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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

#151
post #113
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience is that people who weren't very good at writing software are the ones now "most excited" to "create" with a LLM. I've been a tech lead for years and have written business critical code many times. I don't ever want to go back to writing code. I am feeling supremely empowered to go 100x faster. My contribution is still judgement, taste, architecture, etc. And the models will keep getting better. And as…

What you bring to the table night be fine, but how long do you think you'll find emoloyers willing to still pay for this? One thing is for sure LLMs will bring down down the cost of software per some unit and increase the volume. But..cost = revenue. What is a cost to one party is a revenue to another party. The revenue is what pays salaries. So when software costs go down the revenues will go down too. When revenues…

I don't have an answer for this, and won't pretend to.

But my take on this is that accountability will still be a purely human factor. It still is. I recently let go of a contractor who was hired to run our projects as a Scrum/PM, and his tickets were so bad (there were tickets with 3 words in them, one ticket was in the current sprint, that was blocked by a ticket deep in the backlog, basic stuff). When I confronted him about them, he said the AI generated them.

So I told him that:

1. That's not an excuse, his job is to verify what it generated and ensure it's still good.

2. That actually makes it look WORSE, that not only did he do nearly 0 work, that he didn't even check the most basic outputs. And I'm not anti-AI, I expressly said that we should absolutely use AI tools to accelerate our work. But that's not what happened here.

So you won't get to say (at least I think for another few years) "my AI was at fault" – you are ultimately responsible, not your tools. So people will still want to delegate those things down the chain. But ultimately they'll have to delegate to fewer people.

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

#152
post #51

As a principal engineer I feel completely let down. I've spent decades building up and accumulating expert knowledge and now that has been massively devalued. Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software. I feel depressed and very unmotivated and expect to retire soon. Talk about a rug pull! My experience is that people who weren't very good at writing software are the ones now "most excited" to "create" w…

> Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software.

It may look the same, but it isn't the same.

In fact if you took the time to truly learn how to do pure agentic coding (not vibe coding) you would realize as a principal engineer you have an advantage over engineers with less experience.

The more war stories, the more generalist experience, the more you can help shape the llm to make really good code and while retaining control of every line.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for experienced devs to use their hard won experience to level themselves up to the equivalence of a full team of google devs.

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

#153
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AppleScript doesn’t have any NeXT heritage, it comes entirely from classic MacOS (debuted in System 7.1)

Sure, but you can feel some emergent philosophies that are starting to converge and there are recognizable aesthetics.

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

#154
post #75
post #51

As a principal engineer I feel completely let down. I've spent decades building up and accumulating expert knowledge and now that has been massively devalued. Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software. I feel depressed and very unmotivated and expect to retire soon. Talk about a rug pull! My experience is that people who weren't very good at writing software are the ones now "most excited" to "create" w…

As a Principal SWE, who has done his fair share of big stuff. I'm excited to work with AI. Why? Because it magnifies the thing I do well: Make technical decisions. Coding is ONE place I do that, but architecture, debugging etc. All use that same skill. Making good technical decisions. And if you can make good choices, AI is a MEGA force multiplier. You just have to be willing to let go of the reins a hair.

As a self teaching beginner* this is where I find AI a bit limiting. When I ask ChatGPT questions about code it is always about to offer up a solution, but it often provides inappropriate responses that don't take into account the full context of a project/task. While it understands what good structure and architecture are, it's missing the awareness of good design and architecture and applying to the questions I have, and I don't have have the experience or skill set to ask those questions. It often suggests solutions (I tend to ask it for suggestions rather than full code, so I can work it out myself) that may have drawbacks that I only discover down the line.

Any suggestions to overcome this deficit in design experience? My best guess is to read some texts on code design or alternatively get a job at a place to learn design in practice. Mainly learning javascript and web app development at the moment.

*Who has had a career in a previous field, and doesn't necessarily think that learning programming with lead to another career (and is okay with that).

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an "EM"?

Engineering Manager (as opposed to people who stick to programming, called Individual Contributor.)

Oh, how I hate these horrible job descriptions.

But thanks for the info.

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

#156
I have had the opposite experience.

When it was just asking ChatGPT questions it was fine, I was having fun, I was able to unblock myself when I got non-trivial errors much quicker, and I still felt like I was learning stuff.

With Codex or Claude Code, it feels like I'm stuck LARPing as a middle manager instead of actually solving problems. Sometimes I literally just copy stuff from my assigned ticket into Claude and tell it to do that, I awkwardly wait for a bit, test it out to see if it's good enough, and make my pull request. It's honestly kind of demoralizing.

I suppose this is just the cost of progress; I'm sure there were people that loved raising and breeding horses but that's not an excuse to stop building cars.

I loved being able to figure out interesting solutions to software problems and hacking on them until something worked, and my willingness to do the math beforehand would occasionally give me an edge. Instead, now all I do is sit and wait while I'm cuckolded out of my work, and questioning why I bothered finishing my masters degree if the expectation now is to ship slop code lazily written by AI in a few minutes.

It was a good ride while it lasted; I got almost fifteen years of being paid to do my favorite thing. I should count my blessings that it lasted that long, though I'm a little jealous of people born fifteen years earlier who would be retiring now with their Silicon Valley shares. Instead, I get to sit here contemplating whether or not I can even salvage my career for the next five years (or if I need to make a radical pivot).

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

#157
post #113
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience is that people who weren't very good at writing software are the ones now "most excited" to "create" with a LLM. I've been a tech lead for years and have written business critical code many times. I don't ever want to go back to writing code. I am feeling supremely empowered to go 100x faster. My contribution is still judgement, taste, architecture, etc. And the models will keep getting better. And as…

What you bring to the table night be fine, but how long do you think you'll find emoloyers willing to still pay for this? One thing is for sure LLMs will bring down down the cost of software per some unit and increase the volume. But..cost = revenue. What is a cost to one party is a revenue to another party. The revenue is what pays salaries. So when software costs go down the revenues will go down too. When revenues…

Any given system will still need people around to steer the AI and ensure the thing gets built and maintained responsibly. I'm working on a small team of in-house devs at a financial company, and not worried about my future at all. As an IC I'm providing more value than ever, and the backlog of potential projects is still basically endless- why would anyone want to fire me?

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

#158

I have had the opposite experience. When it was just asking ChatGPT questions it was fine, I was having fun, I was able to unblock myself when I got non-trivial errors much quicker, and I still felt like I was learning stuff. With Codex or Claude Code, it feels like I'm stuck LARPing as a middle manager instead of actually solving problems. Sometimes I literally just copy stuff from my assigned ticket into Claude and…

Are you 60?

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

#160
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I echo another reply here, if anything my experience coding feels even more valuable now. It was never about writing the code—anyone can do that, students in college, junior engineers… Experience is being able to recognize crap code when you see it, recognizing blind alleys long before days or weeks are invested heading down them. Creating an elegant API, a well structured (and well-organized) framework… Keeping it a…

Sorry for the dumb question but how could you feel threatened by LLMs if you retired just a few years ago? Considering the hype started somewhere in 2022-2023.

and they only got really good like last December.
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