I think the true genuinely-love-programming type of people will increasingly have to do what so many other people do, and that's separation of work and personal enjoyment. You might have to AI-architect your code at work, and hand code your toy projects on the weekend.
I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
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Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#102Old Man Yells at Clouds
Old Man Yells at Claude
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the blacksmiths losing their jobs are not allowed to feel bad about it?
No. By this logic, if they wanted to stay with the times they should have sought capital investment for their own industrial forges, joined their local lodges, climbed the ranks, lobbied their governments for loose safety regulations, and plied their workers with propaganda about how "we're in a recession and have to tighten our belts". Think of the wonderful world we could have if everyone just got their shit togeth…
The software world pretty much demanded this outcome.
Go back 10 years and post "SWE's should form labor unions"
Then watch as your post drops to [dead] and people scream "How dare you rob me of theoretical millions of dollars I'll be making".
I wonder how many of these same downvoters are now worried about getting replaced with AI.
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fun managing a bunch of inexperienced juniors when there are no consequences (aka the infamous personal projects). It's a lot more stressful when it matters.
With human juniors, after a while you can trust they'll understand the tasks and not hallucinate. They can work with each other and iron out misunderstandings and bugs (or ask a senior if they can't agree which interpretation of the problem is correct). With AI, there's none of that, and even after many months of working together, there's still possibility that their last work is hallucination/their simulation of und…
The equivalent of "employee development" with AI is just the release schedule of new models, I guess.
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#105I'm the exact same demographic as the author, just turned 50, writing code since childhood in BASIC. I'm dealing with the AI in programming issue by ignoring it.
I still enjoy the physical act of programming so I'm unsure why I should do anything that changes that. To me it's akin to asking a painter to become a photographer. Both are artists but the craft is different.
Even if the AI thing is here to stay, I think there will be room for people who program by hand for the same reason there's still room for people who paint, despite the invention of the camera.
But then, I'm somebody who doesn't even use an IDE. If I find an IDE obtrusive then I'm certain I'll find an AI agent even more so.
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#106Wow... I really relate to this. I'm 50 as well, and I started coding in 1985 when I was 10... I remember literally every evolutionary leap forward and my experience with this change has been a bit different. Steve Yegge recently did an interview on vibe coding ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJyJP517Uw ) where he says, "arch mage engineers who fell out-of-love with the modern complexity of shipping meaningful code…
Yes yes yes!!!
I'm 45 yo. And also started programming quite early around 1988. In my case it was GWBAsic games and then C ModeX and A Later Allegro based games.
Things got so boring in the last 15 years, I got some joy in doing AI research (ML, agents, Genetic Algorithms, etc).
But now, it's so cool how I can again think about something and build it so easily. I'm really excited of what I can do now. And im ot talking about the next billion dollar startup and whatnot. But the small hacky projects that LLMs made capable.yo build in no time.
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#107I prefer to see it as the automtion of the IT age. All other professions had their time when technology came and automated things. For example wood carvers, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, candlestickmakers etc etc. All of those professions have been mostly taken over by machines in factories. I view 'ai' as new machines in factories for producing code. We have reached the point where we have code factories which can…
I think the issue at the core of the analogy is that factories, traditional factories, excel at making a ton of one thing (or small variations thereof). The big productivity gains came from highly reliable, repeatable processes that do not accommodate substantial variation. This rigidity of factory production is what drives the existence of artisan work: it can always easily distinguish itself from the mass product.
This does not seem true for AI writing software. It's neither reliable nor rigid.
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#108A blacksmith was a person that picked up chunks of carbon and heated them to they were glowing red and beat the iron to submission with a hammer in their hands. Today iron is produced by machines in factories by the mega-tonne. We just happened to live in the age where code when from being beaten by hand to a mass produced product. And so the change of technology goes.
Blacksmiths were replaced by factories which produced deterministic products with 100% predictability. AI can't produce code yet with 100% predictability. If that day ever arrives, the blacksmith analogy will be apt.
>with 100% predictability.
Not sure what world you're from, but lots of products get sent back to the manufacture because they break.
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#109You can still have fun programming. Just sit down and write some code. Ain't nobody holding a gun to your head forcing you to use AI in your projects.
And the part of programming that wasn't your projects, whether back in the days of TPS reports and test coverage meetings, or in the age of generative AI, that bit was always kinda soul draining.
Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed
#110I prefer to see it as the automtion of the IT age. All other professions had their time when technology came and automated things. For example wood carvers, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, candlestickmakers etc etc. All of those professions have been mostly taken over by machines in factories. I view 'ai' as new machines in factories for producing code. We have reached the point where we have code factories which can…
> For example wood carvers, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, candlestickmakers etc etc. Very, very few of those professions are thriving. Especially if we are talking true craftsmanship and not stuffing the oven with frozen pastries to create the smell and the corresponding illusion of artisinal work.
They are thriving where I live. There is a huge artisinal market for hand crafted things. There are many markets, craft centers, art fairs, regular classes from professionals teaching amateurs etc. In most rural communities I have visited it is similar.