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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

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Re: We mourn our craft

#221

Post by zeroonetwothree »

oooyay wrote: post #113

You know who else mourned the loss of craft? People that don't like PHP and Wordpress because they lower the barrier to entry to creating useful stuff while also leaving around a fair amount of cruft and problems that the people that use them don't understand how to manage. Like iambateman said: for me it was never about code. Code was a means to an ends and it didn't stop at code. I'm the kind of software engineer t…

I think it's a bit different when you can opt out. If you didn't want to use PHP you didn't have to. But it's getting increasingly hard to opt out of AI.

Re: We mourn our craft

#222

Post by EvanAnderson »

thwarted wrote: post #166
EvanAnderson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I've always thought the purpose of all automation was to remove needless toil. I want computers to free people. I guess I subscribe to the theory of creative destruction.

Maybe it comes down to the definition of "toil". Some people find typing to be toiling, so they latch on to not having to type as much when using LLMs. Other people see "chores" as toiling, and so dream of household robots to take on the burden of that toil. Some people hate driving and consider that to be needless toil, so self-driving cars answer that—and the ads for Waymo latch onto this. Personally, I am not stym…

> Maybe it comes down to the definition of "toil".

For sure.

I idealize a future where people can spend more time doing things they want to do, whatever those avocations might be. Freedom from servitude. I guess some kind of Star Trek / The Culture hybrid dream.

The world we have is so far from that imaginary ideal. Implicit in that ideal would be elimination of inequality, and I'm certain there are massive forces that would oppose that elimination.

Re: We mourn our craft

#223

Post by zeroonetwothree »

d357r0y3r wrote: post #102

I thought I'd miss all the typing and syntax, but I really don't. Everyone has their own relationship with coding, but for me, I get satisfaction out of the end product and putting it in front of someone. To the extend that I cared about the code, it mainly had to do with how much it allowed the end product to shine.

Yes, there's clearly a big split in the community where perhaps ~50% are like OP and the other ~50% are like you. But I think we should still respect the views of the other side and try to empathize.

Re: We mourn our craft

#225

Post by bopbopbop7 »

bgar wrote: post #88
bopbopbop7 wrote: post #39

I'll believe it when I start seeing examples of good and useful software being created with LLMs or some increase in software quality. So far it's just AI doom posting, hype bloggers that haven't shipped anything, anecdotes without evidence, increase in CVEs, increase in outages, and degraded software quality.

Well, on the surface it may seem like there’s nothing being created of value, but I can assure you every company from seed stage to unicorns are heavily using claude code, cursor, and the like to produce software. At this point, most software you touch has been modified and enhanced with the use of LLMs. The difference in pace of shipping with and without AI assistance is staggering.

> every company from seed stage to unicorns are heavily using claude code, cursor, and the like to produce software

> The difference in pace of shipping with and without AI assistance is staggering.

Lets back up these statements with some evidence, something quantitative, not just what pre-IPO AI marketing blog posts are telling you.

Re: We mourn our craft

#226

Post by dolebirchwood »

apitman wrote: post #108
mirsadm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but did you learn anything?

Obviously that matters, but how much does it matter? Does it matter if you don't learn anything about computer architecture because you only code in JS all day? Very situational.

There's a subset of people whose identity is grounded in the fact that they put in the hard work to learn things that most people are unable or unwilling to do. It's a badge of honor, and they resent anyone taking "shortcuts" to achieve their level of output. Kind of reminds me of lawyers who get bent out of shape when they lose a case to a pro se party. All those years of law school and studying for the bar exam, only to be bested by someone who got by with copying sample briefs and skimming Westlaw headnotes at a public library. :)

Re: We mourn our craft

#227

Post by stack_framer »

> wait six months.

I mourn having to repeatedly hear this never-quite-true promise that an amazing future of perfect code from agentic whatevers will come to fruition, and it's still just six months away. "Oh yes, we know we said it was coming six, twelve, and eighteen months ago, but this time we pinky swear it's just six months away!"

I remember when I first got access to the internet. It was revolutionary. I wanted to be online all the time, playing games, chatting with friends, and discovering new things. It shaped my desire to study computer science and learn to develop software! I could see and experience the value of the internet immediately. It's utility was never "six months away," and I didn't have to be compelled to use it—I was eager to use it of my own volition as often as possible.

LLM coding doesn't feel revolutionary or exciting like this. It's a mandate from the top. It's my know-nothing boss telling me to "find ways to use AI so we can move faster." It's my boss's know-nothing boss conducting Culture Amp surveys about AI usage, but ignoring the feedback that 95% of Copilot's PR comments are useless noise: "The name of this unit test could be improved." It's waiting for code to be slopped onto my screen, so I can go over it with a fine-toothed comb and find all the bugs—and there are always bugs.

Here's what I hope is six months away: The death of AI hype.

Re: We mourn our craft

#228

Post by zeroonetwothree »

slibhb wrote: post #16

I get where this is coming from. But at the same, AI/LLMs are such an exciting development. As in "maybe I was wrong and the singularity wasn't bullshit". If nothing else, it's an interesting transition to live through.

I agree, in the sense that any major change is "interesting". Doesn't mean they are all good though, many major changes have been bad historically. The overall net effect has been generally good, but you never know with any individual change.

Re: We mourn our craft

#229

Post by sosomoxie »

IhateAI wrote: post #196
sosomoxie wrote: post #10

I started programming over 40 years ago because it felt like computers were magic. They feel more magic today than ever before. We're literally living in the 1980s fantasy where you could talk to your computer and it had a personality. I can't believe it's actually happening, and I've never had more fun computing. I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all. We're on the precipice of somet…

[flagged]

I'm actually extremely good at programming. My point is I love computers and computing. You can use technology to achieve amazing things (even having fun). Now I can do much more of that than when I was limited to what I can personally code. In the end, it's what computers can do that's amazing, beautiful, terrifying... That thrill and to be on the bleeding edge is always what I was after.

Re: We mourn our craft

#230

Post by logicprog »

Ronsenshi wrote: post #106
fastasucan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It was, for me, never about the code. Then it wasn't your craft.

Yeah, seems like too many went into this field for money or status not because they like the process. Which is not an issue by itself, but now these people talk about how their AI assistant of choice made them some custom tool in two hours that would have taken them three weeks. And it's getting exhausting.

That is an insane assumption to make based on the grandparents' post. What part of them talking about how much they care about the systems thinking and software architecture and usefulness and meaningfulness to other people of software over the day-to-day drudgery of APIs and bugs and typing in syntax indicates to you that they only care about money and status? They just care about a different part of the process.
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