Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 427 posts

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#261

Post by anonzzzies »

somenameforme wrote: post #221
dofm wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our client wants something: I mumble in my phone what they want, with some spec docs we had / made by mumbling in our phones: a working system comes out, we test it with our client, we fix. We sign a SLA, get paid 100k, a few weeks have passed. OK so, it sounds empty and miserable to me, but we can stipulate that this is how it is working out for you. Given that stipulation: how long do you think this can possibly…

You're not just in a race to the bottom with everybody else who is doing this. I don't think his anecdote is particularly surprising at all. You can do the same with basically any typical CRUD app, which is already going to be some very large percentage of all business software. But this kind of also leads to the conclusion that so can the people paying you. I think the years of software development/employment for pr…

Try getting something good out of fiverr or upwork. Even now it’s terrible (we get to clean up some the experiments). I agree maybe with the in house after enough years but that will also have a big effect on employees of those companies; a future (5+ years for sure as enterprises don’t move so fast) AI would need few resources to create and optimize and improve. I am not resisting my company won’t exist soon-ish; I am resisting that people see a bright future for devs here on HN. I don’t know where that comes from outside handwaiving ‘loom’ and ‘train’.

I know fiverr will start delivering nice software in 5 years and that’s what I worry about. By that time fiverr is probably just a chatbox though without humans, as what is the point?

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#262

Post by pibaker »

PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

What had he produced in the years prior to AI getting good enough for coding? All I know is he was on Zuckerberg's sinking metaverse boat for years, and then nothing else.

Maybe it's him, maybe it's his employer. I don't know. I am skeptical of AI's impact on work myself but I just don't think AI is the only thing to blame here.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#263

Post by dofm »

somenameforme wrote: post #258
dofm wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a mistake to assume that quality doesn't plummet when cost does, even if the AI is capable of quality work. The quality issue will always resurface. But yeah — I mean, I am a freelancer who burned out for reasons that are rather more influenced by the SaaS wave. That was hard to compete with. People choose between the solution that meets their needs and changing their processes to meet the ten-times-chea…

A bit of a tangent here, but I'd look into lower cost of living areas if you have the ability to move/remote, even moreso if you'll be drawing social security or have a pension. Money just goes so much further, and with an overall much better quality of life. And there's always stuff like teaching, moreso because it's enjoyable than for the paycheck. But in these parts of the world, making a few bucks doing whatever…

I am moving to somewhere cheaper, yes. Though since my passport is no longer strong (British), my choice/range of cheaper is a lot more limited.

Quality of life will not improve, because I will be lonelier (plus I have a great quality of life here in other ways, that many places cannot match) but I am mostly reconciled to that loss. I will have a fair bit more flexibility in use of space, which means I can be a bit more of a portfolio-earner; I do have some fringe skills that could make some money still, and I can have a little workshop or studio.

> But in these parts of the world, making a few bucks doing whatever in the software world goes so much further.

I am (undiagnosed but very obviously) ADHD and I don't tend to find it easy to make a sustainable income off "a few bucks" here and there; the effort expenditure in managing it always ends up subsidising the work. It's part of why I am burned out. I need thicker strands of work and those are fewer and further between.

I have little certainty when things will get bad, but I do think it likely it happens in the next five or six years, and I do know that when things do get bad they favour the young. Which I am not. It is clear to me that I am never getting an ordinary dayjob in the tech industry again.

I don't mean to sound particularly gloomy but I think mine is the generation whose lifespans will dramatically shorten. I think a lot of single middle aged people (men mostly) in the tech industry will choose the time and manner of their departure. Because we are deliberately creating both misery and job insecurity.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#264

Post by justonepost2 »

anonzzzies wrote: post #160
skrebbel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite Wow that resonated by a scary amount.

Again I don't get what people on HN are doing? Our client wants something: I mumble in my phone what they want, with some spec docs we had / made by mumbling in our phones: a working system comes out, we test it with our client, we fix. We sign a SLA, get paid 100k, a few weeks have passed. I mean, we should not measure everything in money, but for lack of a better measure for productivity, I cannot see how anyone fi…

in that case aren't you a completely useless middleman now?

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#265

Post by awr-asjkt »

Shut up and show us the code, Carmack! Now that you take AI money, you are a hollow influencer.

BTW, for you it would have been pretty bad if coding had been solved in the Quake-3 era. Quake-3 was technically sound but had excruciatingly boring and bland gameplay.

Fortunately, coding has not been solved.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#266

Post by ryandrake »

dofm wrote: post #215
anonzzzies wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sure are though; they have many processes to automate as well: big corn farmers/factories also have admin, erp, crm, departments with processes etc. There are companies doing billions in revenue with departments of people just copy/pasting PDFs who do real life things like you state who have immediate gains. But they won't do it alone yet and luckily need us. They still benefit though vs the large consultant bus…

Literally everyone I know in a large enough company who talks about AI talks about increasingly panicky mandates to use more Copilot coming from above, like you'll lose your job if you don't use it more. I heard exactly this story from my neighbour just three days ago. Literally a call from head office demanding they use Copilot more — to do a task Copilot can't do. Everyone in smaller companies describes various eff…

I can add a data point for you: At my job they have made "amount of AI usage" a criteria for performance reviews, advancement and promotions. Mandate from the top: Use as much AI as you can. They even have a leaderboard (accessible to managers) showing who is using the most and least AI. It feels as though nobody even cares how good or bad a job I do, as long as I do it using AI.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#267

Post by sriram_malhar »

Razengan wrote: post #198
sriram_malhar wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that the same powers that have bred fascism and mandatory id requirement are hand in glove with the AI oligarchs, no? They gain with rampant use of AI disproportionately more than the peasant. The peasantry stands no chance. Unless there is a French Revolution style uprising

> Unless there is a French Revolution style uprising Yeah civilians are not going to win with weapons anymore. The imbalance there has been ridiculously disproportionate for decades. But the common peon can use AI to look up laws and rights and other information and shit to see what we CAN still do. USE it before they take that away too.

You can look up laws all night long. Check out all the laws broken by Potus, ICE (just to name a few) on a daily basis.

The peasantry is not on the side that enforces the law. AI is. AI is a force multiplier. The more force you have, the more multiples of it you en up with. Flock uses AI to do surveillance at scale. Every cloud service has NSA backdoors.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#268

Post by eloisius »

staticautomatic wrote: post #92
turpentine wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms. Focusing on data structures, architecture and algorithms is what competency in programming has looked like since forever. Building systems out of smaller pieces gets you there. If your complaint above is that you were struggling with syntax…

Do you remember how bad documentation was? I still have nightmares about Twisted.

Some projects have fantastic documentation. Qt comes to mind. The experience of writing Qt is a pleasure because I can always jump to the doc for whatever class I'm dealing with and find what I'm looking for immediately. Also every argument type is well-linked in every signature so it's easy to follow and understand everything you're dealing with.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#269

Post by phendrenad2 »

PostOnce wrote: post #88

John Carmack is a personal hero of mine, so it pains me to say this: Carmack hasn't produced anything noteworthy since AI was invented, therefore, how productive can it really be? It could be he is doing incredible work in private... but it could also be that he's lost in the weeds, because AI is so counterproductive while feeling the opposite? I remain a skeptic.

Actually, I'd expect someone like Carmack to be the least productive with AI. Carmack focused his career on high-performance 3d graphics tricks. Those are free now. What isn't free is knowing how to use them. In other words, the game engine is free, the game maps/zones/levels are costly. The "John Romero" part of the equation. Let's see what the idea people are making, not the code gurus.

Re: Don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master

#270

Post by somenameforme »

dofm wrote: post #263
somenameforme wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a tangent here, but I'd look into lower cost of living areas if you have the ability to move/remote, even moreso if you'll be drawing social security or have a pension. Money just goes so much further, and with an overall much better quality of life. And there's always stuff like teaching, moreso because it's enjoyable than for the paycheck. But in these parts of the world, making a few bucks doing whatever…

I am moving to somewhere cheaper, yes. Though since my passport is no longer strong (British), my choice/range of cheaper is a lot more limited. Quality of life will not improve, because I will be lonelier (plus I have a great quality of life here in other ways, that many places cannot match) but I am mostly reconciled to that loss. I will have a fair bit more flexibility in use of space, which means I can be a bit m…

I don't think you're being gloomy so much as realistic. It's clear a lot of people either don't realize what's already happened, or are in some sort of denial about it. What you're saying is entirely true and was almost certainly also true during past eras of revolutionary leaps in technology. Fortunately in current times we have far more options than we did in the past, but realizing those options takes a bit of adventurism.

Since you already have that in you, I think you'll be surprised what you'll find - entire communities of interesting English speaking tech-oriented folks, many with more than a few grey hairs, would be just the start. And don't forget the teaching aspect. If you have a degree, smarts, some basic charisma, and can roll with a bit of chaos - you'll find plentiful opportunities to teach any topic imaginable. It's not just English, like many think. It's really quite fun!

Post reply on HN