# The Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge

14 Hacker News commenters recommended The Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A 1983 paper on the pitfalls of automation that people say still applies closely to AI and coding today.

## Why people recommend it

- Applies to today's AI automation problems (5 comments): "I recently even found a 1983 (!) paper "The Ironies of Automation" by Bainbridge alerting to the pitfalls we see today." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50105910)) "Ironies of automation might be better suited to explain the problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49782674)) "it makes many excellent observations that apply to post-AI coding" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49579725))
- Insightful and widely recommended must-read (3 comments): "It's full of insights like that. Highly recommended!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264175)) "You can't ring more true than this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46266824)) "is one that everyone should read" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49574486))
- Worth rereading for fresh perspective (3 comments): "It's a clunky but fascinating read. I give it a skim every couple years and usually come away with a bit of a fresh take on the problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49375174)) "I suggest revisiting the old Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47157523)) "It's full of insights like that. Highly recommended!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264175))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani et al.](https://hackerapproved.com/p/attention-is-all-you-need.md): 14 recommend
- [MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters by Dean and Ghemawat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mapreduce.md): 6 recommend
- [Transformer Circuits Thread](https://hackerapproved.com/p/transformer-circuits-thread.md): 5 recommend
- [DeepSeek R1 paper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-r1-paper.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "The Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ironies-of-automation/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).