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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

#541

Post by 4nonverbal-alit »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #141
kccqzy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the release of new models are generic. They don’t represent understanding in your specific codebase. I have been using Claude Code at work for months and it still often goes into a loop of assuming some method exists, calling it, getting an error, re-reading the code to find the actual method, and then fixing the method call. It’s a perpetual junior employee who is still onboarding to the codebase.

Yeah, I've experienced similar stuff. Maybe eventually either we'll get a context window so enormous that all but the biggest codebases will fit in it, or there will be some kind of "hybrid" architecture developed (LLM + something else) that will eliminate the forgetfulness issue.

I find the whole idea of context window inefficient. The model that knows more than anyone could, can’t hold a memory of a codebase? I know it’s a limitation of the transformer design, but I find it quite disappointing that most of the investment is being spent on optimizing inefficient technologies rather than rethinking about the design.

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

#542

Post by plagiarist »

orangecat wrote: post #444
JeremyNT wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Would travel agents have been justified in destroying the Internet so that people couldn't use Expedia?

Society was been better without the internet. We have lost all our privacy, our third spaces, the concept of doing hobbies for fun instead of as content, and much more.

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

#543

Post by kelvinjps10 »

sho_hn wrote: post #99
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.

I resonate with that. I also find writing code super pleasurable. It's immediate stress relief for me, I love the focus and the flow. I end long hands-on coding sessions with a giddy high. What I'm finding is that it's possible to integrate AI tools into your workflow in a big way without giving up on doing that, and I think there's a lot to say for a hybrid approach. The result of a fully-engaged brain (which still…

I get a dopamine hit with AI by being able to accomplish tasks fast, mostly in frontent or using a dynamic language like python because you see the changes in real time

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

#544

Post by quietsegfault »

grayhatter wrote: post #527
quietsegfault wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plagiarism is claiming someone else’s specific work as your own. Using a generative tool is closer to using a compiler, an IDE, or a library. I’m not copying a person’s code or submitting someone else’s project with the name filed off. I’m directing a system, reviewing the output, editing it, and taking responsibility for the result. If I paste in a blog post verbatim and pretend I wrote it, that’s plagiarism. If I u…

> If I paste in a blog post verbatim and pretend I wrote it, that’s plagiarism. If I use a tool to generate a starting point and shape it into what I need, that’s just a different kind of authorship. If you cloned chapters from multiple books, from multiple different authors, didn't decide on the sentence structure, didn't choose the words yourself, didn't decide which order your going to place these chapters, didn't…

What I described was directing, reviewing, and editing. You’ve ignored that entirely to construct a version of me who pastes “write me an app” and ships it unread… then spent three paragraphs righteously tearing that down. I own the intent, the spec, the judgment about what’s correct, and the blame when it breaks. That’s authorship, and that’s why using a generative tool isn’t plagiarism. The rest is breathless gibberish dressed up as moral clarity.

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

#545

Post by carefree-bob »

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.

Why do you need to delegate writing code to AI? I don't do that. Is your job mandating that you vibe code? How would they know?

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

#546

Post by selcuka »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #352
takklob wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Either you're thinking of the "room temperature semi-conductor" thing out of Korea, or you're some boomer who forgot that cold fusion was in the 80s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer

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

#547

Post by grayhatter »

quietsegfault wrote: post #544
grayhatter wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I paste in a blog post verbatim and pretend I wrote it, that’s plagiarism. If I use a tool to generate a starting point and shape it into what I need, that’s just a different kind of authorship. If you cloned chapters from multiple books, from multiple different authors, didn't decide on the sentence structure, didn't choose the words yourself, didn't decide which order your going to place these chapters, didn't…

What I described was directing, reviewing, and editing. You’ve ignored that entirely to construct a version of me who pastes “write me an app” and ships it unread… then spent three paragraphs righteously tearing that down. I own the intent, the spec, the judgment about what’s correct, and the blame when it breaks. That’s authorship, and that’s why using a generative tool isn’t plagiarism. The rest is breathless gibbe…

> “write me an app” and ships it unread…

That is in fact, the behavior I see most often.

> What I described was directing, reviewing, and editing.

You didn't actually describe any of that though? You asserted that's what you do, but didn't describe any of those steps.

If you do, you'd be the first person I see actually do that when using LLM codegen. Most people who advocate for it, do behave that way. You're mistakenly taking my rhetorical argument against the more common, and substituting your own interpretation of how things are. Which is the very thing you're attempting to chastise me for doing. Just as you're unconvinced by my rejection of your hypothetical, I'm unconvinced by yours.

I might agree if you spend the same amount of time and effort, it wouldn't count as plagiarism. But if it's not faster, then what's the point?

> The rest is breathless gibberish dressed up as moral clarity.

Sure, that's a fair interpretation if you want to feel like a superior asshole. But really I was attempting to describe how I view the way most people interact with LLM codegen, before claiming they did all the work. Which if you recall, was my original question; why is that view wrong? What details would convince me I've misunderstood something?

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

#548

Post by kamaal »

dzonga wrote: post #508
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.

Its crazy how management has gone from productivity to a kind of policing, crowd control and abstract number management that has no sense.

One of things that's being discussed now is AI won't really help people ship products faster, because no one was serious about building them at the first place. In most large corps the managerial layers simply care about preserving their own jobs and comp.

Also similar things an be said about Product management too. Only a few months they would says developers are busy with other things, now that we can ship quite fast, whats your world changing idea? None

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

#549

Post by tootie »

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'm nigh on 50 and feel very differently. I honestly loved the 2010s and the adoption of frameworks, SaaS, continuous deployment, cloud and even agile. Delivering software felt a lot more professional and less artisan which I really appreciated. I can fondly recall opening 4 ssh windows and running tail -f on every prod server log, but using New Relic or the like is just way, way better. It feels more satisfying to clearly define a feature and deploy it with certainty. It may also be a product of just moving up the seniority ranks and being more exposed to business.

All that being said, I think a side effect of being this age is not really enjoying anything as much as I used to. Coding is still fun, but the magic faded a while ago. My oldest kid is applying to college and she loves coding, but I'm nudging her to do either math or engineering because just learning CS doesn't seem like it's going to be as rewarding as it was 25 years ago.

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

#550

Post by NKosmatos »

Being a similar age with the author, I can relate with many things (like so many people in the comments below). The writing style is a bit strange and as mentioned by others, it might have been (re)written by AI, but the message is still there.
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