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

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

#681

Post by abustamam » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 6:14 AM UTC

saghm wrote: post #677

abustamam wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see comments like this a lot. In fact, I've run into it in my own side projects that I work on by myself -- what is this slop and how do i fix it? I only have myself to blame. I can't speak to open source orgs like curl, but at least at the office, the company should invest time in educating engineers on how to use AI in a way that doesn't waste everyone's time. It could be introducing domain-specific skills, rules…

> Engineers who waste other engineers' time reviewing slop PRs should just be fired. AI is no excuse to start producing bad code. The engineer should still be responsible for the code they ship. Yeah, this is the unfortunate truth about what's going on here in my opinion. The underlying problem is that some workplaces just have bad culture or processes that don't do enough to prevent (or even actively encourage) bein…

Agreed! I think AI just accelerates existing processes. If existing processes suck, then you'll just get sucky code faster.

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

#682

Post by newswasboring » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 7:49 AM UTC

grayhatter wrote: post #635

newswasboring wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you didn't make the decision about where to place the function, about which order you want to call them, if you're gonna do error handling deep down as close to the error as possible, I still make all those decisions. I decide what my error handling structure is, and I have it finally exactly the way I like it in python. I usually discover the "right" way for a piece of software while writing it, then it is…

> Yes I dont decide anymore exactly which line number the function is in, but that never mattered did it? What matters is how your objects compose and how you handle edge cases. I still do that. I would say it does matter, and always did. Obviously, not every single line order matters with performance results that you can measure. That's not what I'm saying. But every decision does add up to who deserves the credit f…

> Then I'm hoping you can explain to me, why so many people who don't try, and just blindly trust the vibe slop, don't feel embarrassed?

I am not answerable for the company you keep.

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

#683

Post by imtringued » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 9:50 AM UTC

jonas21 wrote: post #204

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, but that's obviously impossible. Certainly, you must realize how much worse life would be for all of us had the Luddites succeeded.

If you knew a little bit about history then you would know that the "Anti-Luddite" position is literally "shoot the unemployed if they strike".

Equivocating Luddites with backwards thinking is a way to cover up government violence. You're literally trying to misrepresent the Luddite position by implying that they had some sort of global plot to force the world to be worse and that they were rightfully stopped by the government when in reality they had some personal grievances about how they were treated and they took revenge against the owners of capital by vandalizing their capital.

You're trying to twist this into Luddites hating capital and machinery itself, which is factually wrong.

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

#684

Post by imtringued » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

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…

All of this crap has already been figured out by Silvio Gesell and his free economics ("Freiwirtschaft") movement before world war two. In fact, it has been figured out before Lenin got to power. Communists could have just stolen his ideas, pretended that they were their own and be done with capitalism.

Instead, we live in this absurd timeline where our communist "saviors" preferred losing against capitalists over achieving their stated goals. This tells us that in communism, the means are the goal and the proclaimed end goal is just an excuse to perform the means.

If communists genuinely wanted to help their people and they accept that they might not know how to get there, they would at least run hundreds to thousands of economic experiments, something that wouldn't be possible under capitalism, to find the methods that work. Instead, the self proclaimed saviors are inherently anti-reformist and against incremental change to improve society. They demand that all economic activity be under the control of the state and thereby destroy all possibility of performing economic experiments.

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

#685

Post by dave_sid » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

alexgarden wrote: post #286

dave_sid wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you didn’t. You lead a team of gardeners to develop your grand vision. Or you directed an epic movie leading a cast of talented actors bringing your vision to life. You can choose an empowering analogy or a negative one it’s your choice.

Yeah... a team of gardeners who might, with no warning, decide to burn down your house to create some extra fertilizer for the rose garden. Sometimes I wonder...

Think you need to work on your use of AI and not just copy paste 10000 lines and hope for the best.

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

#686

Post by jbeninger » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

cstever wrote: post #451

jbeninger wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been through a few cycles of using LLMs and my current usage does scratch the itch. It doesn't feel like I've lost anything. The trick is I'm still programming. I name classes and functions. I define the directory structure. I define the algorithms. By the time I'm prompting an LLM I'm describing how the code will look and it becomes a supercharged autocomplete. When I go overboard and just tell it "now I want a…

Serious question: so what then is the value of using an LLM? Just autocomplete? So you can use natural language? I'm seriously asking. My experience has been frustrating. Had the whole thing designed, the LLM gave me diagrams and code samples, had to tell it 3 times to go ahead and write the files, had to convince it that the files didn't exist so it would actually write them. Then when I went to run it, errors ... i…

I mean, it's not actually autocomplete. But it serves the same role. I know approximately what I want to type, maybe some of the details like argument-order are a bit foggy. When I see the code I recognize it as my own and don't have too much trouble reading it.

But I use LLMs one level higher than autocomplete, at the level of an entire file. My prompts tend to look like "We need a new class to store user pets. Base it on the `person` class but remove Job and add Species. For now, Species is an enum of CAT,DOG,FISH, but we'll probably turn that into a separate table later. Validate the name is just a single word, and indicate that constraint when rendering it. Read Person.js, CODE_CONVENTIONS.md, and DATA_STRUCTURES.md before starting. When complete, read REFACTOR.md"

With the inclusion of code examples and conventions, the agent produces something pretty close to what I'd write myself, particularly when dealing with boilerplate Data or UI structures. Things that share common structure or design philosophy, but not common enough to refactor meaningfully.

I still have to read it through and understand it as if I'd written it myself, but the LLM saves a lot of typing and acts as a second pair of eyes. Codex currently is very defensive. I have to remove some unnecessary guardrails, but it will protect against rare issues I might not have noticed on my first pass.

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

#687

Post by rubenflamshep » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 4:32 PM UTC

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.

I think the key here is having the network with the high-roller clients. The ability to execute is down funnel of that.

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

#688

Post by recursive » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #652

recursive wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's complaining about changes. Everyone can do it and that's not a change. Everyone could always do it.

No, that's not what he's complaining about. He doesn't feel like a special '1337 hax0r anymore, and that's a problem for him.

It seems there are multiple possible readings.

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

#689

Post by shafoshaf » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #173

shafoshaf wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[55yo] My sense is that those problems we worked on in the 80s and 90s were like the perfectly balanced MMORPG. The challenges were tough, but with grit, could be overcome and you felt like you could build something amazing and unique. My voxel moment was passing parameters in my compilers class in college. I sat down to do it and about 12 hours later I got it working, not knowing if I could even do it. With AI, it i…

I think there's still quite a chasm out there. Domain knowledge, an informed and opinionated view on how something should function, and overall tech knowledge are still key. Having those three things continues to greatly differentiate people of equal coding skill, as they always have.

Yeah, but I used to be a wizard with arcane knowledge making computers do things others didn't even understand. I was casting fireballs, and now everyone has Find Greater Familiar right out of the gate who does all the heavy lifting. :(

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

#690

Post by shafoshaf » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #688

CamperBob2 wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not what he's complaining about. He doesn't feel like a special '1337 hax0r anymore, and that's a problem for him.

It seems there are multiple possible readings.

I suppose I could just tell you what I'm feeling, not the op. The fun was bringing down the fire. That is INCREDIBLY fun! That feels valuable. That feels like you are helping others.

Now, the mountain is gone. All the skills I learned to navigate it are becoming obsolete. Sure, tools get better, new models are adopted, but it didn't wipe out the mountain. When the world move from the 90s to the Internet age, I took my pitons, backpack, and rope and started climbing higher. I felt like I was empowered to bring MORE fire down to MORE people.

With vibe coding getting better and better, I still have my leadership skills, my ability to understand navigation, and all those skills, but the value and joy of climbing isn't quite there. There is a road leading to the top of the mountain and cars go up there all the time.

That is more than just change. That is something the Luddites faced: it wasn't technology and mass production they decried, it was a loss of identity. Kirkpatrick Sale's "Rebels Against The Future" is an awesome history of the luddites and I think it is very relevant today.