11–20 of 184 posts
It was always this, for everyone other than programmers.
This reminds me a little of the Go champion (the game, not the language) who announced he was giving up the game after a computer beat him. It's a bit like giving up running because cars are faster.
I’m wary about the exuberance of AI displacing quality. But some of the worst experiences I’ve had with coworkers were with those who made programming part of their identity. Every technical disagreement on a PR became a threat to identity or principles, and ceased being about making the right decision in that moment. Identity means: there’s us, and them, and they don’t get it. ‘Programmer’ is much better off as a de…
“Identity” is an overloaded word. It can mean a category flag someone waves, an identifier we ask others to respect, a group we choose to belong to, a way of understanding what it is we like about ourselves, or something we quietly aspire to.
To clarify/nuance. Even if there was no economic nor social incentive for me to program; I'd still tinker with it, AI coding agent enhanced or not.
I guess when you get to a certain age (I'm 45) I stop caring whether something like this has social value. I enjoy it anyways.
Wanting to know how things work always brings me back. I don't care if an AI coded small or big parts of it, I still want to know how it works, how to make it better - what's holding the AI itself back from being a more effective programmer.
I feel like I got into programming when it was seen as low-status profession in the late 80s. And it went through levels of hype and collapse. Maybe this is the ultimate collapse. But I still want to take apart the watch to see how it ticks.
If society collapses because 80% of white collar jobs disappear, I guess I'll just be in my basement wanting to know how a linux kernel driver works.
I’m wary about the exuberance of AI displacing quality. But some of the worst experiences I’ve had with coworkers were with those who made programming part of their identity. Every technical disagreement on a PR became a threat to identity or principles, and ceased being about making the right decision in that moment. Identity means: there’s us, and them, and they don’t get it. ‘Programmer’ is much better off as a de…
I hope AI liberates us from that dumb facade of pretend innovation. In some ways, us programmers got way too full of ourselves and filled our lives with pretend work porting apps from one thing to the next thing with no actual change in end-user value
I am not sure what the loss is. Not everyone is using AI. No one is forcing you to use AI.
I can't relate to this anymore and honestly after embracing vibe coding, I'm sick of reading posts like this (and I don't want to personally attack the write who I sympathize with to some degree). Being able to code doesn't make you better than the "plebs" who are creating massive value with a vibe coded tool. I also remember the brief moment of disbelief when I noticed AI could really code better than me, until I re…
I’m wary about the exuberance of AI displacing quality. But some of the worst experiences I’ve had with coworkers were with those who made programming part of their identity. Every technical disagreement on a PR became a threat to identity or principles, and ceased being about making the right decision in that moment. Identity means: there’s us, and them, and they don’t get it. ‘Programmer’ is much better off as a de…
“Identity” is an overloaded word. It can mean a category flag someone waves, an identifier we ask others to respect, a group we choose to belong to, a way of understanding what it is we like about ourselves, or something we quietly aspire to.
This isn't the first industry mandated madness. Software engineers have supported any fad that their overlords dictated for a long time. It is always the mediocre 100 IQ people who act as mouthpieces for the industry and temporarily get ahead of their more intelligent colleagues.
It is no different now. You can see who is a paid shill and who is not. Python projects like NumPy, members of which are on the take from PyTorch, go to great lengths to rationalize AI usage. Anaconda people who take AI money join in.
Projects like Zig, which are much more interesting, move away from Slophub.
What concerns me is the silence of academics. There are enough tenured professors who could speak up, but they have been intimidated by various speech restrictions from different political parties over the last decade. Or they want that next industry grant.
I can't relate to this anymore and honestly after embracing vibe coding, I'm sick of reading posts like this (and I don't want to personally attack the write who I sympathize with to some degree). Being able to code doesn't make you better than the "plebs" who are creating massive value with a vibe coded tool. I also remember the brief moment of disbelief when I noticed AI could really code better than me, until I re…