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

What *is* code? (2015)

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 55 posts

Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#5

Post by iqp »

Beautifully written, a joy to read but, sadly, it feels like something from a bygone era. Nobody chants "Developers! Developers! Developers!" anymore now that everything is dominated by AI, and the joy of coding is gone too. People like Steve Yegge, who I used to aspire to be like back in 2006, when I started my career as a developer, now writes about how he uses 10+ concurrent LLM agents to code, review, and ship & doesn't even bother to even look at the code being produced anymore. Just today, I implemented 2 features using Cursor & GPT-5.1 Codex-Max & I didn't have to write a single line of code myself. But it felt wrong. It makes me think, "What am I even doing here - Why not just let the product manager prompt the LLM?".

Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#6

Post by olowe »

I was lost, literally, hitchhiking across the Australian outback when this article was published. Going home felt scary because I was afraid to be alone with no one else sharing my interests. Travelling made life enjoyable again because just surviving felt like an achievement. But I felt so, so isolated (again, literally!) from modern society. I wanted to find out why I was so deeply interested in computers but not in “tech”. They must work somehow… why did my iPhone (sold that) feel similar to my PC (sold that too) but only one is called a computer? This article framed things in a way that shook me out of a physically dangerous, homeless, jobless rut. It was all code. And I could learn it if I had the time.

Perhaps it was the way it was written; I couldn’t believe intrigue and passion of computing could be weaved together like this. But there it was.

I did make it home eventually. Fortunately the first 2000km lift back from western Australia to the eastern states with a crystal meth addict on the run from the police didn’t end violently. A few weeks back in Sydney with family some Linux nerds found me working as a receptionist answering phones and scanning paper records in at a failing medical practice. They got me doing desktop Windows and Linux server support. I’m an official software engineer now. I guess I should print this article out to show to my kids!

Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#7

Post by adityaathalye »

olowe wrote: post #6

I was lost, literally, hitchhiking across the Australian outback when this article was published. Going home felt scary because I was afraid to be alone with no one else sharing my interests. Travelling made life enjoyable again because just surviving felt like an achievement. But I felt so, so isolated (again, literally!) from modern society. I wanted to find out why I was so deeply interested in computers but not i…

This story is "best comments" material. It would be even if it were a fabulist tale. Thanks for sharing!

Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#10

Post by olowe »

adityaathalye wrote: post #7
olowe wrote: post #6

I was lost, literally, hitchhiking across the Australian outback when this article was published. Going home felt scary because I was afraid to be alone with no one else sharing my interests. Travelling made life enjoyable again because just surviving felt like an achievement. But I felt so, so isolated (again, literally!) from modern society. I wanted to find out why I was so deeply interested in computers but not i…

This story is "best comments" material. It would be even if it were a fabulist tale. Thanks for sharing!

Haha thanks for saying that. It’s real! It’s relatively easy to get into the middle of nowhere in Australia after all ;) Actually still haven’t published my journal scribblings on my blog 10 years on..
Post reply on HN