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Learning to code is still worthwhile

stevekrouse.com

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Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#51

Post by exfalso »

adamddev1 wrote: post #33

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't AI agents replacing the coding mostly being done on the outer layers of development? I mean, end user applications, apps, dashboards, business applications? On this "outer crust" people can maybe tolerate things with 99% accuracy, or bloated code. A vibe coded app can be argued to be "good enough." (Even then, look at the disaster that Microsoft apps have become post AI adop…

There are ways to do it correctly. You just end up spending a lot of time conceptualizing and refining abstractions.

To me the issue is more that conceptualizing requires a certain state of mind. Before llms it was 10% hard thinking 90% implementing. Implementation was actually sort of a reward, it felt so good just being in the zone and fleshing out ideas.

Post llms I find myself walking up and down quite a lot, only doing the thinking. Now it's more like 40% thinking 60% reviewing plans/code. I haven't experienced flow state since. The thinking is fun but exhausting, the reviewing is just kind of annoying, especially as llms get into these weird failure modes. Before I could look at a bad piece of code and instantly tell what the author was thinking and why the thing doesn't work. Now I need to be a lot more careful because there is little code smell, but a lot of badly chosen abstractions.

Just exhausting...

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#52

Post by stevekrouse »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #43

Thin post with more ads for their company than arguments. Many pursuits are worthwhile, yet almost no one does most pursuits. Coding is going to become a niche activity like portrait painting or making toys. It’s fun but there’s far cheaper easier ways to get a superior product.

Ah damn, sorry about that. I removed my footer "ads" in response to this feedback. Appreciate it.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#53

Post by wincy »

embedding-shape wrote: post #25
gonzalohm wrote: post #5

Learning anything is worthwhile. Just because you code in Python it doesn't mean that knowing how instructions are processed in a CPU or the memory is managed is useless. The excuse that we don't need to know how things work because AI will take care of it is going to bite a lot of people on their asses

> The excuse that we don't need to know how things work because AI will take care of it is going to bite a lot of people on their asses Abstractions always led to this sort of behavior. So many of my web development peers screamed at me for being curious about what happens behind/further down then the stack we were learning, and this was decades ago. Seems it differs a lot per person, and what I've found out only lat…

I’m a web dev but always curious. Which is why I figured out what was breaking the time calls (we’d switched from CENTOS to Red Hat which returned totally different v8 time strings from the underlying calls). You don’t need to know what’s going on underneath the mountain of code you rely on until suddenly you do.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#54

Post by adamddev1 »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #38
adamddev1 wrote: post #33

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't AI agents replacing the coding mostly being done on the outer layers of development? I mean, end user applications, apps, dashboards, business applications? On this "outer crust" people can maybe tolerate things with 99% accuracy, or bloated code. A vibe coded app can be argued to be "good enough." (Even then, look at the disaster that Microsoft apps have become post AI adop…

This type of comment retroactively assigns human written code a quality which it has never had. "No one wants to build on code that is 99% accurate or bloated" - my friend have you ever used Windows??

Of course Windows is garbage. But this is the sort of defeatist argument that always shows up among both AI optimists and places where corruption is rampant. Corruption and incorrectness is established as an inescapable baseline, and then greater systematic corruption (like LLMs producing constantly sub-par code) is justified.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#55

Post by appleappleapple »

sublinear wrote: post #14

I don't entirely disagree, but I absolutely hate these blog posts. They always miss the point entirely. It's been enough years of this that it seems like a deliberate muddying of waters. "Knowing how to code" has always been poorly defined and full of silly arguments. Nobody employs code monkeys. What matters more is that you understand how things work. There's zero progress on that with AI. LLMs might even be negati…

>Nobody hires code monkeys.

Respectfully disagree here. People have always hired code monkeys and arguably they will hire more of them as engineers become increasingly able to defer their judgment to LLMs. It might be true that the top level companies expect strong mental models of the code but in my experience many companies (especially startups) really just want the 0->1 ability and don’t care how you get there.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#56

Post by adamddev1 »

exfalso wrote: post #51
adamddev1 wrote: post #33

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't AI agents replacing the coding mostly being done on the outer layers of development? I mean, end user applications, apps, dashboards, business applications? On this "outer crust" people can maybe tolerate things with 99% accuracy, or bloated code. A vibe coded app can be argued to be "good enough." (Even then, look at the disaster that Microsoft apps have become post AI adop…

There are ways to do it correctly. You just end up spending a lot of time conceptualizing and refining abstractions. To me the issue is more that conceptualizing requires a certain state of mind. Before llms it was 10% hard thinking 90% implementing. Implementation was actually sort of a reward, it felt so good just being in the zone and fleshing out ideas. Post llms I find myself walking up and down quite a lot, onl…

That's why I say, just don't use LLMs.

I think conceptualizing and refining the abstraction is the essence of the beauty of the craft and progress.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#57

Post by layman51 »

NuclearPM wrote: post #29
wasting_time wrote: post #18

The era of LLMs is similar to when Magic was discovered in the 1400s. The layperson may be able to get ahold of a spellbook, but without Understanding it comes with high risk of turning your niece into a frog. Whereas Wizards can cast increasingly powerful spells that build on each other, and make Art.

I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.

I have actually thought something similar but more in terms of divination. There’s some people who might compare LLMs to something like Tarot or automatic writing (think Ouija) because there’s a sense of randomness with LLMs too.

Both LLMs and divination methods also have the danger that someone could kind of drive themselves into madness with it. I don’t know too much about what how or why people can drive themselves crazy by chatting with an LLM, but with divination, I heard it can cause distress to ask the same questions about yourself many too frequently and also they ask about outcomes instead of methods.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#58

Post by hollowturtle »

adamddev1 wrote: post #33

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't AI agents replacing the coding mostly being done on the outer layers of development? I mean, end user applications, apps, dashboards, business applications? On this "outer crust" people can maybe tolerate things with 99% accuracy, or bloated code. A vibe coded app can be argued to be "good enough." (Even then, look at the disaster that Microsoft apps have become post AI adop…

> On this "outer crust" people can tolerate things 99% accuracy, or bloated code

Sorry what people would tolerate? Go look around and ask people, friends and family. They all hate slow bloated software, it costs us dunno how much in time and productivity. With the advent of LLMs it only got worse not better

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#59

Post by adamddev1 »

hollowturtle wrote: post #58
adamddev1 wrote: post #33

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't AI agents replacing the coding mostly being done on the outer layers of development? I mean, end user applications, apps, dashboards, business applications? On this "outer crust" people can maybe tolerate things with 99% accuracy, or bloated code. A vibe coded app can be argued to be "good enough." (Even then, look at the disaster that Microsoft apps have become post AI adop…

> On this "outer crust" people can tolerate things 99% accuracy, or bloated code Sorry what people would tolerate? Go look around and ask people, friends and family. They all hate slow bloated software, it costs us dunno how much in time and productivity. With the advent of LLMs it only got worse not better

I agree 100%. I was just trying to say people can sort of get away with more, or justify it easier.
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