It really is a higher level language for coding though. Not as precise as Fortran but far more upside. I imagine monks bemoaning the printing press that took away the joy of their perfectly handwritten bibles they made in solitude
The Programmer Identity Crisis
201–210 of 317 posts
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
We all owe every part of everything to those who’ve come before us. That goes without saying, really. > Secondly, you are very blind if you don’t see that the AI making your job “easier” is close to replacing you entirely, if you don’t also have a deep understanding of the code produced. Brother don’t patronize me. I’m a senior engineer I’m not yeeting vibe code I don’t understand into prod. I also understand the pos…
It’s simpler than that. It’s more of a funeral, collective expression of grievance of a great, painful loss. An obituary for a glorious, short time in history where it was possible to combine a specific kind of intelligence, creativity, discipline, passion and values and be well compensated for it. A time when the ability to solve problems and solve them well had value. Not just being better at taking credit than oth…
It’s not about not caring. It’s about accepting reality.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#203> One could only wonder why they became a programmer in the first place, given their seeming disinterest in coding. To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself. > careful configuration of our editor, tinkering with dot files, and dev environments That may be fun for you, but it doesn’t add value. It’s accidental complexity that I am happy to delegate.
I think the author makes a decent point with regards to 'problem solving' and better tools and how LLM's somehow feel different. Fortran is a better tool, but you can still reproducibly trace things back to assembly code through the compiler.
LLM's feel like a non-deterministic compiler that transforms English into code of some sort.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#204> LLMs seem like a nuke-it-from-orbit solution to the complexities of software. Rather than addressing the actual problems, we reached for something far more complex and nebulous to cure the symptoms.
The author overlooks a core motivation of AI here: to centralize the high-skill high-cost “creative” workers into just the companies that design AIs, so that every other business in the world can fire their creative workers and go back to having industrial cogs that do what they’re told instead of coming up with ‘improvements’ that impact profits. It’s not that the companies are reaching for something complex and nebulous. It’s that companies are being told “AI lets you eject your complex and nebulous creative workers”, which is a vast reduction in nearly everyone’s business complexity. Put in the terms of a classic story, “The Wizard of Oz”, no one bothers to look behind the curtain because everything is easier for them — and if there’s one constant across both people and corporations, it’s the willingness to disregard long-term concerns for short-term improvements so long as someone else has to pay the tradeoff.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bit harsh off a single post. I like solving problems, not just software engineering problems and I like writing code as a hobby, but I went to this job field only due to high salary and benefits. In fact, I usually hate writing code at day job because it is boring things 20 out of 26 sprints.
>A bit harsh off a single post. I don't think it is. Labeling passion and love for your work "tech fetishism", is spiritually bankrupt. Mind you we're in general here not talking about people working in a mine to survive, which is a different story. But people who do have a choice in their career, doing something they have no love for solely to add more zeros to their bank account? That is the fetish , that is someon…
It definitely is. You are taking it way too far with your criticisms.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#206> One could only wonder why they became a programmer in the first place, given their seeming disinterest in coding. To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself. > careful configuration of our editor, tinkering with dot files, and dev environments That may be fun for you, but it doesn’t add value. It’s accidental complexity that I am happy to delegate.
> coding is the means to an end ... > doesn't add value What about intrinsic value? So many programmers on HN seem to just want to be MBAs in their heart of hearts
Some of you have never been laid off and it shows.
Intrinsic value is great, where achievable. Companies do not care at all about intrinsic value. I take pride in my work and my craft to the extent I am allowed to, but the reality is that those of us who can’t adapt to the businesses desires will be made obsolete and cut loose, regardless of whatever values we hold.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 agree and I’m surprised more people don’t get this. Bad behaviors aren’t suddenly okay because AI makes them easy. If you are wasting time you may be value negative to a business. If you are value negative over the long run you should be let go. We’re ultimately here to make money, not just pump out characters into text files.
How do you know the net value add isn’t greater with the AI, even if it requires more code review comments (and angrier coworkers)?
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#208To 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.
Yeah it doesn’t really seem different from people copy/pasting from stack overflow without reading through it. This isn’t really a new thing, though I guess nobody was really acting like SO was the second coming so it’s probably happening more now.
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
A closer analogy would be a chef who chooses to have a robot cut his tomatoes. If the robot did it perfect every time I'm sure he would use the robot. If the robot mushed the tomatoes some of the time, would he spend time carefully inspecting the tomatoes? or would he just cut them himself?
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…
I genuinely don't think it's hard to compete. I use AI sometimes, I don't use it more than I use it. I find myself at least just-as-productive as people who primarily use AI.
I personally tire of people acting like it's some saving grace that doubles/triples/100x your productivity and not a tool that may give you 10-20% uplift just like any other tool
Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is so funny to me. Hand-coding is no longer "the future"? Did an AI write your post or did you "hand write it"? Code needs to be simple and maintainable and do what it needs to do. Auto complete wasn't a huge time saver because writing code wasn't the bottleneck then and it definitely is not the bottleneck now. How much you rely on an LLM won't necessarily change the quality or speed of what you produce. Special…
> Code needs to be simple and maintainable and do what it needs to do. And yet after 3 decades in the industry I can tell you this fantasy exists only on snarky HN comments. > Hand-coding is no longer "the future"? hand-coding is 100% not the future, there are teams already that absolutely do not hand-code anything anymore (I help with one of them that used to have 19 "hand-coders" :) ). The typing for sure will get…
I think you’re doing something wrong if your throughput gets too high. Llms will go hog wild adding hundreds of Loc for features that could take tens. You have to maintain that shit later