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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

#421

Post by strangattractor »

Having been in this game about 10 years longer I can understand how he feels. I distinctly remember when I realized that C compilers for the ARM produced better assembly than I could code by hand. Bitter sweet but the code being written became larger and more complex because of it.

Modern coding has become more complex than I would have ever thought possible. The number of technologies an individual would have to master to actually be a expert "full stack" coder is ludicrous. It is virtually impossible for an individual to prototype a complex Web based app by themselves. I think AI will lower that barrier.

In return we will get a lot more software - probably of dubious quality in many cases - as people with "ideas" but little knowledge start making apps. Not a totally bad thing but no utopia either. I also think it will likely reduce the amount of open source software. Content producers are already hoarding info to prevent AI bots from scraping it. I see no reason to believe this will not extend to code as more programmers find themselves in a situation more akin to musicians than engineers.

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

#422

Post by mattmanser »

lelanthran wrote: post #337
davsti4 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Similarly, I'm using it to write apps in non-native languages, like rust. This does not make sense; Rust is native.

I assume they mean 'native tongue', as in their day-to-day programming language, or native programming language.

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

#423

Post by Kiro »

skydhash wrote: post #137
zozbot234 wrote: post #47

There's nothing "hollowed out" about directing an AI effectively, the feedback is as quick and tight as it always was. The trick is that you don't just "vibe code" and let the AI one-shot the whole thing: you should propose the change first and ask the AI about a good, detailed plan for implementing it. Then you review what the robot has proposed (which is trivial compared to revising code!) make sensible changes, as…

> you should propose the change first and ask the AI about a good, detailed plan for implementing Why ask though? If I’m familiar with a project, more often than not, I usually have a very good idea of the code I have to write within minutes of reading the ticket. Most of the time taken is finding the impact of the change, especially with dependencies that are present in the business domain, but are not reflected in…

I admire your confidence. Must feel good to know you've perfected the craft.

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

#424

Post by Jare »

bitwize wrote: post #340
rubenflamshep wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has leaned fully into AI tooling this resonates. The current environment is an oligopoly so I'm learning how to leverage someone else's tool. However, in this way, I don't think LLMs are a radical departure from any proprietary other tool (e.g. Photoshop).

Indeed. Do you know how many small consultancies are out there which are "Microsoft shops"? An individual could become a millionaire by founding their own and delivering value for a few high-roller clients.

Nobody says there's no money to make anymore. But the space for that is limited, no matter how many millions hustle, there's only 100 spots in the top 100.

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

#425

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

lelanthran wrote: post #381
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My job for the last 8 years has involved Talking to sales to get an idea what the customer wanted from the business side (first B2B at a product company and now consulting) -> talking to the customer and hashing out more detailed requirements -> designing the architecture and a proposed technical plan -> presenting it to the stakeholder (sometime internal sometime external) -> doing the work or delegating and leading…

> Talking to sales to get an idea what the customer wanted from the business side (first B2B at a product company and now consulting) -> talking to the customer and hashing out more detailed requirements -> designing the architecture and a proposed technical plan -> presenting it to the stakeholder (sometime internal sometime external) -> doing the work or delegating and leading the work -> presenting the work to the…

If not the technical person, then who? It’s a lot easier for a technical person to learn how to talk the language of the business than a business person to have a deep understanding of technology.

On the enterprise dev side of the industry where most developers work, I saw a decade ago that if I were just a ticket taker who turned well defined requirements into for loop and if statements, that was an undifferentiated commodity.

You’re seeing now that even on the BigTech side knowing how to reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard is not enough.

Also if you look at the leveling guidelines of any major tech company, their leveling guidelines above mid level are based on scope, impact and dealing with ambiguity - not “I codez real gud”

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

#426

Post by paodealho »

lelanthran wrote: post #337
davsti4 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Similarly, I'm using it to write apps in non-native languages, like rust. This does not make sense; Rust is native.

> without spending large swaths of time learning minutia

He probably meant languages he's not proficient with.

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

#427

Post by stoneforger »

r_lee wrote: post #359
goatlover wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps they would have advanced the cause of labor and prevented some of the exploitation from the ownership class. Depends on which side of the story you want to tell. The slur Luddite is a form of historical propaganda. Putting it in today's terms, if the goal of AI is to significantly reduce the labor force so that shareholders can make more money and tech CEOs can become trillionaires, it's understandable why…

problem today is that there is no "sink" for money to go to when it flows upwards. we have resorted to raising interest rates to curb inflation, but that doesn't fix the problem, it just gives them an alternative income source (bonds/fixed income) I'm not a hard socialist or anything, but the economics don't make sense. if there's cheap credit and the money supply perpetually expands without a sink, of course people…

Yeah it's called wealth transfer and the vast majority is on the wrong end.

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

#428

Post by GMoromisato »

fourside wrote: post #124
GMoromisato wrote: post #70

I'm lucky because I work as an independent consultant. I get paid to deliver solutions, but I get to choose how to create those solutions. I write whatever code I want however I want. As long as it solves the problem, no one cares. I started programming in 1980, and I having just as much fun now as I did then. I literally cannot wait to sit down at my IDE and start writing. But that was not always true. When I worked…

I have a hard time telling whether agentic coding tools will take a big bite out of the demand for software consultants. If the market is worried about SaaS because people think companies will use AI to code tools internally vs buying them, I would think the same would apply to consultants. I’ve seen the code current tools produce if you’re not careful, or if you’re in a domain where training data is scarce. I could…

It's a good question. I think short-term (5 years) the easy jobs will go away. No one is going to write a restaurant web site by hand. Maybe the design will still be human-made, but all the code will be templated AI. Imagine every WordPress template customized by AI. That's a whole bunch of jobs that won't exist.

Right now I'm creating clinical trial visualizations for biotech firms. There's some degree of complexity because I have to understand the data schema, the specifics of the clinical trial, and the goals of the scientists. But I firmly believe that AI will be able to handle most of that within 5 years (it may be slower in biotech because of the regulatory requirements).

But I also firmly believe that there is more demand for (good) software today than there are programmers to satisfy it. If programmers become 10x more efficient with AI, that might mean that there will be 10x more programs that need writing.

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

#429

Post by zahlman »

serf wrote: post #24

6 or 7 , 38 now -- and having a blast. it isn't all funeral marches and group crying sessions. And don't let the blog post fool you , it is a rant about AI -- otherwise we would have heard complaints about the last 200 paradigm shifts in the industry over the past thirty years. Sure, we got our share of dilbert-style agile/waterfall/tdd jokes shoved in our face, but no one wrote a blog post about how their identity w…

> Sure, we got our share of dilbert-style agile/waterfall/tdd jokes shoved in our face, but no one wrote a blog post about how their identity was usurped by the waterfall model .

That's a difference in form, but not really a difference in content.

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

#430

Post by mbesto »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #92
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…

> 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.

Woodworking is still a thing despite IKEA, big box furniture stores, etc.
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