It's honestly not that deep. If AI increases productivity, we should accept it. If it doesn't, then the hype will eventually fade out. In any case, having attachment to the craft is a bit cringe. Technological progress trumps any emotional attachment.
The Programmer Identity Crisis
181–190 of 317 posts
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worst thing for me is that I am actually good at LLM-based coding My coworkers that are in love with this new world are producing complete AI slop and still take ages to complete tasks. Meanwhile I can finally play my strength as I actually know software architecture, can ask the LLM to consider important corner case and so on. Plus, I am naturally good at context management. Being neurodivergent has given me dec…
A Russell conjugation: my LLM-based coding output, your Claude throwaway code, his complete AI slop.
Oh, first time hearing that term. Thank you, I love it!
Though I don't think this is at play here. Maybe a bit but seeing how my coworkers prompt, there is objective difference. I will spend half an hour on writing a good prompt, revise the implementation plan with the LLM multiple times before I allow it to even start doing anything while my coworkers just write "fix this" and wonder why the stupid AI can't read their minds.
I am producing AI slop as well, just hopefully a bit less. Obviously hand crafted code is still much better but my boss wants me to use "AI" so I do as I am told.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's really the point of this post; it's all about how LLMs are destroying our craft (ie, "I really like using knives!"), not really about whether the food is better. I think the real problem is that it's actually increasingly difficult to defend the artisanal "no-AI" approach. I say this as a prior staff-level engineer at a big tech company who has spent the last six months growing my SaaS to ~$100k…
Call me crazy, but my guess is that that may not have been able to happen without the decade of experience it took you to get to the Staff level engineering position at a big tech company which has enabled you to gain the skills required to review the AI code you're producing properly.
Totally true. But that's also a different point than "But I love using my knives!"
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if the robot did it perfectly, you'd still have posts like these lamenting the loss of the craft of cutting tomatoes. And they're not wrong! I guess I don't understand posts like this IF you think you can do it better without LLMs. I mean, if using AI makes you miserable because you love the craft of programming, AND you think using AI is a net loss, then just...don't use it? But I think the problem here that al…
There are chefs but they are not us. Though it will upset many to hear it, what we are is fast food workers, assembling and reheating prepackaged stuff provided to us. Now a machine threatens to do the assembling and reheating for us, better and faster than we on average do. The chefs coming up with recipes and food scientists doing the pre-packaging will do fine and are still needed. The people making the fast food…
Absolutely true. In my case, I'm trying to run a restaurant, so this is all excellent news for me.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem rather is that you still have to stay somewhat agreeable while calling out the bullshit. If you were "socially allowed" to treat colleagues like > All while the author—who clearly only skimmed their “own” code—is taking no responsibility, going “whoopsie, Claude wrote that. Silly AI, ha-ha.” as they really deserve, the problem would disappear really fast. So the problem that you outlined is rather social,…
They should get a clear explanation of the problem and of the team expectations the first time it happens. If it happens a second time? A stern talk from their manager. A third time? PIP or fired. Let your manager be the bad guy. That's part of what they're for. Your manager won't do that? Then your team is broken in a way you can't fix. Appeal to their manager, first, and if that fails put your resume on the street.
> If it happens a second time? A stern talk from their manager.
In my experience, the stern talk would probably go to you, for making the problem visible. The manager wouldn't want their manager to hear of any problems in the team. Makes them look bad, and probably lose on bonuses.
Happened to me often enough. What you described I would call a lucky exception.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Configuring editors, dot files, and dev environments consistently adds value by giving you familiarity with your working environment, honing your skills with your tools, and creating a more productive space tailored to your needs. Who else becomes the go to person for modifying build scripts? The amount of people I know who have no idea how to work with Git after decades in the field using it is pretty amazing. It's…
Have you considered that the problem is with Git and not the users?
What about any tool, language, library, or codebase that is unnecessarily complex? Should we never bother to put in the effort to learn to use them? It doesn't mean they are without value to us as programmers. For better or worse, the hallmark of many good programmers I've met is a much higher than average tolerance for sitting down and just figuring out how something computer-related works instead of giving up and routing around it.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
If leadership is that inept, then this is likely only 1 of many problems they are creating for the organization. I would be looking for alternative employment ASAP.
the issue isn't recognizing malign influence within your current organization... it's an issue throughout the entire industry, and I think what we're all afraid of is that it's becoming more inevitable every day, because we're not the ones who have the final say. the luddites essentially failed, after all, because the wider world was not and is not ready for a discussion about quality versus profit.
A poor quality product can only be profitable if no high quality alternative exists (at a similar price point). Every time that's the case, it's an epic opportunity for anybody with the wherewithal to raise some funding and build that high quality alternative themselves. A dysfunctional industry running on AI slop will not be able to keep you from eating their lunch unless they can achieve some sort of regulatory capture, which would be a separate (political) issue.
Regarding your Luddite reference, I think the cost-vs-quality debate was actually the centerpiece of that incident. Would you rather pay $100 for a T-shirt that's only marginally better than one that costs $10? I certainly would not. People are constantly evaluating cost-quality tradeoffs when making purchasing decisions. The exact ratio of the tradeoff matters. There's always a price point at which something starts (or stops) making sense.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard agree, I am 51 and all of this resonates true with me except… > That is NOT the same sort of talent. My fingers are clumsy; my mind is not. if handyman work was paying $600/hr your fingers would un-clums themselves reaaaaaaly fast :)
> if handyman work was paying $600/hr your fingers would un-clums themselves reaaaaaaly fast I don't believe that. When it comes to motoric skills, including dancing etc., I am probably in the lowest quintile of the population. Of course, I could become somewhat better by spending crazy amounts of time on training, but I would still be non-competitive even in comparison with an average person. OTOH I am pretty good a…
Just chiming in to say that in this — my era of AI Anxiety — it’s pretty cool you found something new and interesting to apply your talents to at 40.
It feels like we’re all going to have to have a reinvention or two ahead of us.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This process has been affecting most of the world's workers for the past several centuries. It has also been responsible for predicting revolutions which never failed to materialize. 3D printing would make some kind of manufacturing obsolete, computers would make about half the world's jobs obsolete, etc etc. Hand coding can be the knitting to the loom, or it can be industrialized plastic injection molding to 3D pr…
> Hand coding can be the knitting to the loom, or it can be industrialized plastic injection molding to 3D printing. How do you know? That distinction is not a detail--it's the whole point. One could have made a reasonable remark in the past about how injection molding is dramatically faster than 3D printing (it applies material everywhere, all at once), scales better for large parts, et cetera. This isn't really tru…
The trend of mistaken hype predictions indeed won't stop at software engineering.
How would you formulate this verifiably? Wanna take it to longbets.org?
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#190To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…
In my opinion this is another case where people look at it as a technical problem when it's actually a people problem. If someone does it once, they get a stern message about it. If it happens twice, it gets rejected and sent to their manager. Regardless of how you authored a pull request, you are signing off on it with your name. If it's garbage, then you're responsible.
I largely agree with sibling responses.
BUT...
How do have code review be an educational experience for onboarding/teaching if any bad submission is cut down with due prejudice?
I am happy to work with a junior engineer and is trying, and we have to loop on some silly mistakes, and pick and choose which battles to balance building confidence with developing good skills.
But I am not happy to have a junior engineer throw LLM stuff at me, inspired the confidence that the psycophantic AI engendered in it, and then have to churn on that. And if you're not in the same office, how do you even hope to sift through which bad parts are which kind?