191–200 of 404 posts
I think I'm in the middle, at first I was definitely against using any AI because I loved the craft. But over the past 12-18 months I've been using it more and more. I still love to code just by hand for an fun afternoon. But in the long-term, I think you are going to be left behind if you refuse to use AI at all.
Author doesn't care about their blog writing as craft, either (it's been fed through an LLM.)
Sure, I ran the post past an LLM for some ideas on clarity and tightening it up - but I wrote, edited, and published it myself.
Some examples.
> I've felt the grief too—but mine resolved differently than I expected, and I think that says something about what kind of developer I've been all along.
> I kept having this nagging sense that we were mourning different things.
> Here's what I notice about my grief: none of it is about missing the act of writing code. It's about the world around the code changing.
> If you're mourning the context—the changing web, the shifting career landscape, the uncertainty—that's real too, but it's more actionable.
It uses these kinds of patterns over and over that it becomes obvious Just go on LinkedIn.
"It's not X, its Y"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need AI for this, we've had search engines and good online resources for decades
Current AI is much, much better than current search engines (which themselves seem worse than they were decades ago, for some reason).
Commerce camp understands tradeoffs needed in a competitive environment. Cutting corners where possible, not being dogmatic about unit tests and clean code an so on.
If you notice - the craft people rarely think about commerce because coding is an artistic expression.
I think the article misunderstands completely. "Craft" coders are chasing results too — we're just chasing results that last and that can be built upon. I've been in this game for a while, and a major goal of every single good programmer I've known has been to make themselves obsolete. Yes, I enjoyed meticulous hand crafted assembly, counting cycles and packing bits, but nobody had to talk me into using compilers. Ye…
You are repeating the same thing. You think having good maintainable good is important - more than the first camp. That does not mean you are correct. This mindset is useful only in serious reusable libraries and open source tools. Most enterprise code involves lots of exploring and fast iteration. Code quality doesn’t matter that much. No one else is going to see it. When the craft coders bring their ideology to thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are repeating the same thing. You think having good maintainable good is important - more than the first camp. That does not mean you are correct. This mindset is useful only in serious reusable libraries and open source tools. Most enterprise code involves lots of exploring and fast iteration. Code quality doesn’t matter that much. No one else is going to see it. When the craft coders bring their ideology to thi…
I think your target is the wrong target myself. Now what?
There’s a similar divide in the woodworking community between people that use CNC and the like to mill and shape wood vs those that use hand and power tools.
People want to keep doing what they enjoy as their fulltime profession, making a (good) living out of it. Perfectly understandable. But neither AI, powertools or image generation is preventing someone from doing craft coding, hand woodworking or drawing/painting in their spare time and enjoying it.
I love drawing but since it went out of business as a viable career long before I was born I have never felt the grief of losing it. With craft coding we happen to exist at the point in time where it suddenly gets significantly de-crafted.
I think I'm in the middle, at first I was definitely against using any AI because I loved the craft. But over the past 12-18 months I've been using it more and more. I still love to code just by hand for an fun afternoon. But in the long-term, I think you are going to be left behind if you refuse to use AI at all.
"Left behind" in terms of speed or are there other aspects that people are missing out on?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the real divide is over quality and standards. We all have different thresholds for what is acceptable, and our roles as engineers typically reflect that preference. I can grind on a single piece of code for hours, iterating over and over until I like the way it works, the parameter names, etc. Other people do not see the value in that whatsoever, and something that works is good enough. We both are valuable…
> I think the real divide is over quality and standards. I think there are multiple dimensions that people fall on regarding the issue and it's leading to a divide based on where everyone falls on those dimensions. Quality and standards are probably in there but I think risk-tolerance/aversion could be behind some how you look at quality and standards. If you're high on risk-taking, you might be more likely to forego…
I'm just not buying this framing. At all. I'm not sure what it is I'm supposed to be mourning. I'm using my skills and continuing in my craft the way I have for several decades and the way I will continue to for several more. I eschew the LLMs not because they are threatening to me, but because they are unsound products built & promoted by people who are fundamentally sociopathic. If I am to mourn, I can mourn the un…