> will end up like some blacksmith’s tool in an archeological dig
guy who doesn't realize we still use hammers. This article was embarrassing to read.
We mourn our craft
431–440 of 918 posts
Re: We mourn our craft
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not the OP, but my answer is that there’s a big difference between building products and building businesses. I’ve been programming since 1998 when I was in elementary school. I have the technical skills to write almost anything I want, from productivity applications to operating systems and compilers. The vast availability of free, open source software tools helps a lot, and despite this year’s RAM and SSD price…
Yes. I have seen the better product lose out to network effects far too many times to believe that a real mass market competitor can happen nowadays. Look at how even the Posix ecosystem - once a vibrant cluster of a dozen different commercial and open source operating systems built around a shared open standard - has more or less collapsed into an ironclad monopoly because LXC became a killer app in every sense of t…
Oracle Solaris and IBM AIX are still going. Outside of enterprises that are die hard Sun/Oracle or IBM shops, I haven't seen a job requiring either in decades. I used to work with both and don't miss them in the least.
Re: We mourn our craft
#433Re: We mourn our craft
#434Earlier 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 actually like the analogy but for the opposite reason. Cars have become the most efficient way to travel for most industrial purposes. And yet enormous numbers of people still walk, run, ride bikes, or even horses, often for reasons entirely separate from financial gain.
Re: We mourn our craft
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a subset of people whose identity is grounded in the fact that they put in the hard work to learn things that most people are unable or unwilling to do. It's a badge of honor, and they resent anyone taking "shortcuts" to achieve their level of output. Kind of reminds me of lawyers who get bent out of shape when they lose a case to a pro se party. All those years of law school and studying for the bar exam, on…
It's not that our identity is grounded in being competent, it's that we're tired of cleaning up messes left by people taking shortcuts.
It's that, but it's also that the incentives are misaligned.
How many supposed "10x" coders actually produced unreadable code that no one else could maintain? But then the effort to produce that code is lauded while the nightmare maintenance of said code is somehow regarded as unimpressive, despite being massively more difficult?
I worry that we're creating a world where it is becoming easy, even trivial, to be that dysfunctional "10x" coder, and dramatically harder to be the competent maintainer. And the existence of AI tools will reinforce the culture gap rather than reducing it.
Re: We mourn our craft
#436I 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…
In some ways, I'd say we're in a software dark age. In 40 years, we'll still have C, bash, grep, and Mario ROMs, but practically none of the software written today will still be around. That's by design. SaaS is a rent seeking business model. But I think it also applies to most code written in JS, Python, C#, Go, Rust, etc. There are too many dependencies. There's no way you'll be able to take a repo from 2026 and sp…
I’m not sure Go belongs on that list. Otherwise I hear what you’re saying.
Re: We mourn our craft
#437> I didn’t ask for the role of a programmer to be reduced to that of a glorified TSA agent, reviewing code to make sure the AI didn’t smuggle something dangerous into production. This may be the perspective of some programmers. It doesn't seem to be shared by the majority of software engineers I know and read and listen to.
Do you mean the perspective that he is a "glorified TSA agent" or that he doesn't like it? Because in this thread it seems that some people agree but they just like it :)
I disagree the opportunities created for software engineers are reduced to those of a "glorified TSA agent".
We now have more opportunity than ever to create more of the things we have wanted to. We are able to spend more time leaning into our abilities of judgement, creativity, specific knowledge, and taste.
Countless programming frustrations are gone. I, and all those I talk to are having more fun than they have ever had.
I'm still not sure what analogy fits for me. It's closer to product manager/maestro/artist/architect/designer that helps a number of amazing systems create great code.
Re: We mourn our craft
#438While 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?
At least for this article it's more about the job, or to be precise, the past where job and passion coincided:
> Ultimately if you have a mortgage and a car payment and a family you love, you’re going to make your decision.
Nothing is preventing the author from continuing to write code by hand and enjoy it. The difference is that people won't necessarily pay for it.
The old way was really incredible (and worth mourning), considering in other industries, how many people can only enjoy what they do outside of work.
Re: We mourn our craft
#439> So as a senior, you could abstain. But then your junior colleagues will eventually code circles around you, because they’re wearing bazooka-powered jetpacks and you’re still riding around on a fixie bike. Eventually your boss will start asking why you’re getting paid twice your zoomer colleagues’ salary to produce a tenth of the code.
I might be mistaken, but I bet they said the same when Visual Basic came out.
Re: We mourn our craft
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried using GenAI to write documentation? You can literally point it to a folder and say, analyze everything in this folder and write a document about it. And it will do it. It's more thorough than anything a human could do, especially in the time frame we're talking about. If GenAI could only write documentation it would still be a game changer.
But it write mostly useless documentation Which take time to read and decipher. And worse, if you are using it for public documentation, sometimes it hallucinate endpoints (i don't want to say too much here, but it happened recently to a quite used B2B SaaS).
Loop it. Use another agent (from a different company helps) to review the code and documentation and call out any inconsistencies.
I run a bunch of jobs weekly to review docs for inconsistencies and write a plan to fix. It still needs humans in the loop if the agents don’t converge after a few turns, but it’s largely automatic (I baby sat it for a few months validating each change).