It'd be embarrassing if you have to spend $10 in AI tokens for it to fix one line that you could have fixed quicker yourself for free.
Not sure if the savings add up enough to offset the investment in learning to program.
Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
21–30 of 142 posts
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#22Wasn't Claude supposed to do all the coding by now? Did we have a change of mind or did we run out of tokens?
Two things: 1) By the time I’ve determined, and expressed to my satisfaction, exactly what I want, I’ve already done the hard work of coding that thing. The rest is fairly mechanical by comparison. 2) It’s a universal truth (which I know someone’s gonna argue with :D ) that reading and working with other peoples’ code is much less fun than reading and working with your own. This applies even if the other people are r…
"I love building software, I just don't like the data entry parts", to paraphrase a guy I worked with once who explained how he loved writing design docs for junior engineers to implement.
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#23Wasn't Claude supposed to do all the coding by now? Did we have a change of mind or did we run out of tokens?
Claude isn’t even good enough for Anthropic to release native desktop applications for each OS. As someone said in a comment in a different post here, it seems like these tools are good at web and web related (like Electron) development.
Anthropic intentionally missed the opportunity to show that its models can develop really good native applications.
OpenAI’s latest desktop applications seem to be worse than before too.
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
if you had started the guide on the first time it was posted, you'd be done by now!
I started before the guide was published. I am 40 years in on challenging myself and learning and improving and there remains so much more I have the opportunity to master.
Lyf short
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
if you had started the guide on the first time it was posted, you'd be done by now!
I started before the guide was published. I am 40 years in on challenging myself and learning and improving and there remains so much more I have the opportunity to master.
I myself am spending a lot of time leveling up, I recently realized there are so many things about programming and CS that I don't know about or only have a superficial knowledge. There's so much to learn but it's very rewarding.
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#26One of may favorite things to do was to spend some time tinkering around to learn a new programming language. I collected quite a few and it was fun to learn new paradigms and how to organize programs. But now since AI… idk I just can’t do it, it seems just completely useless in the age of AI. Like getting better at the technical aspects of programming just doesn’t feel important anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be a…
Did AI take it away, or did you give it away? Now that you've made the Faustian bargain at this low low introductory price, how long until they start ratcheting up the price? How long will you be able to bear it? You're still allowed to do things the old fashioned way you know. Given the rapid skill degradation that results from LLM-driven coding usage, I'd recommend it if you want to retain any skill at all.
They are talking about the enjoyement. AI did disolve a lot of the meaning and magic behind pure code exercises.
What felt like a creative endeavor now feels and is even more treated by society and other software engineers as grossly mechanical.
And to me too that hurts. I think a lot of people whose identity or passion was tied to this feel like that.
It is very much a "what is painting purpose now that photography exists ?" or "what is craft in an era of industrial mass production" moment for some of us. There are answers but finding them require exploration and being willing to change what we are
I think that's their deeper point
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#27One of may favorite things to do was to spend some time tinkering around to learn a new programming language. I collected quite a few and it was fun to learn new paradigms and how to organize programs. But now since AI… idk I just can’t do it, it seems just completely useless in the age of AI. Like getting better at the technical aspects of programming just doesn’t feel important anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be a…
Did AI take it away, or did you give it away? Now that you've made the Faustian bargain at this low low introductory price, how long until they start ratcheting up the price? How long will you be able to bear it? You're still allowed to do things the old fashioned way you know. Given the rapid skill degradation that results from LLM-driven coding usage, I'd recommend it if you want to retain any skill at all.
So much life enjoyment is tied to feeling competent and respected. Seeing a new, more talented challenger on the horizon is bound to be discouraging to some extent. It's like going from high school to college all over again: you used to be the top of your class, now you're surrounded by people just as competent as you.
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#28dont waste your time, it's a dead field.
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#29Wasn't Claude supposed to do all the coding by now? Did we have a change of mind or did we run out of tokens?
I don't personally know anyone who writes code any more (for work). Is this not the case for you? The distinction I see now is between teams that read PRs and teams that don't. I still think the former is a good approach... for now, but I don't expect this will necessarily be the case in a year (or less). This article was such an inspiration to me when I was younger, and the advice, for that time, was very correct. H…
I do! A lot of the work I do is not simple CRUD, and I have to think about what's going on. Reading code doesn't do that to the same degree.
Re: Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)
#30One of may favorite things to do was to spend some time tinkering around to learn a new programming language. I collected quite a few and it was fun to learn new paradigms and how to organize programs. But now since AI… idk I just can’t do it, it seems just completely useless in the age of AI. Like getting better at the technical aspects of programming just doesn’t feel important anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be a…
Did AI take it away, or did you give it away? Now that you've made the Faustian bargain at this low low introductory price, how long until they start ratcheting up the price? How long will you be able to bear it? You're still allowed to do things the old fashioned way you know. Given the rapid skill degradation that results from LLM-driven coding usage, I'd recommend it if you want to retain any skill at all.
One thing AI did take away; I love reading source code written by other people. Node modules, plugins, LUA, python scripts... whatever. I loved seeing how people organized their logic, named their variables, the flavor of their comments... all of it. I learned so much diving through the source code of all the major tools.
Now it's all AI generated. You don't know if you're reading a novel human's take on a pattern or an LLM's attempt to reproduce. Worse; even if the AI presented something novel it produces at such a rate it's a needle in a haystack.
I feel cautious of any claim people make about their use of AI. I'm not even anti-AI; I use it. But at minimum wish there were a mechanism to know where the lines were.