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Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

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Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#121

Post by sealeck »

omgwalt wrote: post #118

First, I get it. Second, you can look at it differently. AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. The opportunities are going to come to those who know how to prompt the AI and hold it accountable. So yes, you're no longer going to be the hero for the code you type out. But you CAN be the hero for being the Senior Developer or Project Manager who know what needs to be done and knows h…

> AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact.

[citation needed] and this really depends what you are doing.

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#122

Post by jackmenotti »

omgwalt wrote: post #118

First, I get it. Second, you can look at it differently. AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. The opportunities are going to come to those who know how to prompt the AI and hold it accountable. So yes, you're no longer going to be the hero for the code you type out. But you CAN be the hero for being the Senior Developer or Project Manager who know what needs to be done and knows h…

> AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact.

That's not a fact it's a fact only on HN

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#123

Post by jackmenotti »

I don't feel the same, I just have a bad under the skin feeling just thinking about what your code could look like as of now. I feel like there won't be enough human/processes/money to clean up all the slop, hoping for a big reset at some point. And no a sci-fi future AI won't help us clean the slop

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#124

Post by chinchilla2020 »

omgwalt wrote: post #118

First, I get it. Second, you can look at it differently. AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. The opportunities are going to come to those who know how to prompt the AI and hold it accountable. So yes, you're no longer going to be the hero for the code you type out. But you CAN be the hero for being the Senior Developer or Project Manager who know what needs to be done and knows h…

> That's a fact

Great evidence. Add "full stop." to really drive the point home

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#125

Post by brudgers »

[phenomenological questions with today’s first mug of coffee]

then sitting and waiting for it to finish. If it fails…

I could not help but think that sounds like the old days of batch processing and even somewhat recent compilers.

¿Maybe waiting is an ordinary part of programming?

¿And maybe LLM’s fill a vacuum created by desktop systems with abundant memory and fast bulk storage?

¿Could it be that waiting is a fundamental dimension in our relationship to machines and when we change the mechanism to remove one cause of wait, another wait often whack-a-moles itself up? [1]

——

Anyway, my empathy on your job frustration. My advice is programming, no matter how much you love it, is still a day job when programming is your day job. What matters most are the things your day job allows you to do, e.g. Friday night pizza for your children, vintage rollerblades, or a trip to Guam.

And if your mental health is suffering, there’s nothing wrong about talking to a clinical therapist. In fact there can be a lot right about it.

Or not. Good luck.

[1]: We might do something else while we wait for the laundry to finish the dryer cycle or microwave popcorn to pop. Often this can be just filling time and the completion interrupts us with buzzers and beeps.

[2]: The nature of machines is that we tend to eat more popcorn and have cleaner clothes ^and^ spend more time cooking popcorn and washing clothes because it is less bother. Particularly when it comes to our day jobs…the machines of the call center increase the number of calls the call center handles per employee.

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#126

Post by AnotherGoodName »

John23832 wrote: post #4

I think that's just the way you're doing it? I feel the opposite. I appreciate the ability to iterate and prototype in a way which lowers friction. Sure I have to plan steps out ahead of time, but that's expected with any kind of software architecture. The stimulating part is the design and thought and learning, not digging the ditch. If you're just firing off prompts all day with no design/input, yea I'm sure that s…

For prototyping UI it's actually amazing.

"Add a sidebar to the side that tracks where we are in the document".

"Move all elements in area A into a split screen view with those elements at the left hand side and the remaining elements in the right hand side"

The above sort of thing can be painful to do manually. Changing a layout which can have 100's of elements and moving everything across to the new layout structure. Often you can waste a day tweaking it in various ways. LLMs are actually pretty amazing at it since it's a job where you "put old things from one context into a new context" and that's basically what they do. As in AI has saved me some of the biggest pain points and allowed me to focus on the meatier aspects of the code (which it's not so good at).

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#127

Post by [deleted] »

Winsaucerer wrote: post #114
moomoo11 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re doing wrong is you’re working on complex stuff.

I would love someone to do some research on attitudes towards how self-driving AI is, compared to factors like: - Type of dev work (infra, frontend, backend, etc) - Programming language - Level of experience - Quality expectations of project/work environment

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#129

Post by qn9n »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #30
Eatcats wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in this world of LLM coding, we jumped to architect level

Many of us will make that shift effectively, sure. I think the problem is that to really be a good architect, you need 10+ years of actually doing things to understand what should/should not be built, and the industry is rapidly removing the jobs that let people acquire that experience.

Yeah I would recommend avoiding LLM's while learning to anyone new to programming, because I have experience with meticulously rewriting code until I was happy with it's performance, conciseness and readability I can see when an LLM is writing something that could be improved and just gently nudge it in that direction and it resolves the issue.

Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

#130

Post by scarface_74 »

jon-wood wrote: post #24

Have you considered not doing that? It's not obligatory to have an LLM shit out unreviewed code for you, you're making a choice to do that, and you can make a choice not to. Review the code. Hell, maybe even write some code yourself. What you're describing is how I feel whenever I use an LLM for anything more than the most basic of tasks. I've gone from being a senior level software developer to managing a barely com…

How large of an idea can you implement by yourself as opposed to leading a team?

I can and have lead discovery sessions either virtually or hop on plane and do it in person, design the architecture, be a halfway decent project manager, tech lead, hands on development, take an empty AWS account and set up best practices from a security, networking, deployment pipelines, etc.

But I can’t do it all at once and there is still only so much I can do at once and no business would be happy with the length of time it would take me or any one person to do a complex implementation at scale. At some point, if you have big ideas, you have to lead projects.

However LLMs make a damn good and fast junior developer that can do it all especially on a green field project with clear requirements and the amount of work I can get done now by myself on each of those levels - post requirement gathering is at least 2x - 3x.

And I am not bragging - I’m old. I should be able to do all of things I mentioned.

Code is an implementation detail. My job has always been to get computers to do stuff to either make the computer money or to save the computer money either via my own hands or via leading a team.

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