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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

#401

Post by batshit_beaver »

jakewindle47 wrote: post #371
krisgenre wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18 years here (more if I can count my non professional years). Agreed, coding isn't as much fun as it used to be but AI has only increased my enthusiasm for tech. Its a lot more easier to learn and understand new stuff, build things (especially personal tools) and tinker in any programming language.

For me, it was the craft that was fun, less the building. It was nice to have a really good result that customers were happy about, that other engineers were happy about, but it was also nice to have such intimate knowledge of a codebase because I and my team built it. I miss that level of mastery. I feel that in the LLM-assisted coding age, that's now gone. You can read every section of code that an LLM generates, b…

What's stopping you from writing code by hand even today? I mainly use LLMs for researching and trying possible paths forward, but usually implement the suggested solution myself specifically so that I fully understand the code (unless it's a one-liner or so, then I let the LLM paste it in).

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

#403

Post by cameronh90 »

RomanPushkin wrote: post #386

Worst engineer's nightmare would be if you're hired, delivered the "working website with 100 of different calculators", and someone like myself needs "just to code review it" and "make sure all corner cases are covered and stuff like that", and "provide constructive feedback" (that would be copy-pasted later on to AI), but mostly "this work is 99.9% complete". And you "can't understand why such a simple code review t…

Is it that much worse than reverse engineering poorly designed business processes that hang together with Excel spreadsheets and VBA macros?

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

#404

Post by vagab0nd »

leoedin wrote: post #142
cube00 wrote: post #75

Made with care for accuracy. I'm not sure how you can claim this on the footer of every page when you're vibe coding these calculators.

This is more than just a bad side project - it's borderline malicious. How confident is the OP that every single one of these 60 calculators work all the time, with all edge cases? Because if someone is on your website using your calculator, they are putting trust in you. If it's wrong, it could have downstream impacts on them. I hope every single one has a comprehensive set of tests with good edge cases. But realist…

There's a weird conflict going on here and I've experienced it myself. Essentially we hear 2 claims:

- You all should build your own software. AI is so good!

- You all should use the software I built with AI. It's so good!

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

#405

Post by dang »

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

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bot

[flagged]

Ah, this is the problem - the HN community is sensitive about picking up indications that an LLM has either generated or processed the language in a post.

As ericbarrett said, it's far better to write in your own voice. Mistakes in English matter far less than that!

Past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#406

Post by coffeefirst »

jakewindle47 wrote: post #369
int3trap wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you just not use LLM's if it sucks the joy out of the process for you?

Many reasons Everyone else is using LLMs to assist their development, which makes it a lot harder to work without them, especially in just building enterprise apps. It doesn't feel like I'm creating something anymore. Rather, it feels like a fuzzy amalgamation of all developers in the training data are. Working with LLMs sometimes feels like information overload. When I see so much code scrolling past as the agent ma…

I’m curious if you’ve tried using these tools the other way.

Whenever I’ve done experimenting I found the tab completion annoying and the agent got so much wrong I was basically fighting it at every step, but when I went back to VS Code and treated LM as a super fast inline stackoverflow—give me an example, look up this API, find my dumb syntax error—I could use it to support deep work/staying in the zone rather than supplant it, and the resulting code isn’t slop because I wrote it.

It seems to me a lot of developers are operating this way instead, treating the machine as an electric bicycle for lots of little boosts rather than FSD.

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

#407

Post by signatoremo »

leoedin wrote: post #142
cube00 wrote: post #75

Made with care for accuracy. I'm not sure how you can claim this on the footer of every page when you're vibe coding these calculators.

This is more than just a bad side project - it's borderline malicious. How confident is the OP that every single one of these 60 calculators work all the time, with all edge cases? Because if someone is on your website using your calculator, they are putting trust in you. If it's wrong, it could have downstream impacts on them. I hope every single one has a comprehensive set of tests with good edge cases. But realist…

> How confident is the OP that every single one of these 60 calculators work all the time, with all edge cases

Would you be asking the same question if it's written without AI? How can any software be always working will all edge cases?

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

#408

Post by sodapopcan »

9rx wrote: post #307
sodapopcan wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> I'm almost 45 and not sure what else I could do, though. I am of the same age. I have some good ideas on where to go, but dread the grind to get things moving. When I was in my teens and 20s the grind that got me to where am now was fun, but doing it again looks far less appealing now.

I've intentionally spent my entire career as an IC. I have a few ideas but ya, I've never even done the grind. My only dependent is a pug, though, so it's not like I don't have ANY time.

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

#409

Post by sodapopcan »

cableshaft wrote: post #359
sodapopcan wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I basically took the last year off from creative projects and just played solo board games in the evenings for most of the year, on nights when I didn't have other plans. Marvel Champions in particular is a lot of fun, although may be a bit overwhelming at first if you don't play a lot of board games already. I also got into Legendary deckbuilding games recently, and those are a bit more approachable, although not al…

LOL, I meant for a living but I enjoyed reading this nevertheless :D

But ya, I was out of work for 9 months and enjoyed pretty much every minute of it up until I realized it was not as easy to find a job as I thought it would be (well, it played out a bit differently but for the sake of brevity I'll stick that story)

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

#410

Post by vips7L »

3vidence wrote: post #377
jakewindle47 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? I'm not sure. I've looked at a few different paths. I'm lucky to live in the Research Triangle area of the United States, so I've got really good options for schooling around me. My sister graduated with an aerospace engineering degree, and I've always been interested in space. Thinking about hardware as a possible path as well. But in a complete twist, I've also always wanted to be an educator. A high scho…

Just wanted to say I've felt very similarly recently. Honestly feels like we need a place to continue to discuss post-tech career paths for mid-career engineers. I've been considering becoming an electrician but it is also quite a career shift.

Restarting a career seems so hard. Looking at engineering programs and having to spend thousands just doesn’t sit well. I suspect many of us will just keep doing “software” until they won’t pay us anymore.
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