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

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

#91

Post by firecall »

As a solo dev, using LLMs for coding has made me a better programmer for sure!

I can ask an LLM for specific help with my codebase and it can explain things in context and provide actual concrete relevant examples that make sense to me.

Then I can ask again for explanations about idiomatic code patterns that aren't familiar for me.

Working on my own, I don't get that feedback and code review loop.

Working with new languages and techniques, or diving into someone else's legacy code base is no longer as daunting with an LLM to ask for help!

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by IBCNU »

dbdoug wrote: post #83

Hey, I'm nearly 80 years old. I haven't written a line of code in over 10 years. But I'm coding now, with the help of Claude & Gemini, and having a great time. Each block of Python or Applescript that they generate for me is a much better learning tool than a book - I'm going through the code line by line and researching everything. And I'm also learning how to deal with LLMs and their strengths & weaknesses. Correct…

It's cool to rediscover Applescript for me (I'm late 40's) but it's a funny thing where I can like smell the NeXT in it almost nostalgically but it's quite handy in this new era of hijacking mac mini's (OpenClaw obviously is one way to do it, but why not just straight to the core).

I personally think coders get better with age, like lounge singers.

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

#94

Post by eventmapx »

I’m a 13 year lurker, first time commenter (Not sure why this post compelled me). I don’t think this is a genuine take. I don’t see how a 60 year old has any kind of joy for actual software creation suddenly from llms. It might be a joy in seeing software automatically be created but it’s definitely not doing the work. (I may be biased, I left the field 5 years ago) I doubt he’s spending any time fixing the software to make it near usable for anyone besides himself and the semi-working state the llm gave him. Meaning he’s going to have 10 or more half-finished projects again.

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

#95

Post by rubidium »

meebee wrote: post #46

So excited to be getting to my backlog of apps that I've wanted but couldn't take the time to develop on my own. I'm 66 and have been in the software field in various capacities (but programming mostly as a hobby). Here's a partial list of apps I've completed in the last few months: - Media Watch app to keep a list of movies and shows my wife and I want to watch - Grocery List with some tracking of frequent purchases…

And the biggest thing is that: software the way we want is much easier. No ads. No monthly cost.

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

#96

Post by bandrami »

notAnAIBot768 wrote: post #64
scottLobster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it doesn't freak you out that you're relying on thousands of lines of code that you've never looked at? How do you verify the end result? I wouldn't trust thousands of lines of code from one of my co-workers without testing

Do you trust the assembly your compiler puts out? The machine code your assembler puts out? The virtual machine it runs on? Thousands of lines of code you've never looked at...

"Trust"? God no. That's why I have a debugger

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

#97

Post by skeledrew »

TimFogarty wrote: post #27
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…

That's interesting. I have been thinking about how the vastly different reactions people seem to have to agentic coding could be influenced by what they value about coding. To me it seems like there are three joys in coding: 1. Creating something 2. Solving puzzles 3. Learning new things If you are primarily motivated by seeing a finished product of some sort, then I think agentic coding is transcendent. You can get…

I'm squarely into #1, but it usually requires #2 (at a high level) and has #3 as a side effect. But there's also #0 which kicks it all off: the triggering problem/question.

Like just yesterday I started to notice the increasing pressure of an increasingly hard-to-navigate number of Claude chats. So I went searching for something to organize them. I did find an extension, but it's for Chrome, and I'm a Firefox person, so I had Claude look at it with the initial idea of porting to Firefox. Then in the analysis, Claude mentioned creating an extension from scratch, and that's what I went for.

I've never really used JavaScript, let alone created a Firefox extension before, but in a few minutes I was iterating on one, figuring out how I wanted it to work with Claude, and now I have a very nice and featureful chats organizer. And I haven't even peeked at the code. I also now have a firm idea of this general spec of how I want arbitrary list-organizing UI to look+behave going forward.

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

#98

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

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…

You're paid by a company to create software, so they can use it to drive business value and make a profit. You did so effortlessly. But it didn't make you feel personally fulfilled. So you're going to go back and re-do it, so you feel better?

How do you think your company's CEO is going to feel when you tell them you could be finishing the software much faster, but you'd rather not, because it feels better to do it by hand?

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

#100

Post by coffeecoders »

meebee wrote: post #46

So excited to be getting to my backlog of apps that I've wanted but couldn't take the time to develop on my own. I'm 66 and have been in the software field in various capacities (but programming mostly as a hobby). Here's a partial list of apps I've completed in the last few months: - Media Watch app to keep a list of movies and shows my wife and I want to watch - Grocery List with some tracking of frequent purchases…

This is the reason. I have just been vibe-coding my way for a few months now, got almost all the tools (except Browser and Mail) that I use daily, designed by me (with the help of LLM).
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