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I quit. The clankers won

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Re: I quit. The clankers won

#491

Post by tempodox »

Thanemate wrote: post #84

Funnily enough I saw this post as I was placing my HN account on hiatus, because I'm tired pretending that the quality of discourse is on par with what I've been used to read and participate in. We're obviously in an era where "good enough" is taken so far that, what used to be the middle of the fictional line is not the middle point anymore but a new extreme. You're either someone who cares for the output or someone…

> You're either someone who cares for the output or someone who cares how readable and easy to extend the code is.

Which of course is a lie propagated by those who want to cast the disbelievers as mentally defective. Why the hell would you care how readable and easy to extend the code is if you weren’t interested in the result?

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#492

Post by dspillett »

falkensmaize wrote: post #276
dspillett wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is going to catch some heat, but what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents? If it does go as far that way as many seem to expect (or, indeed, want), then most people will be able to do it, there will be a dearth of jobs and many people wanting them so it'll be a race to the bottom for all but the lucky few: development will become a mi…

What the people excited about the race to the bottom scenario don’t seem to understand is that it doesn’t mean low skill people will suddenly be more employable, it means fewer high skill people will be employable. No one will be eager to employ “ai-natives” who don’t understand what the llm is pumping out, they’ll just keep the seasoned engineers who can manage and tame the output properly. Similarly, no one is goin…

> What the people excited about the race to the bottom scenario

I'm not excited about it. I just see it as a logical consequence if what people are predicting comes to pass, and I've thought about how I will deal with that.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#493

Post by kstenerud »

simoncion wrote: post #289
kstenerud wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is looking at the current situation through the old lens. That ship has sailed. The revolution is happening. We live in a new reality now, one where we're still trying to figure out what rules should even be. And there will be winners and losers, and copyright and patent law will be modified in an attempt to tame the chaos, with mixed results because of all of the powerful players on both ends. You can live on t…

Your set of statements and their surrounding context reminds me very much of the mass grave scene in Kubrick's Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670Y3ehmU74 >

I'm not sure why it would. Kubrick was criticizing the false morality of the entire adventure, mixed with common bureaucratic fuckups in an unaccountable environment, with tragic results.

I'm talking about a change brought on by a new technology, where the market (i.e. all of us collectively) push it forward, like the internet revolution and subsequent consolidation. Good shit happens. Bad shit happens. People get rich, people get poor, people get left behind. You can argue the moral implications, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle, just like you couldn't snuff out the industrial revolution. So at some point you have to decide: Where will I fit in all of this?

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#494

Post by DavidPiper »

staminade wrote: post #95

Anti-AI articles like this seem to be the new "Doing my part to resist big tech: Why I'm switching back from Chrome to Firefox" genre that popped up on HN for a decade or so. If it makes you feel better, great, but don't kid yourself that your actions will make any difference whatsoever to the overall trajectory of AI adoption in IT or society.

> don't kid yourself that your actions will make any difference whatsoever to the overall trajectory of AI adoption in IT or society

How large does a group have to be (absolute number or percentage of population) for you to change your mind on this?

Serious question - genuinely curious. My answer is about 10% provided they are organised in some way. 5% if you're particularly good at collective action.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#495

Post by rafterydj »

SoftTalker wrote: post #474
rafterydj wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point still stands. You're going to take up the mantle for suggesting a computer science degree from 2000 completely qualifies someone for work in 2026? No further education needed?

If you've been working all that time, probably not, at least not any more than you had to learn any other language your employer was using. The core concepts covered by a good CS curriculum haven't really changed. Specific languages were never the focus.

I don't disagree about the core CS fundamentals - 100% the same page. I suppose this really boils down to a difference in what constitutes "training/education".

Any $PROGRAMMER_TITLE worth their salary can learn a new stack for a project, because they know the fundamentals. BUT there's still a lead time on being comfortable with new languages, frameworks, problem domains, etc. It's this kind of time and effort that I am trying to get at when discussing companies paying for training/education. It can be worth investing in your people if your goals are longer horizon.

I don't think it makes sense for companies to pay for their employees to learn basic data structures or other "prerequisite" fundamentals, though. That would be a large investment!

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#496

Post by mimd »

Considering that the rant is using photos from Star Trek and Oliver Twist to make their points, copyrighted material with no indication of permission, they're less "creative" than a stochastic parrot.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#497

Post by prplfsh »

nunez wrote: post #473
prplfsh wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get to spend more time working on the things I enjoy. For example, data modeling and workflow orchestration, and building product to solve customer problems. And really, that comes down to spending a lot of my time just thinking really hard - because once I have a clear plan, it's actually not that hard to build it. Not only that, but I can build something, react to it, rebuild it, react to it, and come up with som…

Can't disagree that Claude ships much much faster. It is also nice to be able to type up a plan of what I'd like to build and have it go after verifying the plan it generates. I guess it's iterating in plain English instead of iterating in code that I'm having trouble latching onto. It's a "left brain vs right brain" kind of situation for me (not sure how valid that trope is, but it best expresses what I'm feeling).…

I'm also a lifelong vim user. I guess what I'm getting at is that I find the journey even more engaging now. I think I'm a good programmer. I've worked at great companies. I was competitive in ACM contests and Top Coder. But I find the journey even more engaging now because I can focus on really, really deeply understanding something, and less time on glue. Writing code by hand is still fun, don't get me wrong, but I'm also enjoying the step change in scale.

I don't think IDEs as they exist today are necessarily the right abstraction anymore anyway, to the extent they ever were. At least any more than a C++ IDE that was centered on assembly language as the main thing would be. I want data models, API contracts, and data flows. I don't know what the right answer is, but I think there's something coming.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#498

Post by nurettin »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading. More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

> need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one.

I have never typed and expressed myself so much before I started talking to clankers. Telling them what to do, teaching them skills, giving them architecture decisions and yanking their chain when they weer off course. I type in plain English maybe more than 60 hours a week now.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#499

Post by threetonesun »

Supermancho wrote: post #397
threetonesun wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two statements go hand in hand though. While I do believe companies could take the altruistic take of training people whether or not they stay, and some places do, they're certainly not going to make the effort for someone who has clear markers of being someone who will leave anyway.

That's not how these initiatives are executed, unless the shop is very small. In which case, there's no concrete training offered anyway. If it's large, they don't want to allocate a lot of budget rather than starting a new hiring round. I would say the lack of in-job developer training (or resourcing) is due to multiple factors that results in a consistency rather than specifically targeting individuals. It's not li…

I wasn't specifically calling you out, but more broadly companies know that the average tenure keeps getting lower, for reasons on both the employee and employer side. But even places I have seen career development done, it was generally reserved as a "perk" for employees who at least had a few years in.

Re: I quit. The clankers won

#500

Post by theonething »

ikr678 wrote: post #456
bitmasher9 wrote: post #8

Picking out my favorite idea out of many: we do need ways to stay mentally sharp in the age of AI. Writing and publishing is a good one. I also recommend stimulating human conversations and long-form reading. More and more the bar is being lowered. Don’t fall to brain rot. Don’t quite quit. Stay active and engaged, and you’ll begin to stand out among your peers.

Another one is: Don't use GPS in your own city. Try to learn where you live. Read the map in advance if you are going somewhere new and memorise the turns. A shocking number of my coworkers plot every single trip (even to work!) and claim this helps with traffic or undercover cameras or some other cope. But the traffic will be there regardless, and they shouldnt need Google Maps to remind them not to speed. They'd ra…

> But the traffic will be there regardless

Isn't the point to use the GPS to avoid the traffic? In my experience, it's pretty effective a lot of times for that.

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