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Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

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Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#231

Post by Orygin »

margorczynski wrote: post #207
viking123 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it's nice to use AI coding for side-projects, especially after work when I am kind of tired. Although the one issue is that if it gets stuck in a loop or just does not get the what is wrong and does the wrong thing no matter how you twist it, then you have to go into the weeds to fix it yourself and it feels so tiresome, at that point I think what if I had just done everything myself so my mental model would b…

Why do people assume what currently available is the ceiling, especially after the last 2-3 years of explosive growth? Do you truly believe it won't get better, maybe even better at whole system design and implementation than people?

It will get better, but the rate at which it does may not continue to be exponential. Past performance is not indicative of future results. While the agents models seem to continue to improve, I think LLMs as a whole have started seeing less and less benefits from the current scaling approaches.

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#232

Post by abalashov »

margorczynski wrote: post #207
viking123 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it's nice to use AI coding for side-projects, especially after work when I am kind of tired. Although the one issue is that if it gets stuck in a loop or just does not get the what is wrong and does the wrong thing no matter how you twist it, then you have to go into the weeds to fix it yourself and it feels so tiresome, at that point I think what if I had just done everything myself so my mental model would b…

Why do people assume what currently available is the ceiling, especially after the last 2-3 years of explosive growth? Do you truly believe it won't get better, maybe even better at whole system design and implementation than people?

> Do you truly believe it won't get better, maybe even better at whole system design and implementation than people?

What are you calling "growth"? Adoption, or LLM progress? LLM progress has objectively slowed down, and for rather obvious reasons. The leaps from GPT-2 to GPT-4 can't be reprised forever.

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#233

Post by latexr »

solumunus wrote: post #208
latexr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those who love delivering value/solutions. This is such marketing speak. The words mean nothing, they’re just a vague amalgamation of feelings. “Vibes”, if you will. If you “love delivering value and solutions”, go donate and volunteer at a food bank, there’s no need for code at any point. > The happy consumer and the polished product More marketing speak. If you are using LLMs to write your code, by definition you…

Nonsense. Features are requested from me, I deliver them to the customer, the customer is happy and pays me. I deliver solutions and the customer deems them to be value for their business... What else am I supposed to call that? I'm extremely diligent around vetting all code in my repo's. Everything is thoroughly tested and follows the same standards that were in my codebase before the invention of LLM's. I'm not "vi…

Yes yes, so does a street sweeper. Someone pays them because the road is dirty, and they use a broom to deliver the solution of a cleaner street, which is of value to the user.

Do you see why that’s marketing speak? You’re using vague terms which can be applied to anything. It avoids commitment and makes whatever you do seem grandiose. That’s marketing.

A few years ago, every app developer and designer was a “story teller”.

You don’t “deliver solutions”, you write software (or have it written for you).

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#234

Post by meetingthrower »

hexbin010 wrote: post #203
meetingthrower wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two examples: 1. Invoice billing review. Automated 80% of what was a manual process by providing AI suggestions in an automated way. Saved 3 hours per day of managers time. Increased topline by 10%. Dev time: 1 day 2. Data dashboards. We use janky saas that does not have APIs. Automated a scraper to login, download the reports daily, parse and upload to a database, and build a dashboard. Used to take my associate 3 h…

Awesome! Fully tested? QA'd? No false positives etc? I wouldn't want to hassle customers who have fully paid up accounts

Everything is still touched by human - AI is just giving suggestions to humans to speed them up. Can get them 80-90% there.

I think also you need to compare it to what was already there. No QA on the humans. Done off the side of their desk with no oversite, process, or checking. Huge amounts of manual errors.

The new solution just needs to be better than the old one, it doesn't need to be perfect.

(But I 100% agree that I wouldn't let AI live against customers. It is helping us build automations faster, and doing a "little" thinking on recommendation rules that would be very hard to implement without something highly structured, which would be frankly impossible in our environment.)

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#235

Post by itsthecourier »

7777332215 wrote: post #149
vim-guru wrote: post #71

I'm at the opposite end. I feel AI is sucking all the joy out of the profession. Might pivot away and perhaps live a simpler life. Only problem is that I really need the paycheck :(

Yup. I worked very hard, and for many years to acquire a skill in designing and writing systems. It is an art. And it is very disheartening to see people without any skills to behave the way they do. For now, the work I do cannot be replicated by these people, but I do not such high hopes for the distant future. Though at the point it can truly be automated I think it will be automating a large majority of non physic…

feel the same, but I moved up. create full products and profit from them. you have a great taste if you know what's behind

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#236

Post by abalashov »

7777332215 wrote: post #149
vim-guru wrote: post #71

I'm at the opposite end. I feel AI is sucking all the joy out of the profession. Might pivot away and perhaps live a simpler life. Only problem is that I really need the paycheck :(

Yup. I worked very hard, and for many years to acquire a skill in designing and writing systems. It is an art. And it is very disheartening to see people without any skills to behave the way they do. For now, the work I do cannot be replicated by these people, but I do not such high hopes for the distant future. Though at the point it can truly be automated I think it will be automating a large majority of non physic…

On the plus side, vibe coding disaster remediation looks to be a promising revenue stream in the near future, and I am rubbing my hands together eagerly as I ponder the filthy lucre.

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#237

Post by rvz »

hexbin010 wrote: post #203
meetingthrower wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two examples: 1. Invoice billing review. Automated 80% of what was a manual process by providing AI suggestions in an automated way. Saved 3 hours per day of managers time. Increased topline by 10%. Dev time: 1 day 2. Data dashboards. We use janky saas that does not have APIs. Automated a scraper to login, download the reports daily, parse and upload to a database, and build a dashboard. Used to take my associate 3 h…

Awesome! Fully tested? QA'd? No false positives etc? I wouldn't want to hassle customers who have fully paid up accounts

Nobody told them?!?

I guess Vibe coding cleanup firms and offensive security researchers are plotting to find bugs costing firms millions of dollars worth of bugs or one creating a dreadful data breach.

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#238

Post by Aromasin »

graykey31 wrote: post #209
Aromasin wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend a pivot to hardware. I'm in the FPGA sector, and vibe coding isn't a thing for the most part, simply because the determinism required doesn't lend itself well to LLMs. It's so incredibly easy to introduce a bug at every single step, and the margin for error depending on volumes is near zero. You're often playing with a single clock cycle of headroom. I've yet to play with a single LLM (Claude Opus 4.5 i…

How do I get started with FPGAs? Coming from backend/ops/sysadmin

I jumped mid-career, and there were a few places I started before diving into live hardware projects (which is the only way to go from student to practitioner).

FPGA basics: https://nandland.com/fpga-101/

Verilog basics: https://hdlbits.01xz.net/wiki/Main_Page

Projects: https://www.hackster.io/fpga/projects

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#239

Post by latexr »

closewith wrote: post #227
latexr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have spent over a decade working primarily on open-source, for free. I still do it, thought it’s no longer my primary activity. A huge chunk of that time was helping and tutoring people. That I still do and I’m better at it; I still regularly get thank you messages from people I assisted or who use the tools I build. I did use to volunteer at a food bank, but I used that example only because it’s quick and simple,…

> So yeah, I know pretty well what I’m talking about. Helping others is an explicit goal of mine that I derive satisfaction from. I’d never describe it as “delivering value/solutions”, that’s vague corporate soulless speech. While I commend your voluntary efforts, I don't think it lends any more weight to your original comment. In fact, I think this comment highlights a deep cynicism and I think a profound misunderst…

You’re failing to understand the complaint is about the hollow term being used to sound grandiose.

A street sweeper “delivers value” in the form of a clean street. A lunch lady at a school “delivers solutions” in the form of reducing hunger in children.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do something for others, the criticism is of the vague terminology. The marketing speak. I’ve said that so many times, I’d hope that’d been clear.

> While you are clearly in the former camp

You’re starting from wrong assumptions. No, I’m not “in the former camp”, I find the whole premise to be a false dichotomy to begin with. Reality is a spectrum, not a binary choice. It’s perfectly congruent to believe a great product for customers is the goal, and that the way to achieve it is through care and deliberate attention to the things you do.

Re: Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back

#240

Post by cbdevidal »

7777332215 wrote: post #213
margorczynski wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people assume what currently available is the ceiling, especially after the last 2-3 years of explosive growth? Do you truly believe it won't get better, maybe even better at whole system design and implementation than people?

I think what we currently have is pretty close to the ceiling for LLMs. But with the amount of money being spent there might be a new breakthrough (not llm)

It must depend on the person. I’ve been coding for all my life but have never been GOOD. I thoroughly enjoy coding, despite being frustrated many times.

Literally yesterday I remarked to my tech friends how fun coding with CoPilot is. I actually make forward progress now, and I understand all that the agent is doing.

For me, coding is an enjoyable means to an end. I do enjoy the process, but I enjoy the results more.

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