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I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

jamesdrandall.com

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Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#301

Post by lelanthran »

shafoshaf wrote: post #135
alexgarden wrote: post #48

Wow... I really relate to this. I'm 50 as well, and I started coding in 1985 when I was 10... I remember literally every evolutionary leap forward and my experience with this change has been a bit different. Steve Yegge recently did an interview on vibe coding ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJyJP517Uw ) where he says, "arch mage engineers who fell out-of-love with the modern complexity of shipping meaningful code…

[55yo] My sense is that those problems we worked on in the 80s and 90s were like the perfectly balanced MMORPG. The challenges were tough, but with grit, could be overcome and you felt like you could build something amazing and unique. My voxel moment was passing parameters in my compilers class in college. I sat down to do it and about 12 hours later I got it working, not knowing if I could even do it. With AI, it i…

> With AI, it is like coding is on GOD mode and sure I can bang out anything I want, but so can anyone else and it just doesn't feel like an accomplishment.

That's the thing - prompting is lower-skill work than actually writing code.

Now that actually writing code has less value than prompting, and prompting is lower skill than writing code, in what world do you think that the pay will remain the same?

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#302

Post by alexgarden »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #295
alexgarden wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks... It was magical at the time... I've thought a lot about why it was magical over the years... I think if you boil away all the space stuff, Homeworld was a story about people who knew in their hearts that they were special and destined for something greater than the universe was willing to allow. And they went through hell to discover that they were right. Looking back, I think that's a story a lot of us on t…

Sounds like there's some overlap with the story of the Jewish people, now that I think of it. > Here we are. Looks like the dorks won. I doubt it's permanent, and we all gotta eat. But you know what? My son still tells me how much he was in awe of that game when he saw me playing it. No matter what happens next, you gave us that sweet memory of fun and time together. Thank you.

  > No matter what happens next, you gave us that sweet memory of fun and time together. Thank you.
^^ Made my day. Tell your son he's rad.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#304

Post by jablongo »

samiv wrote: post #138
alexgarden wrote: post #48

Wow... I really relate to this. I'm 50 as well, and I started coding in 1985 when I was 10... I remember literally every evolutionary leap forward and my experience with this change has been a bit different. Steve Yegge recently did an interview on vibe coding ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJyJP517Uw ) where he says, "arch mage engineers who fell out-of-love with the modern complexity of shipping meaningful code…

I just told my gardener to cut the grass and work on some flower installations. I'm so excited about gardening again. Can't wait to do some. Employing a gardener to do my gardening for me is really making me enjoy gardening again!

I'm so excited about landscape architecture now that I can tell my gardener to create an equivalent to the gardens at versailles for $5. Sometimes he plants the wrong kind of plant or makes a dead end path, but he fixes his work very quickly.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#305

Post by chasd00 »

moffkalast wrote: post #275
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. I have always loved the act of intentionally typing (converting my thoughts into structured text).

I guess some people enjoy the process, but you can still do that. It's like with machinists and 3D printers, you can always spend 10 hours on the lathe to make something but most of the time it's more practical to just get the part so one can get on with what actually needs doing.

> It's like with machinists and 3D printers

that's a good analogy, maybe change 3d printers to CNC. I think there's a group of people that derive joy and satisfaction from using the part they designed and there's another that gets satisfaction from producing the part as designed. Same for software, some people are thrilled because they can get the software they imagine while others dread not producing the software people imagine.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#306

Post by Joel_Mckay »

QuercusMax wrote: post #293
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM are not AI, but are a great context search tool when they work. When people first contact ML, they fool themselves into believing it is intelligent... rather than a massive plagiarism and copyright IP theft machine. Fun is important, but people thinking zero workmanship generated content is sustainable are still in the self-delusion stage marketers promote. https://medium.com/ideas-into-action/ikigai-the-perfect-…

I like coding AIs because they're plagiarism machines. If I ask you to do some basic data manipulation operations, I want you to do it in the most obvious, standard way possible, not come up with some fancy creative solution unless it's needed for some reason . If I'm dockerizing an app, I want the most simple, basic, standard thing - not somebody's hand-rolled "optimized" version that I can't understand.

> not somebody's hand-rolled "optimized" version that I can't understand.

In general, it takes around 10 months for people to realize something about probabilistic markdown definitions, and maintenance cycles.

You may miss learning from skilled people someday. =3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#307

Post by tavavex »

pixl97 wrote: post #76
cenamus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the blacksmiths losing their jobs are not allowed to feel bad about it?

You either become a foreman operating the machines or a Luddite burning them.

What if in reality it's not one or the other, but having 10% odds of being good enough to be selected to become a technician operating the machines, 10% odds of getting so enraged as to dedicate your lives to pushing back, and 80% odds of being shoved out due to lower demand and value of your work, having to go do something else, if you still can?

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#308

Post by goatlover »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #168
JeremyNT wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a part of it, but I also feel like a Luddite (the historical meaning, not the derogatory slang). I do use these tools, clearly see their potential, and know full well where this is going: capital is devaluing labor. My skills will become worthless. Maybe GP is right that at first only skilled developers can wield them to full effect, but it's obviously not going to stop there. If I could destroy these things…

[flagged]

For a different perspective:

"Except the Luddites didn’t hate machines either—they were gifted artisans resisting a capitalist takeover of the production process that would irreparably harm their communities, weaken their collective bargaining power, and reduce skilled workers to replaceable drones as mechanized as the machines themselves."

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/06/the-luddites-wer...

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#309

Post by jablongo »

mosburger wrote: post #177
samiv wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just told my gardener to cut the grass and work on some flower installations. I'm so excited about gardening again. Can't wait to do some. Employing a gardener to do my gardening for me is really making me enjoy gardening again!

this is a great analogy despite it possibly coming off as snark. I think it's hard for some people to grasp that programmers are motivated by different things. Some are motivated by shipping products to users, others are motivated to make code that's a giant elegant cathedral, still others love glorious hacks to bend the machine into doing things it was never really intended to do. And I'm sure I'm missing a few othe…

This is a valid point, the good news is I think there is some hope in developing the craft of orchestrating many agents into something that is satisfying and rewarding in it's own right.

Re: I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed

#310

Post by QuantumGood »

samiv wrote: post #138
alexgarden wrote: post #48

Wow... I really relate to this. I'm 50 as well, and I started coding in 1985 when I was 10... I remember literally every evolutionary leap forward and my experience with this change has been a bit different. Steve Yegge recently did an interview on vibe coding ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuJyJP517Uw ) where he says, "arch mage engineers who fell out-of-love with the modern complexity of shipping meaningful code…

I just told my gardener to cut the grass and work on some flower installations. I'm so excited about gardening again. Can't wait to do some. Employing a gardener to do my gardening for me is really making me enjoy gardening again!

By artificially narrowing a multi-faceted issue to just two either/or simplistic options you are no longer describing the issue. If you ackknowledge this, you can comment on it. But not acknowledging it makes your comment hard to parse. Sarcarsm? Overly simplistic? Missing context? Unclear.
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