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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

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Re: We mourn our craft

#211

Post by dham »

Ronsenshi wrote: post #93

Agree with the author. I like the process of writing code, typing method names and class definitions while at the same time thinking ahead about overall architecture, structure, how much time given function would run for, what kind of tests are necessary. I find it unsettling how many people in the comments say that they don't like writing code. Feels aliens to me. We went into this field for seemingly very different…

It's not so much the writing of the code (which I did like), it's the aesthetic of the code. It's solving a problem with the right code and the right amount of code (for now). That's still the case, even with AI writing most of the code. You have to steer it constantly because it has very bad instincts, because most people in the profession aren't good at it, so it has bad training data. Mainly because the "learn to code" movement and people getting into this profession just for the money and not the love. Those people are probably screwed.

Re: We mourn our craft

#212

Post by AndrewKemendo »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #159
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I was born in 84 and have been doing software since 97 it’s never been easier, better or more accessible time to make literally anything - by far. Also if you prefer to code by hand literally nobody is stopping you AND even that is easier. Cause if you wanted to code for console games you literally couldn’t in the 90s without 100k specialized dev machine. It’s not even close. This “I’m a victim because my softw…

I'm not going to code by hand if it's 4x slower than having Claude do it. Yes, I can do that, but it just feels bad. The analogy I like is it's like driving vs. walking. We were healthier when we walked everywhere, but it's very hard to quit driving and go back even if it's going to be better for you.

I walk all the time

During the summer I’ll walk 30-50 miles a week

However I’m not going to walk to work ever and I’m damn sir not going to walk in the rain or snow unless if I can avoid it

Re: We mourn our craft

#213

Post by koiueo »

nubg wrote: post #151

To the people who are against AI programming, honest question: why do you not program in assembly? Can you really say "you" "programmed" anything at all if a compiler wrote your binaries? This is a 100% honest question. Because whatever your justification to this is, it can probably be used for AI programmers using temperature 0.0 as well, just one abstraction level higher. I'm 100% honestly looking forward to findin…

There's a big difference between deterministic abstraction over machine code, and probabilistic translation of ambiguous language into machine code.

Compiler is your interface.

If you treat LLM as your interface... Well, I wouldn't want sharing codebase with you.

Re: We mourn our craft

#214

Post by recursivegirth »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #192
fastasucan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's just gatekeeping. It was and is my craft. I've been doing it since grade 5. Like 30 years now. Writing tight assembly for robot controllers all the way to AI on MRI machines to security for the DoD and now the biggest AI on the planet. But my craft was not typing. It's coding. If you're typist you're going to mourn the printer. But if you're a writer you're going to see how the improves your life.

Right, there is a non-zero overlap between the VIM Andy's and AI nay-sayers.

Re: We mourn our craft

#215

Post by kelnos »

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 love building things too, but for me, the journey is a big part of what brings me joy. Herding an LLM doesn't give me joy like writing code does. And the finished project doesn't feel the same when my involvement is limited to prompting an LLM and reviewing its output.

If I had an LLM generate a piece of artwork for me, I wouldn't call myself an artist, no matter how many hours I spent conversing with the LLM in order to refine the image. So I wouldn't call myself a coder if my process was to get an LLM to write most/all the code for me. Not saying the output of either doesn't have value, but I am absolutely fine gatekeeping in this way: you are not an artist/coder if this is how you build your product. You're an artistic director, a technical product manager, something of that nature.

That said, I never derived joy from every single second of coding; there were and are plenty of parts to it that I find tedious or frustrating. I do appreciate being able to let an LLM loose on some of those parts.

But sparing use is starting to really only work for hobby projects. I'm not sure I could get away with taking the time to write most of it manually when LLMs might make coworkers more "productive". Even if I can convince myself my code is still "better" than theirs, that's not what companies value.

Re: We mourn our craft

#216

Post by jryio »

These comments are comical. How hard is it to understand that human beings are experiential creatures. Our experiences matter, to survival, to culture, and identity.

I mourn the horse masters and stable boys of a century past because of their craft. Years of intuition and experience.

Why do you watch a chess master play, or a live concert, or any form of human creation?

Should we automate parts of our profession? Yes.

Should he mourn the loss of our craft. Also yes.

Re: We mourn our craft

#218

Post by zeroonetwothree »

codazoda wrote: post #59

“We’ll miss creating something we feel proud of” I still feel proud when skillfully guiding a set of AI agents to build from my imagination. Especially when it was out of my reach just 6-months ago. I’m a 49 year old veteran who started at just 10 years old and have continued to find pure passion in it.

I wonder if this is just a matter of degree. In a few years (or less) you may not have to "skillfully guide" anything. The agents will just coordinate themselves and accomplish your goals after you give some vague instruction. Will you still feel proud? Or maybe a bit later then agents will come up with their own improvements and just ship them without any input at all. How about then?

Re: We mourn our craft

#219

Post by crazygringo »

tatjam wrote: post #190
crazygringo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's more like moving from line cook, to head chef in charge of 30 cooks. Food's getting made, but you focus on the truly creative part -- the menu, the concept, the customer experience. You're not boiling pasta or cutting chives for the thousandth time. The same way now you're focusing on architecture and design now instead of writing your 10,000th list comprehension.

Except the cooks don't exist anymore as they all have become head chefs (or changed careers) and the food is being cooked by magical cooking black boxes

Sure, but the point is you're now doing the most creative and satisfying part. Not the drudgery.

It's not that you've stopped doing anything at all, like the other commenter claimed in their personal chef analogy.

Re: We mourn our craft

#220

Post by blibble »

bojan wrote: post #178
heliumtera wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As someone who started with Borland DOS-era IDEs I can tell you that IDEs did get a lot better over the years. I'm still fascinated every day by JetBrains IDEs.

> I'm still fascinated every day by JetBrains IDEs.

have you used them recently?

terrible, is the word I would use

(as a customer since the 2010s)

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