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We mourn our craft

nolanlawson.com

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Re: We mourn our craft

#281

Post by zeroonetwothree »

nojito wrote: post #121
wesammikhail wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. If you find the agentic workflow to be more fun, more power to you. I for one think writing code is the rewarding part. You get to think through a problem and figure out why decision A is better than B. Learning about various domains and solving difficult problems is in itself a reward.

>You get to think through a problem and figure out why decision A is better than B. Learning about various domains and solving difficult problems is in itself a reward. So just tell the LLM about what you're thinking about. Why do you need to type out a for loop for the millionth time?

(a) it's relaxing and pleasing to do something like typing out a for loop. The repetition with minor variation stimulates our brains just the right amount. Same reason why people like activities like gardening, cooking, working on cars, Legos, and so on. (b) it allows you to have some time to think about what you're doing. The "easy" part of coding gives you a bit of breathing room to plan out the next "hard" section.

Re: We mourn our craft

#282

Post by Alex-Programs »

stack_framer wrote: post #227

> 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 wante…

The state of the art is moving so rapidly that, yeah, Copilot by Microsoft using gpt-5-mini:low is not going to be very good. And there are many places where AI has been implemented poorly, generally by people who have the distribution to force it upon many people. There are also plenty of people who use vibe coding tools and produce utterly atrocious codebases. That doesn't preclude the existence of effective AI tools, and people who are good at using them.

Re: We mourn our craft

#283

Post by marcosdumay »

rtkakh wrote: post #58

> They can write code better than you or I can, and if you don’t believe me, wait six months. No they cannot, And an AI bro squeezing every talking point into a think piece while pretending to have empathy doesn't change that. You just want an exit, and you want it fast.

Also:

> and if you don’t believe me, wait six months

This reads as a joke nowadays.

Re: We mourn our craft

#284

Post by zeroonetwothree »

codazoda wrote: post #118
dismalaf wrote: post #70

Dunno, LLMs writing code still feels like they memorized a bunch of open source code and vomited them out in worse condition. It's not that impressive that Claude wrote a C compiler when GitHub has the code to a bunch of C compilers (some SOTA) just sitting there. I'm using an LLM to write a compiler in my spare time (for fun) for a "new" language. It feels more like a magical search engine than coding assistant. It'…

That is my experience from a year ago but I no longer feel that way. I write a few instructions, guide an agent to create a plan, and rarely touch the code myself. If I don’t like something, I ask the agent to fix it.

Agree, there was a huge step change with Claude Code + Opus 4.5 (maybe 4.6 is even better?). Anyone dealing with earlier models as their basis should probably try the newest stuff and see if it changes their minds.

Re: We mourn our craft

#285

Post by ori_b »

iambateman wrote: post #9

I do not mourn. For my whole life I’ve been trying to make things—beautiful elegant things. When I was a child, I found a cracked version of Photoshop and made images which seemed like magic. When I was in college, I learned to make websites through careful, painstaking effort. When I was a young professional, I used those skills and others to make websites for hospitals and summer camps and conferences. Then I learn…

> For my whole life I’ve been trying to make things—beautiful elegant things.

Why did you stop? Because, you realize, LLMs are giving up the process of creating for the immediacy of having. It's paying someone to make for you.

Things are more convenient if you live the dream of the LLM, and hire a taskrabbit to run your wood shop. But it's not you that's making.

Re: We mourn our craft

#286

Post by blibble »

localghost3000 wrote: post #49

This perspective was mine 6 months ago. And god damn, I do miss the feeling of crafting something truly beautiful in code sometimes. But then, as I've been pushed into this new world we're living in, I've come to realize a couple things: Nothing I've ever built has lasted more than a few years. Either the company went under, or I left and someone else showed up and rewrote it to suit their ideals. Most of us are doin…

> Nothing I've ever built has lasted more than a few years.

maybe this say something more about your career decisions than anything else?

Re: We mourn our craft

#287

Post by blargthorwars »

eranation wrote: post #143
iambateman wrote: post #9

I do not mourn. For my whole life I’ve been trying to make things—beautiful elegant things. When I was a child, I found a cracked version of Photoshop and made images which seemed like magic. When I was in college, I learned to make websites through careful, painstaking effort. When I was a young professional, I used those skills and others to make websites for hospitals and summer camps and conferences. Then I learn…

I like coding, I really do. But like you, I like building things more than I like the way I build them. I do not find myself miss writing code by hand as much. I do find it that the developers that focused on "build the right things" mourn less than those who focused on "build things right". But I do worry. The main question is this - will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have…

Computers are better at chess. Humans invented chess and enjoy it.

I think humans have the advantage.

Re: We mourn our craft

#288

Post by kaffekaka »

croes wrote: post #103
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…

> We're on the precipice of something incredible. Total dependence on a service?

Yes this is the issue. We truly have something incredible now. Something that could benefit all of humanity. Unfortunately it comes at $200/month from Sam Altman & co.

Re: We mourn our craft

#289

Post by zeroonetwothree »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #35

This just in: people who expect things to stay the same should steer clear of careers in technology. Art, too, come to think of it.

C came out in ~1972. Some people have been coding in C the entire time since then. There's no inherent reason that software hasn't stayed the same for a long time :).

Re: We mourn our craft

#290

Post by ori_b »

stevejb wrote: post #110
fastasucan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't this like saying that if better woodworking tools come out, and you like woodworking, that woodworking somehow 'isn't your craft'. They said that their craft is about making things. There are woodworkers on YouTube who use CNC, some who use the best Festool stuff but nothing that moves on its own, and some who only use handtools. Where is the line at which woodworking is not their craft?

The analogy you're making is that wiring a taskrabbit to assemble Ikea furniture is woodworking.

There's a market for Ikea. It's put woodworkers out of business, effectively. The only woodworkers that make reasonable wages from their craft are influencers. Their money comes from YouTube ads.

There's no shame in just wanting things without going to the effort of making them.

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