They said solid middle class not lower.

My family was working class not even lower middle class.

And even we flew a few times in the late 80s early 90s, and we had a (probably used) Tandy computer that hooked up to the living room TV.

People have different priorities. We certainly couldn’t have afforded a current generation top of the line computer, and we couldn’t have flown every year. But an older computer and the occasional flight were firmly attainable to anyone with stable job if they really wanted them.

>$1000

That depends very much on the computer.

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1990-Sea...

Commodore 64C,1990, $159.99

My parents were working class in the 80s and we got a used Tandy that plugged into the TV and ran BASIC.

I’m not going to disagree with you there. A bad engineering culture is usually ultimately caused by other factors. Many times that is just hiring bad engineers though. Such that even if business got out of the way, the engineers still wouldn’t make a quality product.

I know someone who has a friend that works at Anthropic. He says that it’s essentially 2 companies. 1 that vibe codes everything and merges without understanding, and one that spends all their time putting out the fires created by the first company.

I think we’re destined to be #2 for a while. If it gets too bad, my plan is to move into a part of the industry where quality and reliability are non-negotiable. Or start my own company and compete against established players for the smaller customer base that’s willing to pay for quality.

I go out of my way to pay for quality projects even if (and often because) they have fewer features. I think there are probably enough of us to support a lifestyle business in many niches.

I also suspect as vibe coding introduces more bugs (we’ve certainly seen this at my current company) the people willing to pay for alternatives will grow.

Because delegating doesn’t give me the level of control I want, the kind of people with the quality standards and capabilities I have are extremely expensive, and I like creating things.

If I had access to a factory of apprentices that I had total control of, I probably would outsource more of it. So on the surface it seems like I’d love AI, but these particular apprentices aren’t up to my standards, there are severe limitations on how much I can train them, and I get no joy from teaching them.