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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

#501

Post by bonsai_spool »

saithound wrote: post #498
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…

> 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. We replaced the chess board in the park with an app that compares the Elo score of you and your opponent, and probabilistically declares a winner. But don't worry, if you were a good chess player before we introduced the…

>We replaced the chess board in the park with an app that compares the Elo score of you and your opponent, and probabilistically declares a winner.

The chess board is still there, not sure I see how LLM tools compels one to stop writing personal projects without AI assistance.

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

#502

Post by cstever »

leesec wrote: post #28

yeah coding is a lot more fun and useful now

It won't be called coding soon; Sometime in the future (soon?) we won't be talking about code. The few leftovers/managers/CEOs will only be talking about products not the code, not programming, not even operating systems. You won't hear about pull requests, or databases, or HTTP or any of that. You won't talk about programmers. At least not outside of "hobbies".

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

#503

Post by keithnz »

I'm 54 and started programming when I was 7 also. While I've enjoyed coding throughout my career, I'm loving this new phase of software dev, a lot of the hassle has now been removed and now you can concentrate on ACTUALLY building things without so many side tracks and hiccups from technical details. I guess I'm not as attached to coding as I thought I was, I actually really enjoy building software and now that has become a lot easier and I feel experienced devs are really well suited to working with AI to get it to build the right thing and to consider robustness, performance, approach/structure, architecture etc. I'm really enjoying myself at the moment!

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

#504

Post by WoodenChair »

Ironically this post comes across to me as written by an LLM. The em-dashes, the prepositions, the "not this, that" lines. As a college instructor, I can usually tell. I put it through GPTZero and it said it's 96% LLM written. GPTZero is not full-proof but I think it's likely right on this one and I find it very ironic.

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

#505

Post by nunez »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #379
lelanthran wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me it's that writing code is really enjoyable, and delegating it to AI is hell on earth. It's very sad, for me. Like I told someone recently - letting the LLM write my code for me is like letting the LLM play my video games for me. If all I wanted was the achievement on my steam profile, then sure, it makes sense, but that achievement is not why I play video games. I'm looking at all these people proudly showin…

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…

Look, there are at least dozens of us who like and enjoy programming for programming's sake and got into this crazy industry because of that.

Many of these people made many of the countless things we take for granted every day (networking, operating systems, web search; hell, even the transformer architecture before they got productized!).

Seeing software development --- and software engineering by proxy --- get reduced to a jello that will be stepped on by "builders" in real-time is depressing as shit.

It's even more depressing to see folks on HACKER news boost the "programming never mattered" mentality that's taken hold these last few years.

Last comment I'll make before I step off my soapbox: the "codez real gud" folks that makes the big bucks bring way more to the table than their ability to code...but their ability to code is a big contributor to why they bring more to the table!

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

#506

Post by ibejoeb »

dnw wrote: post #500

The thing we loved hasn't changed. We just can't get paid for it anymore.

Somebody still needs to do lower-level work and understand machine architecture. Those feeling like they might be replaced in web or app dev might consider moving down the stack.

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

#507

Post by direwolf20 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #462
probably_wrong wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing intrinsic to computing nowadays that makes it less magic than fiddling around with config.sys There definitely is: the rent-seeking behavior is out of control. As a kid I could fiddle with config.sys (or rather autoexec.bat) while nowadays wrestling a file path out of my phone is a battle and the system files of my phone are kept from me.

Why do you allow a mobile handheld computing and communication device to define "computing" ? I understand that they are important devices and lots of people with a hacker mentality would like to be able to hack them the way old folks once hacked DOS. But the current computing environment is much, much wider than iOS/Android, and if you're going to complain about just one aspect of it, I think it would be better to a…

For the same reason computing used to be defined by a Commodore 64 more than by an IBM System/370-XA mainframe from the same year — they're the most commonly and most easily accessible computing devices.

Old farts like us think the desktop is the default kind of computer, but it isn't. Most computers are phones, followed by tablets and laptops with touchscreens, and desktops are the weirdest ones.

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

#508

Post by dzonga »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #394

I'm 61 (retired when I was 57). I too began with BASIC (but closer to 1980). Although I wrote and published games for the Macintosh for a number of years as I finished up college, my professional career (in the traditional sense) began when I was hired by Apple in 1995 and relocated to the Bay Area. Yeah, what started out as a great just got worse and worse as time went on. I suspect though that to a large degree thi…

you also have bozo managers like my recent one measuring metrics like PR time open, review count

while the team hasn't shipped anything useful in 6 months.

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

#509

Post by dzonga »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #91

As someone who has always enjoyed designing things, but was never really into PUZZLES, I always felt like an outsider in the programming domain. People around me really enjoyed the "fun" of programming, whereas I was more interested in the Engineering of the thing - balancing tradeoffs until within acceptable margins and then actually calling it "DONE". People around me rarely called things "done", they rewrote it an…

well said.

also coz of llms no more puzzle questions in interviews for those that have to go through them.

for some of us - we drink, eat, sleep - something called shipping - v1 might be shitty but it has to get out - no puzzles

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

#510

Post by nunez »

lelanthran wrote: post #415
HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot figure out what you mean by "BA" in this context

> I cannot figure out what you mean by "BA" in this context Business Analyst - those people who learn everything about what the customers requirements, specs, etc are. What they need, what they currently have, how to best advise them, etc. They know everything , except how to program.

I was a BA forever ago during a summer job in college. That job wasn't for me at all! Looking back on the experience, putting together a FRD felt much like writing a CLAUDE.md with some prompts thrown in!
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