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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

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Re: We mourn our craft

#111

Post by [deleted] »

massysett wrote: post #26
sosomoxie wrote: post #10

I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing. I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. We're on the precipice of somet…

We have what I've dreamed of for years: the reverse dictionary. Put in a word and see what it means? That's been easy for at least a century. Have a meaning in mind and get the word? The only way to get this before was to read a ton of books and be knowledgable or talk to someone who was. Now it's always available.

[deleted]

Re: We mourn our craft

#112

Post by querez »

jmclnx wrote: post #68
sosomoxie wrote: post #10

I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing. I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. We're on the precipice of somet…

I retired a few years ago, so I have no idea what AI programming is. But I mourned when CRT came out, I had just started programming. But I quickly learned CRTs were far better, I mourned when we moved to GUIs, I never liked the move and still do not like dealing with GUIs, but I got used to it. Went through all kinds of programming methods, too many to remember, but those were easy to ignore and workaround. I view t…

I think you're underestimating what AI can do in the coding space. It is an extreme paradigm shift. It's not like "we wrote C, but now we switch to C++, so now we think in objects and templates". It's closer to the shift from assembly to a higher level language. Your goal is still the same. But suddenly you're working in a completely newer level of abstraction where a lot of the manual work that used to be your main concern is suddenly automated away.

If you never tried Claude Code, give it s try. It's very easy to get I to. And you'll soon see how powerful it is.

Re: We mourn our craft

#113

Post by oooyay »

You know who else mourned the loss of craft? People that don't like PHP and Wordpress because they lower the barrier to entry to creating useful stuff while also leaving around a fair amount of cruft and problems that the people that use them don't understand how to manage.

Like iambateman said: for me it was never about code. Code was a means to an ends and it didn't stop at code. I'm the kind of software engineer that learned frontends, systems, databases, ETLs, etc -- whatever it was that was that was demanded of me to produce something useful I learned and did it. We're now calling that a "product engineer". The "craft" for me was in creating useful things that were reliable and efficient, not particularly how I styled lines, braces, and brackets. I still do that in the age of AI.

All of this emotional spillage feels for not. The industry is changing as it always has. The only constant I've ever experienced in this industry is change. I realized long ago that when the day comes that I am no longer comfortable with change then that is my best signal that this industry is no longer for me.

Re: We mourn our craft

#114

Post by FeteCommuniste »

croes wrote: post #96
iambateman wrote: post #9

I do not mourn. For my whole life I’ve been trying to make things—beautiful elegant things. When I was a child, I found a cracked version of Photoshop and made images which seemed like magic. When I was in college, I learned to make websites through careful, painstaking effort. When I was a young professional, I used those skills and others to make websites for hospitals and summer camps and conferences. Then I learn…

But you don’t make. You order it.

Right.

It's like learning to cook and regularly making your own meals, then shifting to a "new paradigm" of hiring a personal chef to cook for you. Food's getting made either way, but it's not really the same deal.

Re: We mourn our craft

#115

Post by nubg »

Fraterkes wrote: post #94
iambateman wrote: post #9

I do not mourn. For my whole life I’ve been trying to make things—beautiful elegant things. When I was a child, I found a cracked version of Photoshop and made images which seemed like magic. When I was in college, I learned to make websites through careful, painstaking effort. When I was a young professional, I used those skills and others to make websites for hospitals and summer camps and conferences. Then I learn…

I've seen a hundred ai-generated things, and they are rarely interesting. Not because the tools are insufficient, it's just that the kind of person that can't even stomach the charmed life of being a programmer will rarely be able to stomach the dull and hard work of actually being creative. Why should someone be interested in you creations? In what part of your new frictionless life would you've picked up something…

What sets you apart from millions of manual programmers?

Re: We mourn our craft

#116

Post by bloppe »

The acceleration of AI has thrown into sharp relief that we have long lumped all sorts of highly distinct practices under this giant umbrella called "coding". I use CC extensively, and yet I still find myself constantly editing by hand. Turns out CC is really bad at writing kubernetes operators. I'd bet it's equally bad at things like database engines or most cutting edge systems design problems. Maybe it will get better at these specific things with time, but it seems like there will always be a cutting edge that requires plenty of human thought to get right. But if you're doing something that's basically already been done thousands of times in slightly different ways, CC will totally do it with 95% reliability. I'm ok with that.

It's also important to step back and realize that it goes way beyond coding. Coding is just the deepest tooth of the jagged frontier. In 3 years there will be blog posts lamenting the "death of law firms" and the "death of telemedicine". Maybe in 10 years it will be the death of everything. We're all in the same boat, and this boat is taking us to a world where everyone is more empowered, not less. But still, there will be that cutting edge in any field that will require real ingenuity to push forward.

Re: We mourn our craft

#117

Post by heliumtera »

arduanika wrote: post #83
fastasucan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It was, for me, never about the code. Then it wasn't your craft.

No true programmer is excited for the future.

this is so true.

never once in my life i saw anything get better. except for metal gear solid psx and gears of wars

Re: We mourn our craft

#118

Post by codazoda »

dismalaf wrote: post #70

Dunno, LLMs writing code still feels like they memorized a bunch of open source code and vomited them out in worse condition. It's not that impressive that Claude wrote a C compiler when GitHub has the code to a bunch of C compilers (some SOTA) just sitting there. I'm using an LLM to write a compiler in my spare time (for fun) for a "new" language. It feels more like a magical search engine than coding assistant. It'…

That is my experience from a year ago but I no longer feel that way. I write a few instructions, guide an agent to create a plan, and rarely touch the code myself. If I don’t like something, I ask the agent to fix it.

Re: We mourn our craft

#119

Post by sidibe »

lukekim wrote: post #95

Like other tech disrupted crafts before this, think furniture making or farming, that's how it goes. From hand-made craft, to mass production factories (last couple of decades) to fully automated production. The craft was dying long before LLMs. Started in dotcom, ZIRP added some beatings, then LLMs are finishing the job. This is fine, because like in furniture making, the true craftsmen will be even more valuable (o…

Where do people find this optimism? I reckon when the software jobs fall everything else will follow shortly too. That's just the first target because it's what we know and the manual stuff is a little harder for now. The "good news" is everyone might be in the same boat so the system will have to adapt,

Re: We mourn our craft

#120

Post by SoftTalker »

zamalek wrote: post #8
AllegedAlec wrote: post #4

While I'm on the fence about LLMs there's something funny about seeing an industry of technologists tear their own hair out about how technology is destroying their jobs. We're the industry of "we'll automate your job away". Why are we so indignant when we do it to ourselves...

This article isn't really about losing a job. Coding is a passion for some of us. It's similar to artists and diffusion, the only difference being that many people can appreciate human art - but who (outside of us) cares that a human wrote the code?

I think this is really it. Being a musician was never a very reliable way to earn a living, but it was a passion. A genuine expression of talent and feeling through the instrument. And if you were good enough you could pay the bills doing work work for studios, commercials, movies, theater. If you were really good you could perform as a headliner.

Now, AI can generate any kind of music anyone wants, eliminating almost all the anonymous studio, commercial, and soundtrack work. If you're really good you can still perform as a headliner, but (this is a guess) 80% of the work for musicians is just gone.

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