomplish this through laws, regulations, certifications, trade groups, professional associations, and so on. Those do work. Check your dictionary: the definition of the word “discipline” includes rules and punishment!

> Your surgeon is not performing a splenectomy while drunk, but that’s not because there’s a breathalyzer installed on the door of every operating room. We didn’t use technology to solve that problem. We used training, regulation, and (severe) penalties.

> That’s what software development needs today. We can’t keep pretending that more automation is going to solve everything. You’re not going to find a new “GC” level advancement every year, because there aren’t dumb inefficiencies like “malloc/free” still sitting around. Once the low-hanging fruit of basic automation have run out, there’s no substitute for professional discipline.