The Beginning of the End: Nearer My God To Thee

I still remember the first time I watched Titanic. The scene that stayed with me wasn’t the iceberg or the chaos — it was the band. As the ship tilted and panic spread, the musicians kept playing. Their music was fragile, beautiful, and heartbreaking all at once. It was a reminder that even in endings, there can be dignity, and even in collapse, there can be art.

As a software engineer today, I sometimes feel like I’m standing on that deck. AI is the iceberg on the horizon. I can already hear the creak of change in the industry — junior coding tasks being automated, debugging handled by machines, frameworks suggested by algorithms. Part of me wonders: am I one of the passengers scrambling for lifeboats, or am I part of the band, playing on as the old world sinks?

There are moments when AI feels like the melody that lifts me.It takes away the drudgery of repetitive coding, freeing me to focus on design and creativity. It opens doors to new roles — prompt engineering, AI ethics, system oversight — jobs that didn’t exist when I first learned to code. It connects me with colleagues across the globe, breaking down barriers of language and skill. In those moments, I feel like the band’s music: fragile but hopeful, carrying us into something new. But there are darker notes too. I see entry-level jobs disappearing, the same way globalisation hollowed out manufacturing towns. I worry that wages will polarize — those who master AI will thrive, while others will sink. I fear becoming obsolete, like a craftsman watching machines take over his trade.

That’s when the Titanic scene haunts me most. The band played not because they thought they’d survive, but because they wanted to give meaning to the moment. I ask myself: if my role as a coder fades, will I still find meaning in the transition?

The Industrial Revolution taught us that machines don’t end work — they change it. Globalisation showed us that progress without fairness deepens inequality. AI is teaching me that my career isn’t guaranteed, but my ability to adapt is.

As I sit at my desk, watching AI autocomplete my code, I hear echoes of that Titanic music. It’s both a requiem and an overture. The beginning of the end of software engineering as I knew it — but maybe also the beginning of something greater.

I don’t want to be the passenger who panics. I want to be the musician who plays on, turning disruption into a new kind of harmony.