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We're all CTO now

jamie.ideasasylum.com

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Re: We're all CTO now

#31

Post by bqmjjx0kac »

dgfitz wrote: post #22
noitpmeder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not true. Think of all the studying that is required before applying to tech jobs these days. Sure someone won't fire you because you can't balance a binary tree by hand, but it certainly might exclude you from getting that next job, regardless of if it applies to their day to day workloads. If people stop manually coding their ability to do so WILL atrophy. Take away the coding agents and you'll s…

> Think of all the studying that is required before applying to tech jobs these days. Surely you realize this is the problem. I just landed a mid 6-figures job _without_ grinding leetcode. They’re out there. This game everyone plays is an abomination.

Surely you don't believe that there's a significant fraction of tech jobs that pay $500k?

Re: We're all CTO now

#32

Post by csomar »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #18
artursapek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agents are definitely more useful than Google and SO… have you tried pair programming with Claude 4 Opus and building something? It’s amazing.

I have, and it does a mediocre to poor job, even at trivial tasks using popular stacks and languages. IME, one most either start with a green field, or babysit every step with/as an expert, or both. Perhaps I've just been unlucky or my projects have too much debt.

You need to start with a green field as the LLM makes lots of assumptions about your code base, based on what it learned before. Doing it green field means less resistance from the LLM.

I think, based on that, Rust will be the most popular and powerful language by next year. Of course, I might be completely wrong.

Re: We're all CTO now

#33

Post by dgfitz »

hobs wrote: post #29
dgfitz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think of all the studying that is required before applying to tech jobs these days. Surely you realize this is the problem. I just landed a mid 6-figures job _without_ grinding leetcode. They’re out there. This game everyone plays is an abomination.

Right, but are you going to fix it by yourself? No. Is the point correct that most people wont remember half of the arcane rituals we're expected to perform on command only in an interview or in very specific parts of the job? Yes. Can we relearn it? Sure. Will skills atrophy if unused? Definitely, balancing a binary tree is not like riding a bike.

Remembering how to balance a binary tree is a complete waste of brainpower. We have lots of papers, books, and reference material that can show us this.

The arcane rituals of jumping though leetcode hoops reminds me of pledging a fraternity.

Re: We're all CTO now

#34

Post by StopVibeCoding »

mrbluecoat wrote: post #25
StopVibeCoding wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tested this. I have been coding for close to 20 years, in anything from web to embedded. I got tired of hearing about vibe coding day in and day out, so I gave in, and I tried everything under the sun. For the first few days, I started to see the hype. I was much faster at coding, I thought, I can just type this small prompt to the LLM and it will do what I wanted, much faster than I could have. It worked! I d…

Clearly this affected you deeply enough to create a new HN crusade account. Genuinely curious questions: Did you share this experience with management and your peers? What was their response? What steps could realistically reverse the momentum of vibe coding?

> Did you share this experience with management and your peers? What was their response?

Among my peers, there seemed to be a correlation between programming experience and agreement with my personal experience. I showed a particular colleague a part of the code and he genuinely asked me which one of the new hires wrote this.

As for management, well, let's just say that it's going to be an uphill battle :)

> What steps could realistically reverse the momentum of vibe coding?

For me and my team it's simple, we just won't be using those tools, and will keep being very strict with new hires to do the same.

For the software industry as a whole, I don't know. I think it's at least partially a lost cause. Just as the discussions about performance, and in general caring about our craft are.

Re: We're all CTO now

#35

Post by skydhash »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #20
skydhash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learn new languages mostly for hirability or to explore new and fun concepts. After the realization that my job is solving problem and not using shiny tech, most of my reading has switched to what problems people are facing and possible solutions. And that usually involves a mix of theory (to understand) and best practices (as shortcuts). There’s one optimization path that people seems to barely explore (other than…

Sounds rewarding, any particular resource you would recommend that you've enjoyed?

Here is my current reading list (in CSV Format).

https://pastebin.com/BXwTjY54

As for the second part. Learn vim, emacs, kakoune, or try to be fluent in your current editor. The reason I put Vim and Emacs on top of the list is that they have powerful primitives for coding and they're not notepad patched with external tools.

Re: We're all CTO now

#36

Post by StopVibeCoding »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #19
StopVibeCoding wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tested this. I have been coding for close to 20 years, in anything from web to embedded. I got tired of hearing about vibe coding day in and day out, so I gave in, and I tried everything under the sun. For the first few days, I started to see the hype. I was much faster at coding, I thought, I can just type this small prompt to the LLM and it will do what I wanted, much faster than I could have. It worked! I d…

AI writes code according to the instructions given. You can instruct it to architect and organize the code any way you want. You got the fruit of your inarticulation.

This is what I heard from many people online.

I have tried beign specific, I have even gone as far as to feed its prompt with a full requirement document for a feature (1000+ words), and it did not seem to make any significant difference.

Re: We're all CTO now

#37

Post by raincole »

dgfitz wrote: post #22
noitpmeder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not true. Think of all the studying that is required before applying to tech jobs these days. Sure someone won't fire you because you can't balance a binary tree by hand, but it certainly might exclude you from getting that next job, regardless of if it applies to their day to day workloads. If people stop manually coding their ability to do so WILL atrophy. Take away the coding agents and you'll s…

> Think of all the studying that is required before applying to tech jobs these days. Surely you realize this is the problem. I just landed a mid 6-figures job _without_ grinding leetcode. They’re out there. This game everyone plays is an abomination.

Surely you realize that "balancing binary tree" is just an example and the topic is not about recruitment process.

Re: We're all CTO now

#38

Post by bilekas »

noitpmeder wrote: post #13
hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #6

>And with those new skills, your old skills will start to atrophy. Skills don't work like muscles, please stop with this thinking model of the world. No one is going to fire you because you don't have the same speed of recall of language constructs and have to look more things up. Speed of coding is not the damn bottleneck. Plus have a little faith in your brain that you could get back to that point if you wanted to.

This is absolutely not true. Think of all the studying that is required before applying to tech jobs these days. Sure someone won't fire you because you can't balance a binary tree by hand, but it certainly might exclude you from getting that next job, regardless of if it applies to their day to day workloads. If people stop manually coding their ability to do so WILL atrophy. Take away the coding agents and you'll s…

> but it certainly might exclude you from getting that next job, regardless of if it applies to their day to day workloads

As others have mentioned this is the problem. Not being able to pull up a binary tree the most efficient way on the spot should not be the criteria to identify a good developer.

Re: We're all CTO now

#40

Post by paulddraper »

hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #6

>And with those new skills, your old skills will start to atrophy. Skills don't work like muscles, please stop with this thinking model of the world. No one is going to fire you because you don't have the same speed of recall of language constructs and have to look more things up. Speed of coding is not the damn bottleneck. Plus have a little faith in your brain that you could get back to that point if you wanted to.

Skills 100% atrophy.
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