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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

#341

Post by Jaygles »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #331
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #321

>> The problem? Every compound interest calculator online is terrible. Ugly interfaces, ads covering half the screen, can't customize compounding frequency properly, no year-by-year breakdowns. I've tried so many. They all suck. While you can't do anything about (other peoples') interfaces, you can absolutely do something for ads. You can install an ad-blocker on your browser. This is not just for you, OP, it's for e…

Using an ad blocker just shifts the cost of creating/providing content onto people not using ad blockers. The enshitification of the internet is largely driven by people ad blocking, as is incentivizes more click bait, more ads, and sloppier cheap content. For engineering/software related content, the impact is immense since the audience is largely people ad blocking. I won't name names, because they fear backlash fr…

> The enshitification of the internet is largely driven by people ad blocking

This is unfairly putting the blame on only one rational actor in a prisoner's dilemma.

Content providers are free to put their content behind a paywall with no ads, but they choose not to.

They choose not to because people don't pay for content when they can get it from other providers who don't use a paywall.

Consumers then are left without the option to pay for an ad-free experience.

But ads are run on hardware the consumer owns, consuming their resources and harvesting personal information on the consumer, which is a security concern.

So even if they want to support content creators by viewing the ads they run, they need to also accept the security trade-off, which many reasonably do not

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

#342

Post by iberator »

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 :(

Once you out NOW, it's impossible to go back to entry/mod level programing jobs. :( Downshifting to some shitty minimum wage job is BRUTAL

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

#343

Post by natdempk »

agentultra wrote: post #325

Sorry for yucking into everyone's yum here but... did we miss an opportunity here as programmers to provide simpler tools for people to build simple applications for themselves? Since when did "average" people have time to set up a CI pipeline, agents, MCPs, and all the rest needed to get vibe coded apps to work become the "simple" way for non-programmers to use computers to mush some data together for their small bu…

> did we miss an opportunity here as programmers to provide simpler tools for people to build simple applications for themselves?

Not really? To someone who doesn't care about software, software is a means to an end of actually doing something, and everything between idea execution of value is basically overhead. This has always been true and the overhead is getting carved further and further down over time.

> Since when did "average" people have time to set up a CI pipeline, agents, MCPs, and all the rest needed to get vibe coded apps to work become the "simple" way for non-programmers to use computers to mush some data together for their small businesses and neighbors and stuff?

You don't need all of this. You can basically just download Cursor, the Claude app, Claude code, opencode, whatever today and run something locally. I do think "deployment and productionization" is a bit of a gap but stuff like Replit or even Vercel + Supabase is pretty far along towards agents just being able to do most of infra for you for anything small scale, or at least tell you the buttons to press to hook things up.

> Did spreadsheets, embedded databases, and visual form builders stop working or are lacking in some way?

Pretty much all the LLM/agent products are obviously way ahead of form builders at this point. Take Retool for example, you could spend minutes to hours plugging together "programming-lite" concepts. A single prompt and a few minutes, and maybe 1-2 back and forths can basically get you to the same place with probably less overall jank in a lot of situations. Form-builder stuff is totally dead outside of maybe being an escape-hatch for some LLM situations, or letting users do higher-level scaffolding, but even then I think stuff like Cursor's "select the part of the app you want to change and prompt" is going to be a better UX.

> maybe there's an opportunity for better, local, lower-tech tooling that doesn't require such a huge tech stack

I think you are viewing this from the "tech" angle rather than the deliver value to the end user angle. The tech stack can be arbitrarily complex as long as it works to reduce end user friction and provide value with as much ease as possible. This might as well be the core idea of all consumer tech.

I think your core theses are basically "people care about the underlying tech" and "people want to learn programming or programming-adjacent" and those are both wrong for the vast vast majority of people.

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

#344

Post by vips7L »

jakewindle47 wrote: post #330

LLMs have sucked all of the joy out of software engineering for me, and I've been doing it for 12 years. As others have pointed out, I'm looking at a career shift now. I'm essentially burning out on doing the whole LLM-assisted coding stuff while I still can, earning money on contracts, and then going to step away from the field. I'm lucky that I'm in a position to do so, but I really don't know what the rest of my c…

What are you looking of shifting to? I’ve thought about an actual engineering discipline, but going through the schooling just seems too big of a thing.

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

#345

Post by vips7L »

g947o wrote: post #181
falloutx wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what marketing? this must have been done 1000 times just in last month. There is nothing new here. At best its for personal use.

This. I have so many things to say about the site, but have been withholding them in fear of "posting shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work"

Is it a shallow dismissal if the work doesn’t work?

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

#346

Post by SamPatt »

greenchair wrote: post #265
voidUpdate wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm an outlier then because I actually like programming, and I've never wanted to be a manager, even a manager of an LLM. At least half the fun of making software is doing the programming

You aren't an outlier. Most of us got into coding because we enjoyed coding, not writing documentation that talks about coding.

I enjoyed coding because of what it enabled me to _do_.

I can now do more with AI tooling so I enjoy that more.

I know lots of you enjoy coding for its own sake, more power to you. But it's no surprise to me that many (most?) view it as a means to an end.

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

#347

Post by newsoftheday »

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…

> It is an art.

I agree what we do requires a lot of creative thinking. When AI supporters attempt to use an argument comparing to factory workers being freed from dull laborious work by robots, the analogy falls flat on two fronts. First, there's nothing creative about that sort of work and second, because robots are highly accurate; while AI can often be just high.

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

#348

Post by lifetimerubyist »

lrvick wrote: post #195
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 :(

Consider security engineering. It requires constantly thinking about unconventional ways to attack systems, and taking advantage of common coding mistakes LLMs produce as often is humans because it learned from humans. Security engineers will have jobs until software is perfectly secure... and that is going to be a while. I do not use LLMs at all to do my job, and it is unlikely I ever would. Clients pay me -after- t…

> Security engineers will have jobs until software is perfectly secure... and that is going to be a while.

Not as long as you think.

https://cybernews.com/security/standord-artemis-system-beats...

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

#349

Post by bitwize »

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…

I'm aware I didn't build the things I depend on—OS, language runtimes, etc. But if I use AI to build the thing I'm building, I'm not really building it—I'm asking someone else to. We've been hoodwinked into believing that AI code generation is just a tool, but it's not—it's a service. You're asking OpenAI or Anthropic to make all but the highest level decisions and write the program you described. It's just done automatically by machine. I feel the same way about AI-generated other things too. What else is paying money, submitting a description, and getting back an image or a song but a commission?

If that's the tradeoff a business wants to make, that's their call. But AI-assisted development really is just outsourcing with a bigger carbon footprint.

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

#350

Post by solumunus »

lioeters wrote: post #138
000ooo000 wrote: post #112

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.

"There are two kinds of programmers: those who love making programs, and those who love making money. I'm in the latter group."

Pretty much. But I like making money THIS way. Other ways would be fine, but I enjoy this immensely.
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