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The Programmer Identity Crisis

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Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#271

Post by dmurvihill »

crazygringo wrote: post #178
Etheryte wrote: post #89

Earlier 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.

This a million times. If you do this three times, that's grounds for firing. You're literally not doing your job and lying that you are. It's bizarre to me that people want to blame LLMs instead of the employees themselves. (With open source projects and slop pull requests, it's another story of course.)

Maybe that’s true of each individual case, but we still have the systemic problem of the way these AI tools interact with human psychology. It tends to turn off the user’s brain, even people who know better.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#272

Post by brailsafe »

strix_varius wrote: post #57

To 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…

I think this is why I've been feeling less productive overall lately. Partly due to the fact that more code is expected to be produced more quickly, and partly because using an agent or something puts me into the wrong frame of mind where I don't really have the full context of what I've written and why, and the amount of quality work I can produce is necessarily qualified by how much I can reliably review, line-by-line, over whatever period of time.

I've been using them more conservatively, slowing down, and manually writing things more. It's easier when I'm just replicating logic over a bunch of different well-defined properties of a clear type definition or spec, but even then results are a bit questionable sometimes.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#273

Post by latchup »

bloppe wrote: post #187
GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cap…

Unfortunately, your reasoning has an enormous hole in it. A huge part of a product's quality is how it fares over time, i.e. how many years it lasts and how much it costs to maintain. Sadly, this either takes time or a realistic assessment to determine, both of which cannot part of a market bubble.

The 10$ shirt becomes a much shittier proposal once, in addition to its worse looks, fit, and comfort, you factor in its significantly lower durability and lifespan. That's why the 100$ shirt still exists after all. Nevermind that the example is a bad one to begin with because low-price commodities like T-shirts are never worth fixing when they break, but code with a paid maintainer clearly is.

In an market bubble like the one we find ourselves in, longevity is simply not relevant because the financial opportunity lies precisely in getting off in the train right before it crashes. For investors and managers, that is. Developers may be allowed to change cars, but they are stuck the train.

It's sad how some of the doomed are so desperate to avoid their fate that they fall prey to promises they know to be bullshit. The argument for Wish and TEMU products is exactly the same, yet we can all see it for what it is in those cases: a particularly short-lived lie.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#274

Post by 0x457 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #150
0x457 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like how devoid of curiosity do you have to be to do something half your waking life that you don't appreciate if you're very likely someone who has the freedom to choose? Do you understand work-life balance? I get paid to do the job, I satisfy my curiosities in my free-time. > 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? Beca…

>Because I doubt finding a well paying job that you love is something that is achievable in our society, Which is why I stressed twice, including in the part you chose to quote, that I am talking about people who can achieve that. If you have to take care of your sick grandmother, you don't need to feel addressed. But if you did have the resources to choose a career, like many people who comment here, and you ended u…

> If you have to take care of your sick grandmother, you don't need to feel addressed.

That's not what am I saying at all. Unless you have Stockholm syndrome about your job, it's very hard to find a well paying job that you can love.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#275

Post by soco »

latchup wrote: post #273
bloppe wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cap…

Unfortunately, your reasoning has an enormous hole in it. A huge part of a product's quality is how it fares over time, i.e. how many years it lasts and how much it costs to maintain. Sadly, this either takes time or a realistic assessment to determine, both of which cannot part of a market bubble. The 10$ shirt becomes a much shittier proposal once, in addition to its worse looks, fit, and comfort, you factor in its…

Just addressing the comparison: a t-shirt can be changed for the cost of the new t-shirt. A software product costs not only the new one (being AI, very cheap) but also the cost of integrating it with processes and people - and this can kill you.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#276

Post by marssaxman »

spicymaki wrote: post #242

I feel that for long time people coming into the industry did not really care about code as a craft, but more of code as easy money. This was first salient to me when I saw posts about opensource developers who make critical infrastructure living hand to mouth. Then the day in the life of a software engineer working in a coffee shop. Then the bootcamps or just learn to code movement. Then the leetcode grinders. Then…

> Now the bosses are like automate your way out of a job or you will lose your job.

That is and always has been part of the job. Automating away labor is what we do, and there's no form of labor we understand better or have more opportunity to automate than our own.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#277

Post by pklausler »

tyleo wrote: post #131
Etheryte wrote: post #89

Earlier 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.

> We’re ultimately here to make money, not just pump out characters into text files.

Different projects have other incentives. Dealing with AI slop from internet randos is a very real problem in open-source codebases. I've pretty much just stopped reviewing code from people that I don't know on one project that I work on when it's obviously going to take way more time than it would have done to do the patch myself. There used to be an incentive to help educate new contributors, of course, but now I can't know whether that is even happening.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#278

Post by Izkata »

isaacremuant wrote: post #145
aeblyve wrote: post #115

This process has been affecting most of the world's workers for the past several centuries. Programming has received a special treatment for the last few decades, and it's understandable that HN users would jump to protect their life investment, but it need not. Hand-coding can continue, just like knitting co-exists with machine looms, but it need not ultimately maintain a grip on the software productive process. It…

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…

> How much you rely on an LLM won't necessarily change the quality or speed of what you produce.

I wouldn't say that, everything I've seen at work indicates the quality will change downwards.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#279

Post by isaacremuant »

bdangubic wrote: post #152
isaacremuant wrote: post #145

Earlier 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…

It's very hard for me to answer this without being insulting:

- You have been in very bad environments if you think the way you think.

- Coding/typing is and wasn't the bottleneck. You're not fit to give advice to people on their careers if you think it is. Years of doing the wrong thing doesn't mean you're good.

- Your entire attitude screams "I'm a big seniority fish in a mediocre pond" but it breaks down when you can't put specificity behind your words.

- The last paragraph is just the cherry on top. I'm curious on the specifics actions happening in those terminals and how it relates to the quality and speed point. Why even 6 terminals and not some coordinator tool for what I presume are your "agents"?

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#280

Post by game_the0ry »

I am sad about losing "the craft" but fwiw I think there will still be creative to work to be done at the edge of what we know and do as programmers. LLMs only synthesize what's known (the training data) and I think there will still be space for human creativity. At least for now.
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