AI Writes the Answers Now, So What Should Programmers Do? One 1024 Day Answer: Start Small

The practical consequence: naming one annoying recurring task and trying to save 30 minutes on it gives a testable response to AI anxiety, instead of another course purchase or a resignation made on imagination.

AI answers coding questions in seconds, and the question of whether programmers still have a career is openly circulating in China. On October 24, the unofficial Chinese holiday for developers, one frontend voice tells peers to treat the question as a practical one: side hustles are experiments, not lifelines; learning should be aimed at a task you can use immediately; and career changes should be tested in spare time before anyone resigns.

The advice on side income starts from what you already know: report automation for small teams, small tools that remove repetitive work, or writing up solved problems. Paid projects need explicit scope, deadlines, revision limits, and maintenance terms, because the real drain is a small request that grows into an endless project. The same caution applies to anything that demands big upfront payments or promises easy money.

The learning advice is equally concrete. Instead of filling bookmarks with courses, pick a repetitive task and let AI take the first pass, or build a small tool for a familiar business problem, then check whether it saved time or found users. The same applies to learning the industry you work in, since many 'build this feature' requests hide process, data, or handoff bottlenecks. The suggested first step for anyone unsettled by AI: pick one task that annoys you every week and try to shave 30 minutes off it, then record what happened.