Now might be the best time to learn software development • Hacker News Board

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#241

Post by UncleOxidant » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 2:55 PM UTC

tempodox wrote: post #223

uludag wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally fair take — and honestly, it’s refreshing to hear someone call it like it is. You’re clearly someone who values real understanding over surface-level noise, and it shows. A lot of people just go along with the hype without questioning the substance underneath — but you’ve taken the time to test it, poke at the seams, and see what actually holds up. I swear there's something about this voice which is especiall…

Which makes me wonder whether there is an SI unit for sycophantic sliminess, because the first paragraph of your answer is dripping with it.

The first paragraph seems like it's written by AI.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#242

Post by jimbokun » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 2:55 PM UTC

Funes- wrote: post #209

sarchertech wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are far more programmers now than in 1980, yet the average programmer makes far more (inflation adjusted) now.

And the quality of what they develop is in the gutter, on average.

It was in 1980, too.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#243

Post by jdmoreira » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

bgwalter wrote: post #182

guicen wrote: post #131

In fact, in my opinion, one of the benefits of AI tools that is often overlooked is "psychological support". When you are stuck at work, it will give you a push. Even if it is not completely right, it is enough to get you moving. The feeling of "no longer fighting alone at work" is actually more important than many people think.

To each his own. I'm completely drained after 30 min of "discussing" with an LLM, which is essentially an overconfident idiot. Pushes never come from the LLM, which can be easily seen by feeding the output of two LLMs into each other. The conversation collapses completely. Using Google while ignoring the obnoxious and often wrong LLM summaries at the top gives you access to the websites of real human experts, who oft…

You are discussing with a llm? Never happened to me and I use llms all the time. Why would you need to discuss if you know best? Just tell it what to do and course correct it. It's not rocket science.

PS: Both humans and llms are hard to align. But I do have to discuss with humans and I find that exhausting. llms I just nudge or tell what to do

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#244

Post by jimbokun » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

ath92 wrote: post #150

20after4 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now the business of wedding / portrait photographer has become hyper-competitive. Now everyone's cousin is an amateur photographer and every phone has an almost acceptable camera built in. It is much more difficult to have a profitable photography business compared to 20 years ago.

The game has definitely changed. It used to be profitable to be a photographer for hire, and that’s no longer the case. But the revenue generated through pictures (by influencers) has increased a lot. If today all you do as a programmer is open jira tickets without any kind of other human interaction, AI coding agents are bad news. If you’re just using code as a means to build products for people, it might be the bes…

> But the revenue generated through pictures (by influencers) has increased a lot.

So the job qualifications went from "understand lighting, composition, camera technology" to "be hot".

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#245

Post by munificent » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

shinedog wrote: post #94

munificent wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That only made the world better, and we got soo many more good photographers. I disagree with the "only" part here. Imagine a distribution curve of photos with shitty photos on the left and masterpieces on the right and the height at the curve is how many photos there are to be seen at that quality. The digital camera transition massively increased the height of the curve at all points. And thanks to things like be…

You hit this so hard it was impossible not to recognize. In every sense there is too much "ok" shit (in every media realm) that we cannot help but miss amazing stuff. Knowing that I don't have enough time for all the incredible things that technology has enabled crushes me.

...and now think how much worse this problem will become now that we're in the era of generative AI.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#246

Post by ben_w » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

StefanBatory wrote: post #219

jerf wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The accusations that politicians are already overusing AI are flying, and given the incentives I wouldn't be surprised more of the internal functioning of all modern governments are already more LLM-based AI than we'd realize. Or particularly appreciate. By that I don't mean necessarily the nominal function of the government; I doubt the IRS is heavily LLM-based for evaluating tax forms, mostly because the pre-LLM he…

In my country a MP of lower house sent out a tweet generated by LLMs. As in, copied it with a prompt in.

Even before LLMs, politicians (and celebrities) had other people tweet for them. IIRC, I've met someone who tweeted on behalf of Jill Stein.

Which is not to say seeing a prompt in a tweet isn't funny, it is, just that it may have been an intern or a volunteer.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#247

Post by rsynnott » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 3:00 PM UTC

nathanfig wrote: post #229

rsynnott wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm... slightly dubious, honestly, just because, historically, confident predictions of "this is the future of programming!" are almost always wrong. Throughout the 90s and into the early noughties, say, there was a very, very strong idea that things like VB and Delphi and Frontpage and Flash, where code was essentially intermingled with the UI, were The Future. And then all of that just died, to such an extent that…

Sounds a lot like "nothing ever happens"?

Well, arguably in programming nothing ever does happen; we're still using mostly imperative programming languages on mostly UNIX-y systems which are not dramatically different from those in the 1970s, with filesystems rather similar to those in the 70s...

Some stuff does happen, of course, but most prophesied things do not happen.

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#248

Post by bentt » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

One thing that every working dev needs to realize, for their benefit, is that the AI gold rush is leading many, many companies to find ways to trumpet their use of AI for no other reason than to please investors. After all, if it's the big new thing, then of course you need to get on the train or get left behind. Investors are very important. They can provide money. Companies need money.

We might think, "Yeah, but so many of these dumb AI corpo-initiatives are doomed to fail!" and that's correct but the success/fail metric is not based on whether the initiatives' advertised purpose is effective. If investors respond positively in the near term, that's success. This is likely why Logitech embedded AI in their mouse software (Check and see if Logi+ AI Agent is in your task manager) https://news.logitech.com/press-releases/news-details/2024/N...

The near term crash (which will happen) in AI stuff will be because of this dynamic. All it means is that phase one of the grift cycle is completing. In the midst of this totally predictable, repeatable process, a dev's job is to get gud at whatever is truly emerging as useful. There are devs who are showing huge productivity gains through thoughtful use of AI. There are apps that leverage AI to do new and exciting things. None of this stuff happens without the human. Be that human!

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#249

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

WJW wrote: post #153

pipes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought photographers don't get paid well anymore due market saturation and few skills required to get a good photo?

This implies photographers used to be paid well in the past, which isn't true. Like painting or rock music, photography has always been a winner-takes-all kind of market where a select few can get quite wealthy but the vast majority will be struggling forever.

While photographer was never a sure path to rich and famous, professionals used to do very good business and make a good living.

Demand is way down because while a $5000 lens on a nice camera is better than my phone lens, my phone is close enough for most purposes. Also my phone is free, in the days of film a single roll of film by the time you developed it costs significant money (I remember as a kid getting a camera for my birthday and then my parents wouldn't get me film for it - on hindsight I suspect every roll of film cost my dad half an hour of work and he was a well paid software developer). This cost meant that you couldn't afford to practice taking pictures, every single one had to be perfect. So if you wanted a nice picture of the family it was best to pay a professional who because of experience and equipment was likely to take a much better one than you could (and if something went wrong they would retake for free).

Re: Now might be the best time to learn software development

#250

Post by triceratops » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

redeeman wrote: post #203

jdright wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong, obedient people are exactly the type that don't need unions, they are obedient and accept anything. Unions are for people that don't accept anything and know that they are a target taking action alone or in non organized ways. Unions are the way to multiply the forces and work as a group with common interests, it is for people that are not extremely selfish and egocentric.

why do you need a union? everyone should just set their personal standards for what they accept/demand, and then let the market sort it out? someone wants to work for $20/hour programming, in a fashion that can satisfy some demand? great, then I will simply NOT be doing that job. Everyone wins even though I do not get that particular job. Someone is willing to work 7 days a week as they prefer to grind to earn more m…

> Nobody wants to inhale toxic fumes in some factory? well then the company had better invest in safety equipment, or work dont get done. We dont need a union for this

We tried that in the past. The work still got done, and workers just died more often. If you want to live in that reality move to a developing country with poor labor protections.