I don't think you're old, I just think that you enjoy the activity of programming.
Ask HN: Am I old?
21–30 of 35 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#22It is like hearing about manual cars.
The American mind is unable to comprehend a clutch and a stick.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#23The key is knowing when and how to use both. If you can be twice as fast with something using AI and you're actively choosing not to use it, then yeah you're just being stubborn. Get over it or risk getting the boot. There will be times though where you need to finish that last 10% of coding because the model just isn't refined enough for whatever task you're giving it. And from what I've experienced so far, that las…
I cannot think of any environment in which getting code fast is of paramount importance (ok, maybe in hackathons and the advent of code). In work based environments, the bottleneck is not writing code is human interaction (understanding requirements, making trade offs and communicating them, listening to feedback, etc.)
If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later. Yes, the things you say are where the bottlenecks typically lie, but it's a cycle so the faster you can get working code out the sooner you can enter the other parts of the cycle. In theory anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cannot think of any environment in which getting code fast is of paramount importance (ok, maybe in hackathons and the advent of code). In work based environments, the bottleneck is not writing code is human interaction (understanding requirements, making trade offs and communicating them, listening to feedback, etc.)
If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later. Yes, the things you say are where the bottlenecks typically lie, but it's a cycle so the faster you can get working code out the sooner you can enter the other parts of the cycle. In theory anyway.
Teams who use agile mostly release on a set schedule not immediately. Getting that function a few minutes quicker but introducing a blackhole you don't understand but you hope works in production but can't rely on the tests AI made seems foolish.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#25It's the same with math -- those with a deep understanding will be able to do it by hand.
Everyone else will take the easy route -- higher immediate productivity but overall capable of less.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#26I currently pretty much only use A.I. when I get stuck (or sometimes if I want some help writing the scaffolding for unit tests). If I'm not stuck then I don't use it. There may come a day when I don't think it'll be worth the time to code myself when I'm not stuck, but that day is not today.
But then again I may be considered old, too (I'm in my 40s).
I don't think it's a great idea to become too reliant on it, just like it's not a great idea to only know how to copy+paste code from Stack Overflow. If you use it too much the coding muscle gets weak and you will become less able to identify when something is done incorrectly or in a less than ideal way because of this corner case or business requirement.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cannot think of any environment in which getting code fast is of paramount importance (ok, maybe in hackathons and the advent of code). In work based environments, the bottleneck is not writing code is human interaction (understanding requirements, making trade offs and communicating them, listening to feedback, etc.)
If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later. Yes, the things you say are where the bottlenecks typically lie, but it's a cycle so the faster you can get working code out the sooner you can enter the other parts of the cycle. In theory anyway.
> If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later.
There's no mention of that anywhere in the manifesto
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#28I think people who can do this stuff, and enjoy it, are able to use AI more effectively.
I just spent most of the day going back and forth with AI over stuff, and it kept getting more and more complex. Someone who didn't know any better would probably just take it and run with it, but I worked along with it, offering up more elegant suggestions to bring it back down to earth, where other people might be able to actually understand what it is trying to do.
I still get the most joy from writing tiny little scripts that help me (or others) do something useful.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later. Yes, the things you say are where the bottlenecks typically lie, but it's a cycle so the faster you can get working code out the sooner you can enter the other parts of the cycle. In theory anyway.
> If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later. There's no mention of that anywhere in the manifesto Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan It's mostly saying to focus on active fact…
I was going by this:
https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
Specifically:
"Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software."
I guess there are religious texts, and then there are the interpretations of those texts.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#30I both like to code but am lazy enough to hate the monotony of doing the same thing over and over. While I do use AI regularly, I also use an extensive collection of code generators that are deterministic that help me skip past the boring part. Doing something novel (to me) is fun, creating a form UI for the 1000th time is not very fun.