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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

#311

Slightly moving into the other direction, after 17 years of science and tech optimism I see myself turning into a Luddite more and more. First observation was that communication and social aspects of software seems crucial for success and proliferation. And next came: that technology seems inept to solve any socio-econimic problems, but rather aggravates them.

It's not technology that is the problem. It never was. It's Capitalism, always was the problem and always will. It's insane how Capitalism curtails innovation.

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is lots of useful information here. I enjoy a lot of the discussions. Why else?

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

#314

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.

> 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. I don't think it will be; a vibe coder using Gas Town will easily spit out 300k LoC for a MVP TODO application. Can you imagine what it will spit out for anything non-trivial? How do you even begin to approach remedying that? The only…

The f is gas town?

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

#315

I, on the other hand, am getting gradually, but strongly, disillusioned, and importantly also feeling disenfrenchised, from coding and the world around it.

I too am feeling this way. I liked the deep engagement and flow state that came at least to me through actually typing out my program and having to deeply think about things.

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

#316
Hey, it's very cool that you've gotten motivated to build again - and please don't take this personally, because this is more about the philosophical and cultural implications of AI and not just this particular post/project.

But these are the kinds of things that pretty much general purpose AI can just oneshot in a single prompt now.

For example, the other day I wanted to know how much caffeine I was taking in based on my coffee intake. So I asked Claude to just build me an app where it would show my current caffeine "load" in my system, and increase it when I pushed a button with the volume of the coffee, and even had real-time decay of the amount of caffeine in my system. One shot.

Anyone can just get these kinds of things made for themselves on-demand. We don't need nice apps anymore, because now software is completely disposable and customized per person. So what is the point of even building these kinds of "fun" tools anymore? Feels like we are essentially doomed to only churn out AI orchestration platforms and fast fashion throwaway b2b sass apps for our coporate overlords now. Lifestyle/small business software companies are basically going to go extinct long term. Just give Sam Altman money and GPT will make whatever you want and who cares if it's actually good or not because you'll just throw it away when you're done. Fast Fashion Software.

AI has taken everything I liked about developing software out of the equation and handed it over to a bot. Now I'm just doing the things that I find mostly annoying (code review, reviewing specs, triaging bugs) and not the things I actually enjoy - writing code and solving problems.

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

#317

Slightly moving into the other direction, after 17 years of science and tech optimism I see myself turning into a Luddite more and more. First observation was that communication and social aspects of software seems crucial for success and proliferation. And next came: that technology seems inept to solve any socio-econimic problems, but rather aggravates them.

You and OP are talking about two different things. OP is talking about being able to build things that do things. You're talking about building things that make money.

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

#318
post #129
post #58

Same here. Creating a polished, usable app is just so much work, and so much of it isn't fun at all (to me). There are a few key parts that are fun, but building an intuitive UI, logging, error handling, documentation, packaging, versioning, containerization, etc. is so tedious. I'm bewildered when I read posts by the naysayers, because I'm sitting here building polished apps in a fraction of the time, and they work.…

> Creating a polished, usable app is just so much work, and so much of it isn't fun at all (to me). Then don’t do it. No one is forcing you. Are you also going to complain that building airplanes and ensuring food safety are too much work and not fun for you? Not everything needs to be or should be dumbed down to appeal to lowest common denominator. Alternatively, go work at a company where you’re part of a team and…

This is coming across as the "hobby police" here telling everyone what they can and can't do... I'm sure it wasn't meant that way but it reads that way.

The airplane company wont let you vibe code their systems anyway, and rightly so. the rest of us can just do whatever we like.

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

#319

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. I don't think it will be; a vibe coder using Gas Town will easily spit out 300k LoC for a MVP TODO application. Can you imagine what it will spit out for anything non-trivial? How do you even begin to approach remedying that? The only…

> How do you even begin to approach remedying that? The only recourse for humans is to offer to rebuild it all using the existing features as a functional spec. There are cases where that will be the appropriate decision. That may not be every case, but it'll be enough cases that there's money to be made. There will be other cases where just untangling the clusterfuck and coming up with any sense of direction at all,…

> it's probably not a great time to be a very middling pure CRUD web app developer. However, has it ever been, outside of SV and certain very select, fortunate corners of the economy?

Like 80% of jobs outside the USA are either local or outsourced CRUD web applications. Many people live quite well thanks to exchange rates. I wonder what's gonna happen if/when those jobs disappear.

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

#320

Slightly moving into the other direction, after 17 years of science and tech optimism I see myself turning into a Luddite more and more. First observation was that communication and social aspects of software seems crucial for success and proliferation. And next came: that technology seems inept to solve any socio-econimic problems, but rather aggravates them.

It's not technology that is the problem. It never was. It's Capitalism, always was the problem and always will. It's insane how Capitalism curtails innovation.

I've been think about these broad critiques of Capitalism, and while I sometimes find myself nodding in at least partial agreement, I worry that it's far too blunt a critique.

If you look at Soviet or Chinese Communism, they also stifled innovation, and they also destroyed entire ecosystems. They also had extreme concentrations of power, which allowed psychopathic leaders to commit atrocities.

If we want to come up with real long-term solutions, maybe we need to be honest about underlying human traits, and address those via systematic controls. Otherwise, it feels like we are going to keep bouncing from extreme to extreme. That tendency towards extremes seems like another easily exploited human trait that needs to be identified and addressed.

I guess my point here is that maybe it's not entirely specific systems at fault here, as much as it is universal human traits and group dynamics.

Disclaimer: I thought we had already found the beginnings of an answer, and it was Social Democracy with a regulated market economy. However, this system appears not to be extreme enough for many people to get excited about it.

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