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I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

jamesdrandall.com

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Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#201

Post by acoard »

samiv wrote: post #138
alexgarden wrote: post #48

Wow... I really relate to this. I'm 50 as well, and I started coding in 1985 when I was 10... I remember literally every evolutionary leap forward and my experience with this change has been a bit different. Steve Yegge recently did an interview on vibe coding ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJyJP517Uw ) where he says, "arch mage engineers who fell out-of-love with the modern complexity of shipping meaningful code…

I just told my gardener to cut the grass and work on some flower installations. I'm so excited about gardening again. Can't wait to do some. Employing a gardener to do my gardening for me is really making me enjoy gardening again!

I think this works unironically. My mother is an avid gardener and can spend 8 hours a day gardening. When her life circumstances allowed for it, she hired a once a week gardener to do the tasks she didn't like (or had difficulties doing as a small woman), and still gardens the same amount. I've teased her for hiring a gardener, but she swears it's a huge help and boost to her gardening quality of life.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#202

Post by Zaskoda »

I found that feeling again while building a game on the EVM. All of the constraints were new and different. Solidity feels somewhere between and high and low level language, not as abstracted as most popular languages today but a solid step above writing assembly.

A lot of people started building projects like mine when the EVM was newer. Some managed to get a little bit of popularity, like Dark Forest. But most were never noticed. The crypto scene has distracted everyone from the work of tinkerers and artists who just wanted to play with a new paradigm. The whole thing became increasingly toxic.

It was like one last breath of fresh cool air before the pollution of AI tools arrived on the scene. It's a bitter sweet feeling.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#203

Post by gorfian_robot »

aabajian wrote: post #127

It seems AI is putting senior developers into two camps. Both groups relate to the statement, "I started programming when I was seven because a machine did exactly what I told it to, felt like something I could explore and ultimately know, and that felt like magic. I’m fifty now, and the magic is different, and I’m learning to sit with that." The difference is that the first camp is re-experiencing that feeling of wo…

delegating UI to the 'not worth my time' pile is how you end up with a poor UI

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#204

Post by jonas21 »

JeremyNT wrote: post #149
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you were a smart dev before AI, chances are you will remain a smart dev with AI. I don't think that's what people are upset about, or at least it's not for me. For me it's that writing code is really enjoyable, and delegating it to AI is hell on earth.

This is a part of it, but I also feel like a Luddite (the historical meaning, not the derogatory slang). I do use these tools, clearly see their potential, and know full well where this is going: capital is devaluing labor. My skills will become worthless. Maybe GP is right that at first only skilled developers can wield them to full effect, but it's obviously not going to stop there. If I could destroy these things…

> If I could destroy these things - as the Luddites tried - I would do so, but that's obviously impossible.

Certainly, you must realize how much worse life would be for all of us had the Luddites succeeded.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#205

Post by davsti4 »

aabajian wrote: post #127

It seems AI is putting senior developers into two camps. Both groups relate to the statement, "I started programming when I was seven because a machine did exactly what I told it to, felt like something I could explore and ultimately know, and that felt like magic. I’m fifty now, and the magic is different, and I’m learning to sit with that." The difference is that the first camp is re-experiencing that feeling of wo…

Similarly, I'm using it to write apps in non-native languages, like rust. My first foray into it led to finding poor documentation examples. AI allows me to create without spending large swaths of time learning minutia.

I'm enjoying it to a point, but yes, it does eliminate that sense of accomplishment - when you've spent many late nights working on something complex, and finally finish it. That's pretty much gone.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#206

Post by bambax »

sho_hn wrote: post #14

My advice to everyone feeling existential vertigo over these tools is to remain confident and trust in yourself. If you were a smart dev before AI, chances are you will remain a smart dev with AI. My experience so far is that to a first approximation, the quality of the code/software generated with AI corresponds to the quality of the developer using the AI tool surprisingly well. An inexperienced, bad dev will still…

Yes, absolutely. I think the companies that don't understand software, don't value software and that think that all tech is fundamentally equivalent, and who will therefore always choose the cheaper option, and fire all their good people, will eventually fail.

And I think AI is in fact a great opportunity for good devs to produce good software much faster.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#207

Post by neom »

zzrrt wrote: post #199
neom wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Alex Garden on Hackernews. Hello fellow canuck. I'm now getting up there, still a few years shy of y'all but not much. I came up through the 90s and early 2000s, all web/linux stuff, irc servers, bash scripts, python, weird php hacks, whatever, I was a kid. I'd lose track of time, It was Monday night after high school then all of a sudden it was Sunday morning and I was talking on irc about the crazy LAMP stack…

Why is your last paragraph nearly identical to the last paragraph you are replying to? It might have been a strange quirk, but there’s also been the suggestion that the post you’re replying to is an imposter, so it gets weirder that you also did that.

I thought I was being cute. :) I'm not a bot. I reached out to Alex and he confirmed the original comment was indeed him.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#208

Post by Joel_Mckay »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #175
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get bored if they don't find real meaning in their work. https://medium.com/ideas-into-action/ikigai-the-perfect-care... Fact is, the tech sector is filled with folks that find zero joy in what they do, chose a career for financial reasons, and end up being miserable to everyone including themselves. The ex-service people would call these folks entitled Shitbirds, as no matter the situation some will complain…

The reason we don’t have the right to be lazy is because of the people who find “meaning” in toil. I do not want to work and AI is the most anti work technology in human history. Bertrand Russel literally wrote a book called “in defense of idleness” because he knew that heavy hitters like him had to defend work abolitionism. The “work is good” crowd is why we can’t have nice things. You guys are time thief’s and onto…

You seem very passionate about your opinions, but are you happy?

The fact remains LLM can't reach comparable human error rates without consuming 75% of the energy output of our entire local galaxy.

While I find true Neuromorphic computing topics more interesting, the emergence of the LLM "AI" true believer is deeply concerning to those that understand how they are actually built. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERiXDhLHxmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx4Tpsk_fnM

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#209

Post by sowbug »

chasd00 wrote: post #27

What the author describes is also the feeling when you shift from being a developer all day to being a team lead or manager. When you become a lead you have to let go and get comfortable with the idea that the code is not going to be how you would do it. You can look at code produced by your team and attempt to replace it all with your craftsmanship but you're just setting yourself up to fail. The right approach is u…

A lot of us resist the pressure to move to management or technical leadership for just these reasons. Programming people isn't the same as programming computers.

But the LLMs outnumber us. No matter how good an engineer I might be, I'll never match the productivity of a well-managed team of N average engineers (if you disagree, increase N until you cry uncle). Sure, there will be mythical man-month problems. But the optimal N is surely greater than 1, and I'll never be more than 1.

Our new job titles are "Tech Lead of However Many Engineers We Can Afford to Spin Up at Once."

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#210

Post by convivialdingo »

paulmooreparks wrote: post #50

I'm 55 and I started at age 13 on a TI-99/4A, then progressed through Commodore 64, Amiga 2000, an Amiga XT Sidecar, then a real XT, and on and on. DOS, Windows, Unix, the first Linux. I ran a tiny BBS and felt so excited when I heard the modem singing from someone dialing in. The first time I "logged into the Internet" was to a Linux prompt. Gopher was still a bigger thing than the nascent World-Wide Web. The author…

Similar story for myself. It was long and tedious for my mental model to go from Basic, to Pascal, to C, and finally to ASM as a teen.

My recent experience is the opposite. With LLMs, I'm able to delve into the deepest parts of code and systems I never had time to learn. LLMs will get you to the 80% pretty quick - compiles and sometimes even runs.

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