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Programming Still Sucks

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Re: Programming Still Sucks

#151

Post by eloisant »

stevenlangbroek wrote: post #88
doug_durham wrote: post #62

It sounds like the author shouldn't be in tech. For many, perhaps most of us programming is joy. It's why we started in our teens and have continued for 40 years. This is just a cynical post that adds no new value. We didn't kill the junior training mechanism. Juniors are still hired in the 100's thousands every year. There are valuable things to be said about the impact of AI. This isn't one of them.

Programming gives me great joy. I wrote my first batch scripts when I was 6 years old. I got my first job in the industry when I was 20. I'm 41 now. The problem isn't the act of programming. As to juniors, first time I heard someone brag about AI removing the need to hire juniors was in 2022. every junior I know is struggling to find work. It's not hard to find reddit threads with people sharing their experience to t…

> every junior I know is struggling to find work.

They also struggled in 2000, and in 2008. There was no AI at the time.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#152

Post by redfloatplane »

quxbar wrote: post #36

I don't agree with everything this piece concludes, but I do admire getting to read through a whole HN article without feeling the sheen of AI co-authorship.

It’s funny you say that as about halfway through I was beginning to wonder if this was at least Claude-edited. Absolutely no shade to the author meant, I think it’s a thoughtful article, but I _did_ feel the sheen of AI co-authorship.

It raises the question of how much text I have read that I did not realise was LLM-generated. I think I have a decent nose for it but I’m not perfect, there must be false negatives (and false positives, as it certainly might be with this article). What will it mean when I can no longer tell the difference?

Edit: thinking on it a little more, I hope the author doesn’t feel insulted by my comment given the subject matter of the article at hand. Sorry, it’s early morning! I’m sure I am wrong about my assessment. Which now really makes me wonder about the above

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#154

Post by hparadiz »

ironmagma wrote: post #143
hparadiz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no where near that TC and think this way too. This field of work is generally new in history. The whole woe is me what will we ever do attitude is so weak and frankly annoying.

Most of modern society is new in history; what is that supposed to say? If you are making the point that it's unproven and fragile, that would be a good point and actually one that supports "woe is me" because all of it could disappear overnight considering the fragility.

In my lifetime I have watched SPARC SUN Servers being thrown in the trash, spaghetti coded javascript and php run fortune 500s, the linux kernel adding containers, and everyone now being required to know how to code for CI so they can rerun tests, linters, and rebuild their app on every commit and publish it to an S3 bucket with specific IAM permissions tied to some SSO IAM provider.

At no point in any of that was anyone coddled or told that they will get to keep their job forever. Learn new skills. That's the game.

It's not even unique to tech. Doctors have to do this too.

There's so much work in the industry right now around LLM implementation that folks not looking into that are sleeping on good jobs.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#155

Post by rdslw »

bluegatty wrote: post #49
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autor surely always could be journalist. He can write a exceptional story.

Don't like to go against everyone but this not particularly well written. It's a long winding absurdist metaphorical tale, that is really more or less a rant. It's not particularly well grounded. It's a nice piece of personalized fiction, but it's not particularly good writing and nothing approaching what we'd think of as 'journalism'.

Thank you for writing this and your below longer comment.

I printed them with OP to remind me any time i’m afraid somebody can criticize my work and that it’s not worth to produce/write/publish.

no matter how good, there will always be people like you here, so no need to worry.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#156

Post by rramadass »

keybored wrote: post #128
fooqux wrote: post #27

> AI didn't take our jobs. Greed did. Same greed that moved factories to Bangladesh and keeps slaves in cobalt mines in the Congo, wearing a new mask. Tell the nephew to do something else. Anything. It won't save him either, but at least he won't have to pretend the thing destroying his life is a robot. This hit me hard. This article is art. I think I need to sleep on this and read it again in the morning.

Imagine you start on a trek to find the sage with the answer to why idiot sociopaths rule everything, why wars that don’t even benefit the aggressor are started, why there is enough food for everyone twice over but people are still starving... and much more. You’ve been pondering this question for years. You’ve read comments. Wikipedia. You already have a good idea. But you seek the wisdom of the sage. You cross moun…

On Greed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48046648

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#157

Post by trhway »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #69
yoyohello13 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He really put in to words what I’ve been feeling lately. I love programming and I’m quite good at it, but this industry is a cesspit. I’ve already decided to go back to school to get one of those ‘real’ jobs. I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society.

>> I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society. People will argue this point. However, when I look at all the things that tech has done thinking it was going to improve society; when in fact, it did the exact opposite is hard to argue. AI is just another item on a very long list of dystopian markers that writers/musicians have warned us about for years. The scary part now is people den…

>However, when I look at all the things that tech has done thinking it was going to improve society; when in fact, it did the exact opposite is hard to argue.

Imagine, you invented iron production to improve people lives - better tools (ploughs, axes, knives), etc - and now you see how people immediately use it for better weapons crushing the ones who have still been using bronze.

Or for example from the Palantir's Karp's book "Technological Republic" :

" We make the case that one of the most significant challenges that we face in this country is ensuring that the U.S. Department of Defense turns the corner from an institution designed to fight and win kinetic wars to an organization that can design, build, and acquire AI weaponry—... "

The tech is great, be it iron or AI. The people are still [almost] the same (i sometimes think that our evolutionary goal is the AGI robots who would take over the Earth and will evolve toward higher morals and conscience faster than we would - as they would naturally have shared brain state/connection that we can get only if we develop telepathy which we wouldn't, and we unfortunately disregard the next best thing - empathy)

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#158

Post by stevenlangbroek »

jrm4 wrote: post #34

Yes. And the reason for all of this is the same as it's always been, and requires literally no technical knowledge to understand. There is essentially zero accountability for harm. There is no button on your toaster that blows up the toaster. But there's a link in your email. And that's a button. And no one has figured out how to punish Microsoft or Apple or Google for allowing that to continue, though we do this jus…

I agree, but would dare you to go one step further: there is no accountability for harm because, being the "bourgeoisie" under neoliberal capitalism, capital insulates them from consequences.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#160

Post by LazyGooze »

black3r wrote: post #136
01100011 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are way too many people in tech who did it solely for the money. People worry about AI slop but these poseurs have been cranking out garbage for decades. A lot of my career has been cleaning up the mess they've made.

The difference with AI is that now generating AI slop is much faster than carefully crafted code. So companies began to prefer AI slop.

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