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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

#251

Post by abalashov »

miningape wrote: post #246
abalashov wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

I'm very much in a similar boat to you - I'm also considering a pivot away from SWE if this is what it's going to become. Luckily I'm still young and don't have anyone depending on me (other than myself). I'm still working on my own small closed source projects, building them the way I want to, like a gameboy emulator - and I've gotten a lot of joy from those.

I think deskilling is an underrated concern. Programming among the competent is a mind-body experience and a matter of motor memory and habits of mind, and LLMs make you extraordinarily lazy.

No matter how 'senior' you are, when you lose touch with the code, you will, slowly, lose the ability to audit what LLMs spit out, while the world moves on. You got the ability to do that by banging your head against code the hard, "pre-AI" way, perhaps for decades, and if you don't do the reps, the muscle will atrophy. People who think this doesn't matter anymore, and you can just forget the code and "embrace exponentials" or whatever, are smoking the good crack; it _is_ about the code, which is exactly why LLMs' ability to write it is the object of such close examination and contestation.

Folks who realise this will show to advantage in the longer run. I don't mean that one shouldn't use LLMs as an accelerant -- that ship has sailed, I think. However, there is a really good case to be made for writing a lot by hand.

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

#252

Post by closewith »

latexr wrote: post #239
closewith wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

This isn’t a critique of language - it’s a category error. You’re confusing the mechanism with the purpose.

In your examples, a street sweeper or lunch lady (Google says this is an antiquated US term for canteen worker?) do indeed deliver value, clean streets and nourished students. That's the value they're paid to provide. Those are the outcomes we care about, and whether the sweeper uses a broom or Bucher Citycat is only of interest in that one allows the sweeper to provide more value at lower cost, eg more metres of clean road per dollar.

The same is true of the canteen worker, who may use Rationales and bains marie to serve more hot meals at lower cost than cooking each meal individually.

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

Saying you "write software", not deliver solutions actually indicates that you don't understand the profession you're in. It mistakes the process for the outcome. Writing code is one means among many for achieving an outcome, and if the same outcome could be achieved by the business without software, the software would be dropped instantly. Not because care doesn’t matter, but because the purpose was never the code itself.

> 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.

But according to you, care and deliberate attention (software as craft) are the only way. An absolutist position. But most software that matters is imperfect, build over time, touched by many hands, and full of compromises. Yet it still delivers enormous value. That’s evidence that outcomes, not purity of process, is what delivers value and defines success in the real world.

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

#253

Post by bbg2401 »

gxs wrote: post #223
bitwize wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hom…

Take a deep breath and try again. You'll get more of a constructive argument with the person you're responding to were you to engage with intellectual honesty.

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

#254

Post by pawelduda »

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…

> And it is very disheartening to see people without any skills to behave the way they do.

The way the do, which is? I've skimmed comments and a lot of them is hate, hostility towards OP's project and coders "without skill" in general, also denial because there's no way anything vibe-coded worked. At best, there is strong tribalism on both ends.

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

#255

Post by KptMarchewa »

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)

At least, they can still be much faster and cheaper.

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

#256

Post by aenis »

djeastm wrote: post #243
abalashov wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you not fear that future/advanced AI will be able to look at a vibe-coded codebase and make sensible refactors itself? That's my worry. Might be put off a few years, but still...

But its already the present.

For what I am vibing my normal work process is: build a feature until it works, have decent test coverage, then ask Claude to offer a code critique and propose refactoring ideas. I'd review them and decide which to implement. It is token-heavy but produces good, elegant codebases at scales I am working on for my side projects. I do this for every feature that is completed, and have it maintain design docs that document the software architecture choices made so far. It largely ignores them when vibing very interactively on a new feature, but it does help with the regular refactoring.

In my experience, it doubles the token costs per feature but otherwise it works fine.

I have been programming since I was 7 - 40 years ago. Across all tech stacks, from barebones assembly through enterprise architecture for a large enterprise. I thought I was a decent good coder, programmer and architect. Now, I find the code Claude/Opus 4.5 generates for me to be in general of higher quality then anything I ever made myself.

Mainly because it does things I'd be too tired to do, or never bother because why expand energy on refactoring for something that is perfectly working and not to be further developed.

Btw, its a good teaching tool. Load a codebase or build one, and then have it describe the current software architecture, propose changes and explain their impact and so on.

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

#257

Post by giancarlostoro »

I recommend you get Claude proper subscription. You can spend $100 a month for Max and get way more API usage out of it, or for $17 if you are patient about hitting limits its still way cheaper than using the API directly.

I have a similar experience but its moreso AI lets me build my side projects I only have time to research on, not much time or energy to actually code. I get to review the code and have Claude inspect it (most people I feel dont have Claude do code audits) and tell me where theres bugs, security issues, etc. I do this routinely enough.

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

#258

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#259

Post by svieira »

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…

> excel sheets

Funnily enough, Excel is the quintessential example of a fourth generation language, IDE, and database and it's the only one aside from SQL which actually succeeded from its time period. It's software, just like what you're building now, and just like what you're building now there are good points and bad points about it. The tradeoffs are different between the JS / Python code you're likely spinning up now vs. the Excel code that was being spun up before, but they rhyme.

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

#260

Post by aenis »

abalashov wrote: post #245
djeastm wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not fear that future/advanced AI will be able to look at a vibe-coded codebase and make sensible refactors itself? That's my worry. Might be put off a few years, but still...

> Do you not fear that future/advanced AI will be able to look at a vibe-coded codebase and make sensible refactors itself? This is a possibility in very well-trodden areas of tech, where the stack and the application are both banal to the point of being infinitely well-represented in the training. As far as anything with any kind of moat whatsoever? Here, I'm not too concerned.

I am no longer sure thats the case. I had it chew through a gnarly problem with my own custom webrtc implementation on a esp32 SOC. It did not rely on any existing documentation as this stuff is quite obscure - it relied on me pointing to specs for webrtc, specs for esp32 SDK, and quite some prompting. But it solved the problems I was dreading to solve manually in a matter of a 2hr session. Thats for a hobby project, we are now starting to experiment using this in the enterprise, on obscure and horrible to work with platforms (such as some industry specific salesforce packages). I think claude can work effectively with existing code, specs on things that would never made it to stackoverflow before.
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