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

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281–290 of 460 posts

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

#281

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…

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.

Yes, I immediately see the need for the opposite - perfect, accurate, proven bug free software. As long as there is AI there will be AI slop.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This false dichotomy comes up from time to time, that you either like dicking around with code in your basement or you like being a big boy with your business pants on delivering the world's 8000th online PDF tools site. It's tired. Please let it die.

It's not that extreme. There are people who would code whether it was their career or not, I'm not one of those people. I fell into software development in order to make money, if the money stopped then I would stop. I love building and selling products, if I can't do that then I have no interest in programming. I'm interested in machines, CPU's, etc. I'm interested in products, liaising with customers, delivering so…

why are you on a hacker forum then?

maybe "MBA news" would be better suited?

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

#283

There is an interesting pattern emerging in this thread. There are a lot of 'same here' and 'opposite for me' comments, but both sides are converging on the same point: people developing software to solve a problem. Many who are considering a career shift away from software due to 'AI disgust' devoted their lives to developing software because they loved the craft. But with AI churning out cheap, ugly, but passable c…

Some are saying "finally, AI does all the busywork and we focus on the business domain"

But what if the business is soulless? As in what if the business you're working on is just milking value out of people through negative patterns which... is ... well a lot of tech businesses these days. Maybe the busywork enabled engineers to be distracted from the actual impact of their work which makes people demotivated.

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

#284

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...

The amount of software needed and the amount being written are off many orders of magnitude. It has been that way since software's inception and I don't see it changing anytime soon. AI tools are like having a jr dev to do your grunt work. Soon it will be like a senior dev. Then like a dev team. I would love to have an entire dev team to do my work. It doesn't change the fact that I still have plenty of work for them to do. I'm not worried AI will take my job I will just be doing bigger jobs.

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

#285

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 :(

I'm in a similar position. At some point in the past few months I just stopped coding in my hobby time altogether. I'm almost 45 and not sure what else I could do, though. Hope you figure something out!

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

#286

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…

> 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.

There is definitely tribalism. I think a lot of the negativity is people who recognize the long term goals of these companies, not just to tech workers. Right now, these models are a threat to people who worked hard and invested their time, while it lets inexperienced or lazy people appear more competent. I think that less experienced developers (or people who don't care anymore or maybe ever) see what an LLM can do and immediately believe it will solve all their problems. That if you are not embracing this with full force you are going to be left behind.

You might see more opposing views in this thread, but if you browse this site often you'll see both sides.

Those embracing it heavily do not see the nuances carefully creating maintainable solutions, planning and recognizing tech debt, and where it's acceptable short term. They are also missing the theory building behind what is being created. Sure AI models might get even better and could solve everything. But I think it's naive to think that will be generally good for 90% of the population including people not in tech.

Using these models (text or image) devalues the work of everyone in more than one way. It is harmful for creative work and human expression.

This tech, and a lot of tech, especially ones built by large corporations for profit extraction and human exploitation, is very unlikely to improve the lives at a population level long term. It can be said for a lot of tech (ie. social media = powerful propaganda). The goal of the people creating these models are to not need humans for their work. At which point I don't know what would happen, kill the peasants?

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

#287

> Stack: Next.js, React, TailwindCSS, shadcn/ui, four languages (EN/DE/FR/JA). The AI picked most of this when I said "modern and clean." I’m not an AI hater but I do see this as evidence of LLMs being susceptible to chasing trends as much as people. Next.js with server rendered React is not a stack that an experienced web developer would have recommended for a “clean” solution to a collection of financial calculator…

Next.js is 9 years, React 12 years old.

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear AI is better at music and poetry too. Go forth and prompt.

Let the guy makes his music, why do we have to put this shit AI stuff in everything. Had to delete spotify for this bs.

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

#290
post #90

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 :(

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.

Still waiting for the 100% vibe coded trading bot.

Im in this field and my system was heavily built with Claude, though not per vibe coding, more like a junior supporting me: I do not see any person connecting a vibe coded bot to a real account soon, since if its about real money, people will hesitate. And if you have blown up one account with your vibe coded bot while you are not a professional dev, you will loose interest very quickly - such systems do not contain "just a few thousand lines of code": Sure you could speed up development massivly and "hit the rock sooner than later" when going vibe coded here :-D

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