Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Are 80s high school hobby programmers overwhelmingly pro-AI?

news.ycombinator.com

31–33 of 33 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are 80s high school hobby programmers overwhelmingly pro-AI?

#31
I was a hobby programmer in the 80s, but that was after college. I was a hobby programmer in the 70s via my high school's library having a terminal to access a mainframe for self-study programming courses, and I built mail-order computer kits which I programmed in machine language.

I think AI is a great tool, but requires safeguards. I use it every day, but I use a lot of tools to reign it in, keep it on task, check its results, and force it to follow an engineering process.

I don't know about the "as quickly as possible" part, since there needs to be guardrails, but improving AI should be done sooner rather than later. e.g, instead of training to give the answer it thinks you want to hear, it should be trained to give provably correct answers. instead of being trained and fine tuned and then let loose, it should be able to continuously learn and improve.

While people keep chasing tokens/second and vibe-coding, I'm more interested in correct results per kWh, sustainable and ethical AI. Also, I'm worried that there will be an increasing digital divide between the wealthy and the rest of us, so I do want AI to be available and not locked up just for corporations and governments.

To me, the fun is solving problems, and AI let's me solve more problems, harder problems and more quickly. I was happy to move from assembler programming to high level programming languages, to 4GL, to frameworks, tech stacks, etc. Moving to AI coding is just another shift in solving problems at a higher level with more productivity.

hacking microprocessors was fun. building complex systems using AI is fun, too.

Re: Ask HN: Are 80s high school hobby programmers overwhelmingly pro-AI?

#32
I have been a professional SWE for 30 years, I was also paid to write software when I was in middle school in the early 80s. I quit to do other things before high school.

I am not pro AI nor anti AI. since machine learning is not an interest of mine and is not programming I simply have no interest in it.

im also not interested in being a consumer of machine learning products as it relates to my profession.

If I need solutions coded with automation code generators are much faster and reliable. i write them all the time.

The only benefit I derive as a consumer of machine learning at this time is to avoid using the degraded and near useless google search engine for minor lookups of trivia I dont commit to memory. And I do value this very much given the pathetic state of internet search.

As an engineer I can do everything I need and want to do and dont need help building systems. People who do frequently need help enjoy machine learning consumerism more than I do.

As far as what I want in regards to machine learning in the workplace is to be allowed to do my job and not be bothered to use a bunch of junk I dont need.

and the noise around LLMs is annoying and I am anti building data centers and destroying general purpose computing over some corporate lust for power just because an LLM can string a few sentences together.

I am also vehemently against the massive theft of copyrighted content to train LLMs and view LLM output as a form of obfuscated theft.

Re: Ask HN: Are 80s high school hobby programmers overwhelmingly pro-AI?

#33
No. None of the coders are overwhelmingly pro-ai. But, all are learning it and ramping up. The GenX money people are 100% into AI now. They are the same people who always had "an great idea for an app you should make." We have seen multiple waves of technology appear and then get exploited and collapse. Personally, I think coding is the least interesting use of these things. If I was independently weathly I would point AI at pesticide reduction in farming, water management and distribution, and drug addiction mitigation through chemistry.
Post reply on HN