It is like hearing about manual cars.
Ask HN: Am I old?
11–20 of 35 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#12Why not both?
I'm in my mid-50s. I enjoy writing a simple utility function by hand. I care about craft and form.
But, I also care about increased productivity, exploring new technologies, and the wonders of AI.
Being into one doesn't negate the other.
I believe this says more about the tendency for our minds to close off to new ideas and stimulus as we get older. There's a reason that most people's "ideal era" is in their high school years.
I urge you to foster more resilience and adaptability and shun the traps of "back in my day-ism".
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#13I'm 61, and old Turbo Pascal/Delphi/Lazarus programmer when I get the chance. I've just decided to see what my GitHub copilot subscription can really do for me in implementing something like metamine[1], a language I first learned about here on HN that includes a magically equals[1].
It's slow going, learning how to use a virtual assistant to get things done, but it's patient with me, as well. Eventually, however (and to stay relevant to the conversation here), I've started exploring how the code works, and fixing bugs on my own.
Once I get the framework to the point where anyone can try it out, I hope to then go through and understand every freaking line of code, and expand it from there. You're not alone in the desire to grok everything you write. There's a lot of power in that knowledge.
Then I'll re-implement it in Turbo Pascal under MS-DOS... just to prove a point. ;-)
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#14Do you want to do work or do you want to do your hobby? If you get joy out of digging with your bare hands then you should do that. When you're doing work, use a shovel or heavy machinery if you want to get to the valuable output sooner.
There's always going to be room for craftsmen.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#15The 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 last 10% ends up being 70% of the work, which is where your expertise will come in.
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#16If you have to ask you know the answer :D
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#17If you have to ask you know the answer :D
But seriously LLMs are great for a dew things and are getting better... But this is early days ... they are limited and try to do everything ... One day we all might have Jarvis at home
But not yet
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#18The 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.)
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#19Same feeling here, also I think this is relevant : https://i.imgur.com/WMXCqCk.png
Re: Ask HN: Am I old?
#20Do you want to do work or do you want to do your hobby? If you get joy out of digging with your bare hands then you should do that. When you're doing work, use a shovel or heavy machinery if you want to get to the valuable output sooner.
There's always going to be room for craftsmen.
No, there's always going to be room for craftsmen who make things better than machines do.
In other words, there isn't always going to be room for craftsmen.
The 20th and early 21st century is the only time in human history when humans both 1) had machines that can make things and 2) the things machines made weren't better.
That's a blip. From now on, there'll be no comparison. The only reason to want something made by a craftsman is philosophical: "I want something markedly worse, but knowing it's been made by human hands".