Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 1001 posts

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#31

Post by alexpotato »

al_borland wrote: post #10

I spent the last 2 days primarily using Claude instead of coding things myself at work. I felt the exact opposite way. It was so unfulfilling. I’d equate it to the feeling of getting an A on a test, knowing I cheated. I didn’t accomplish anything. I didn’t learn anything. I got the end result with none of the satisfaction and learned nothing in the process. I’m probably going to go back and redo everything with my ow…

The creator of OpenClaw had a great line about this:

"If your identity is tied to you being an iOS developer, you are going to have a rough time. But if your identity is 'I'm a builder!' it is a very exciting time to be alive."

Plus, there is no rule that says you can't keep coding if it's faster for you and/or it's quicker in general. e.g I can write a Perl one liner much faster than Claude can. Heck, even if it's not faster and you enjoy coding, just keep coding.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#33

Post by alexpotato »

bGl2YW5j wrote: post #21

I've also been loving the speed Claude has enabled me to move at, and now agree that the coding part of SWE has become LLM-wrangling instead. I now see interacting with an LLM, to build all parts of software, as the new "frontend". Following this idea, what do people think "backend" work will involve? Building and tweaking models, and the infra around them? Obviously everyone will shift more into architecture and str…

Was chatting with a friend about this:

"I used to write java code and the compiler turned it into JVM bytecode.

Now I write in English and the LLMs compile it into whatever language I want."

Although as one HN commenter pointed out: English is a pretty bad programming language as it's way more ambiguous than most programming languages.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#35

Post by zer00eyz »

al_borland wrote: post #30
dllrr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For fun and education purposes, learning and satisfaction are understandable. For work, companies won't support it. Get it done. Fast. That's the new norm.

I disagree. I need to be able to support what I ship and answer to the details of what it does and why it does it. I can only truly do that if I write it myself. There should also be a symbiotic relationship at a job. Yes, they get something from me, but I should also get something… learning and some amount of satisfaction… in addition to the paycheck. I can get a paycheck anywhere. It’s not the “new norm” unless emp…

> I need to be able to support what I ship and answer to the details of what it does and why it does it. I can only truly do that if I write it myself.

How do you function on a team, where you have to maintain code others have written?

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#36

Post by stuaxo »

A great thing you can do with LLMs:

"in (language I'm familiar with) I use (some pattern or whatever) what's the equivalent in (other language)?"

It's really great for doing bits and then get it to explain or you look and see what's wrong and modify it and learn.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#38

Post by NDizzle »

al_borland wrote: post #10

I spent the last 2 days primarily using Claude instead of coding things myself at work. I felt the exact opposite way. It was so unfulfilling. I’d equate it to the feeling of getting an A on a test, knowing I cheated. I didn’t accomplish anything. I didn’t learn anything. I got the end result with none of the satisfaction and learned nothing in the process. I’m probably going to go back and redo everything with my ow…

This past week I found and fixed a bug that happens once in 40,000 transactions working with Claude Code - Opus 4.6. Our legacy app was designed around 2008 and has had zillions of band aids added since then. Nobody (~700 person company) has been able to reliably reproduce this issue to confidently claim that they know what the cause is and how to definitively fix it. That all changed yesterday. I spent today writing up summaries that were shared far and wide. My wizard status is yet again renewed.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#39

Post by ynac »

cmos wrote: post #8

51 year old electrical engineer here, same thing! (minus the retiring part cause finances) It's given me the guts to be a solo-founder (for now). I

Just checked out MoveOMeter.com Great idea - and I get how pitching to "an old coot" like my parents would get a laugh out of them before an insulting hurtful pass. Very clever positioning - I'd lean in on that. Your audience is there and waiting - which is tricky since your customer is actually the sales person and you need to give them the training up front to close the deal with their elder. Nice work!

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#40

Post by thangalin »

Yes! Although 60 is still a decade away, I've spent a fair few evenings vibe-coding a FOSS dependency-free raw git repo browser.[1] Never would have even started such a project without LLMs because:

* Implementing a raw Git reader is daunting.

* Codifying syntax highlighting rules is laborious.

* Developing a nice UI/UX is not super enjoyable for me.

* Hardening with latest security measures would be tricky.

* Crafting a templating language is time-consuming.

Being able to orchestrate and design the high-level architecture while letting the LLM take care of the details is extremely rewarding. Moving all my repositories away from GitLab, GitHub, and BitBucket to a single repo under my own control is priceless.

[1]: https://repo.autonoma.ca/treetrek/

Post reply on HN