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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

#411

Post by pton_xd »

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 :(

I agree, the profession is dying and will soon be dead. There is no need to understand code. LLM coding agents make all sorts of suboptimal decisions but it doesn't matter; they just keep churning until it works. Staying in the loop to read and evaluate the program line-by-line only slows the process down.

I think the coding tools are not good enough yet so we can kinda-sorta hang on, but they will be within a few years.

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

#413

Post by dysoco »

fourside wrote: post #264

> 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 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 calculators

Do you speak with web developers on a daily basis? It seems to be the default stack for everyone to build from from a Saas to a TODO app for the last 5 years or so.

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

#414

Post by margalabargala »

risyachka wrote: post #66
mr_mitm wrote: 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.…

>> so much of it isn't fun at all thats why it was valuable. All things worth doing are hard.

There are plenty of things that are hard that are not valuable. At least not valuable enough to matter.

This is why we have compilers rather than writing assembly by hand.

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

#415

Post by chickensong »

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…

I 100% don't care, and I'm more than happy to move to a different model of internet that has explicit channels of free vs paid vs subsidized content.

The current landscape is so hostile that I feel it's my moral duty to block everything.

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

#416

Post by bitwize »

williamcotton wrote: post #145
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…

The problems I've been working on are at a much higher level than the nuts and bolts. I'm currently exploring domain-specific languages aimed at writing web applications. I've been particularly interested in, much like bash, data flowing through pipelines. I have spent quite a bit of time and I'm definitely not vibe coding but I've probably only writen 1-2% of the code in these projects. It is so much work to build o…

Speccing out a language, and implementing it, are two different kinds of work. There are doubtless GCC devs on the C standards committee, but when they're writing the standard they're not doing the same thing as working on GCC.

You decided you wanted to focus on speccing out your language and outsource the implementation. That's fine if you want to do that. But let's be honest: you outsourced the bits you considered boring or tedious. Someone else may find that the interesting part, and the experience of outsourcing it rather than building it themselves to be hollow in comparison.

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

#417

Post by margalabargala »

latexr wrote: post #199
mr_mitm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then don’t do it. No one is forcing you. No one is also keeping me from doing what I want to spend my time with on my days off. > Are you also going to complain that building airplanes and ensuring food safety are too much work and not fun for you? No, because this isn't remotely comparable to weekend hobby projects. What a weird question. > No, no you are not, guaranteed. “Polishing” means caring about every detai…

> No, because this isn't remotely comparable to weekend hobby projects. I agree. But those also don’t need: > intuitive UI, logging, error handling, documentation, packaging, versioning, containerization, etc. is so tedious. Some of that, sure, but not all of it. Either it’s a weekend hobby project or it’s not, and your description is conflating both. A hobby is something done for fun.

There are tons of stuff that are weekend hobby projects that need most of that. Presumably they are building something that actually does something, in which case deploying it to where you need it to be, logging the issues it has, writing up how it works so you have the info 8 months from now, etc are all very relevant.

And they're all often a pain to actually do.

And AI makes most of that pain just...go away.

Stop trying to gatekeep what other people do in their free time. No one is forcing you to join them.

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

#418

Post by jakewindle47 »

vips7L wrote: post #410
3vidence wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's currently my plan. I have kids, so I need to squeeze software dry.

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

#419

Post by jakewindle47 »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #400
jakewindle47 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m sure programmers who wrote their code on punch cards felt the same. Then programmers who wrote in assembler felt the same about high-level languages and optimising compilers.

I'm sure they did, and this analogy comes up every time I bring this up. Usually, there's mention of calculators as well.

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

#420

Post by jakewindle47 »

llll_lllllll_l wrote: post #392
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…

do you think shifting careers is gonna make us to avoid AIshitfication? I thought that was spreading on all areas.

Yes and no, I'm looking for something that's deeply people-oriented now. I mentioned it in a different comment, being a teacher. Also thinking about being a nurse. My wife was a nurse, maybe we could work together.
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