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It used to be hard

praf.me

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Re: It used to be hard

#2
> feel like an old rock and roll guitarist watching a DJ sell out a stadium.

> Is it bad that the barrier to entry for a DJ is lower? No

Lets set very modest goals, not selling out stadiums, just making median income, so you can buy a house and raise family.

It is much much much harder now! DJ is not even paid profession anymore! Actually maiking money is impossible. This field is impossible!

> we are not enough as people and worthy of good things.

That is totally true for like 90% of population. Not some sort of feelings, but based on response stats from job sites!

Re: It used to be hard

#4
Maybe it’s just me but it’s still hard. Writing code wasn’t hard before. Honestly putting up guard rails is harder than writing it yourself. It just may be faster now.

Getting proper requirements, knowing what to make, update, the domain knowledge, satisfying customers was and still is the hard part.

Re: It used to be hard

#8
I disagree with the article a lot. Solving problems because easier yes, the size of the problems became bigger. What I can do now with an LLM is magnitudes larger than I could've done alone.

Re: It used to be hard

#9

Maybe it’s just me but it’s still hard. Writing code wasn’t hard before. Honestly putting up guard rails is harder than writing it yourself. It just may be faster now. Getting proper requirements, knowing what to make, update, the domain knowledge, satisfying customers was and still is the hard part.

I don't disagree, and I've heard this said a bunch, but to some degree it feels like cope. Writing code wasn't generally the barrier to success, but it was still a barrier. And for sure, it's not gone entirely, but in a way it was one of the fun parts, and it does feel like a big part of it is gone now.

Many of us have nostalgic memories about staying up late, in the zone, cranking out code until you manage to get something working. "Getting requirements", figuring out "what to make", "satisfying customers"... all as important as they always have been, but they just aren't fun in the same way.

As for domain knowledge, well, to a degree that's one of the parts that used to be hard and isn't anymore. Like the article says, many of us prided ourselves on having in-depth knowledge of network protocols, OS internals, whatever. Now you can just ask a bot for that stuff and, while it's sure not perfect yet, stand a solid chance of getting a good answer.

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