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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

#221

Post by bambax »

meetingthrower wrote: post #202
puilp0502 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent is talking about the people who post to LinkedIn that "SWE as a profession is dead" non-stop. I fully agree with you that it massively lowered the cost to create, but I'd argue that the people who's saying that SWE is dead wouldn't be able to go past the complexity barrier that most of us are accustomed to handling. I think the real winners would be the ones with domain expertise but didn't have th…

Correct. I think "real" software requires real development and architecture. And to be honest, even the tiny apps I'm doing I wouldn't have been able to do without some background in how frontend / backend should work, what a relational database is, etc. (I was an unskilled technical PM in the dotcom boom in the 2000s so at least know my way around a database a little. I know what these parts of tech CAN do, but I di…

Yes, you're not who the GP was talking about ;-)

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

#222

Post by latexr »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #201
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,…

>I have spent over a decade working primarily on open-source, for free. How do you feel about the fact that OpenAi et al have slurped up all your code and are now regurgitating it for $20/month?

I don’t think they should’ve done that or continue to do it without consent, and I don’t limit that to code. Books, images, everything else applies the same.

I also don’t think “but it wouldn’t be viable otherwise” is a valid defence.

I don’t see what that has to do with the conversation, though. If your point is about the free/$20, that doesn’t really factor into my answer.

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

#223

Post by gxs »

bitwize wrote: post #84
j1436go wrote: post #56

Happy for everyone who enjoys it. For me it's the opposite: AI everywhere sucks the joy out of it and I'm seriously starting to consider a career shift after roughly 10 years of writing code for a living.

It sucks the joy out of it because to the extent that you build something with AI, (Obama voice) you didn't build that. I am allergic to the concept of developing with AI, especially for personal work, because AI-authored code isn't something I built , it's something I commissioned . It's like if I went onto Fiverr or Upwork with a spec and paid money and said "Here, build this" to a freelancer and then went back and…

Huh? What about all the open source software you use, did you build all of it?

What about the phone in your hand, did you design that?

HN loves to believe they are the noble few - men and women of math and science, driven by nothing but the pure joy of their craft

But this whole AI thing has been super revealing. Almost everyone here is just the same old same old, only that now that the change is hitting close to home, you’re clutching your pearls and lamenting the days when devs were devs

The younger generation born into the AI world is going to leave you in the dust because they aren’t scared of it

My math teacher used to say that people felt this was about…calculators, imagine that

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

#224

Post by czpl »

solumunus wrote: post #217
czpl wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

polished product, and LLM generated code should not be put in the same conversation.

You're simply wrong and it will become obvious in time.

I'll believe it when I see it. So far time has shown the opposite is true.

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

#225

Post by olig15 »

ivcatcher wrote: post #106
olig15 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bot

[flagged]

If that’s the case, then mentioning using LLMs to help translate/organise what you want to say in your messages might be taken a bit better by others.

If you want to use LLMs to help express something you don’t know the words for in English then that is a good use for LLMs, if it’s called out. Otherwise your messages scream LLM bot to native speakers.

“You’re absolutely right”, “That hits different”, “Good call!” “–“ are all classic LLM giveaways.

I’m not a moderator here, so you don’t have to listen to me either way.

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

#226

Post by solumunus »

kklisura wrote: post #218
solumunus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be two camps of people: those who love the coding and those who love delivering value/solutions. I am in the latter camp. The happy consumer and the polished product is what gives me satisfaction, the code is just really a vehicle from A to B. It’s a shame for anyone in the first camp who wants a career.

> ...and those who love delivering value/solutions. I am in the latter camp. The happy consumer and the polished product is what gives me satisfaction... Can't the customer now just skip you and generate a product for himself via AI?

Serious? Have you used an LLM? Of course they couldn't... LLM's speed up my development velocity. Maybe 1.5x-2x? Hard to measure. You still need the knowledge to make smart decisions, enforce sensible/maintainable architecture & patterns, etc. How is a regular person going to review code to make sure it's correct/efficient/safe?

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

#227

Post by closewith »

latexr wrote: post #163
closewith wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is such marketing speak. The words mean nothing, they’re just a vague amalgamation of feelings. “Vibes”, if you will. I actually think this reveals more about you than you might realise. A _lot_ of people enjoy being able to help people resolve problems with their skills. Delivering value is marketing speak, but it's specifically helping people in ways that's valuable. A lot of people who work in software are…

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 misunderstanding of the internal motivations of others and why "delivering value" resonates with others, but rings hollow to you.

In the end, this debate is less about LLMs, and more about how different developers identify. If you consider software to be a craft, then mastery of the skillset, discipline, and authorship of the code is key to you.

If you consider software to be a means to an end, then the importance lies in the impact the software has on others, irrespective to how it's produced.

While you are clearly in the former camp, it is undeniable that impact is determined entirely by what the software enables for others, not by how it was produced. Most users never see the code, never care how it was written, and judge it only by whether it solves their problem.

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

#228

Post by HPsquared »

meetingthrower wrote: post #166
keyle wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear. It too shall pass. They'll get tired, they'll grind the same apps 500 times and leave. Just like SEO experts, marketing experts, trade bots and crypto experts; the vibe coders will weed out.

Vibecoder here. I don't think so. I am a PE investor, and we are using it in our small portfolio companies to great effect. We can make small little mini-apps that do one thing right and help automate away extra work. It's a miracle. Simply wouldn't have been done before. I think we'll see an explosion of software in small and midsize companies. I admit it may be crappy software, but as long as the scope is small - w…

It's a nice demonstration of the Jevons Paradox in action.

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

#229

Post by entrox »

pydry wrote: post #167
7777332215 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It is an art. And it is very disheartening to see people without any skills to behave the way they do They've even got their own slogan: "you're probably just not prompting it properly"

> They've even got their own slogan: "you're probably just not prompting it properly"

That's the same energy as telling other professions to "just learn to code, bro" once they are displaced by AI.

But I guess it doesn't feel nice once the shoe is on the other foot, though. If nobody values the quality of human art, why should anybody value the quality of human code?

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

#230

Post by abalashov »

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 :(

Came here to say this. I've been programming since I was 9, and it always had a strong aesthetic, artistic and creative dimension. That dimension has always been in tension with the economic demands of adult life, but I was good at finding the quiet corners in which to resolve it.

A lot of work was tedious, painstaking grind, but the reward at the end was considerable.

AI has completely annihilated all of the joy I got out of the process, and everything that attracted me to it with such abandon as an adolescent and a teenager. If someone had told me it was mostly slop curation, I would have stayed in school, stuck to my philosophy major, and who knows -- anything but this. I'm sure I'd have got reasonably far in law, too, despite the unpropitious time to be a JD.

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