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Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

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Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#581

Post by tqwhite »

hnarayanan wrote: post #485
data_maan wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opinions differ: hobby coders love it, but domain expert secretly despise it because it narrows the gap between the skills they spent years honing and the average Claude, I mean Joe, that just uses this mental exoskeleton.

I do understand this sentiment. But I wish these experts would see that they too are novices in literally every other field that they are not explicitly trained or experienced in. It is fun to explore curiosities even in spaces you don't know well.

What a good insight.

The people who are pained by AI subsuming something they do forget that it empowers them to do a million other things.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#582

Post by 63stack »

latexr wrote: post #377
lovelearning wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software. I must say I find this idea, and this wording, elitist in a negative way. I don't see any fundamental problem with democratization of abilities and removal of gatekeeping. Chances are, you were able to accumulate your expert knowledge only because: - book writing and authorship was democratized away from the church and academia - web content publication and p…

> I don't see any fundamental problem with democratization of abilities and removal of gatekeeping. This parroted argument is getting really tired. It signals either astroturfing or someone who just accepts what they are sold without thinking. LLMs aren’t “democratising” anything. There’s no democracy in being mostly beholden to a few companies which own the largest and most powerful models, who can cut you off at an…

I agree completely, the "democratizing programming" is being overplayed by AI vendors like they are doing community service, and HN commenters use it like a trump card in an argument.

Everyone already had the option to write any code, fork any open source project, publish any of their code, run any of their code but suddenly AI appears and THAT is what makes it democratic? What was undemocratic about it? Is this democracy where idiots are running ai agents that publish smear campaigns, or harass maintainers for not accepting their slop is the democratic future you wish for?

How many (job) positions do you see today that want a backend developer? Frontend developer? Not much because now everyone is expected to be at least full stack, if not also devops as well. The exact same thing is playing out right now with AI, people are expected to produce 5x the amount of code before, if you don't, someone else will take your job that is willing to do it.

Already bloated programs will bloat further, they will require even more resources to run, you will have to pay even more for hardware, they will be slower, less responsive, you will have to pay yet another monthly fee to big tech for their AIs, and people will happily do it and pat themselves that we democratized programming, while running towards the future where nobody will be able to own hardware capable of general computing.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#583

Post by tndibona »

paulluuk wrote: post #571
tndibona wrote: post #555

I just had what you might probably describe as the opposite experience. I was sat at a very important all hands meeting by our senior tech leader with about 100 people or so .who was mandating an AI goal for every employee on workday, he basically says that “if we all do not learn to adapt to AI, we will all get left behind” , and he had presented how to utilise spec driven development. He opened up the room for Q&A…

I understand your sentiment. I personally would never use a textbook for anything code related, if there's no proper documentation online then I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, haha. However, even though I've never worked with CassandraDB, I feel pretty confident that I could do it with Claude Code. Not just "do it for me", but more like "I have done a lot of database migrations in my time, but haven't worked…

Oh, I agree with what you’re saying and that’s sort of how I mostly use AI as well. The problem I have with my company is they’ve stepped from measuring success by the outcomes to measuring the means to achieve it. My opinion is - It forces people to operate a certain way potentially at their own expense, unwittingly even.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#584

Post by tartoran »

sghiassy wrote: post #565
Thanemate wrote: post #511

To those of you reading the comment section thinking something like the following: >"Wait a moment! Being forced to use AI gave me depression, and I'm really aware of the fact that it's only going to become better and better the more developers are using it, to the point where the 10 job openings of yesterday are 1 job opening tomorrow. Why are people so excited", remember this: You are reading HN, the survivorship b…

Been coding since 13, now 44 working in FAANG. Love AI explaining code Dislike AI for writing code (that was my fun part)

You dont like the quality of the generated code or the process of not typing it out yourself?

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#585

Post by arKahsg »

Young people who consider studying CS should reflect on the fact that the marketing oriented part of boomers and Gen-X are vile people who will use you and sell you out at any moment.

They started with co-opting DEI in open source so they could retain their positions without working. Part of the DEI people now probably pivoted to Trump.

Now they sell you out by promoting their intellectual wheelchairs, because they no longer care about future employment.

The three star bloggers that promote AI are all Gen-X.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#586

Post by microtonal »

amelius wrote: post #556
pmarreck wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLM watch-six-agents-writing-and-you-proofreading gave me so much existential crisis and depression this is extremely bizarre because I’m 53, been coding since 12, and it has had literally the exact opposite effect on me, I find it tremendously exciting, like riding a snowmobile instead of manually cross-country skiing but I do think that if you’re not ready to work like this, you may need to consider a career pivo…

Coding since 11. Using AI makes me completely lethargic. I really don't know how to fill the minutes that AI takes to write code. Maybe if AI gets faster I will be able to enjoy it. That said, like many people here I have invested quite some time in becoming a skilled and experienced coder, so there is no denying that this whole AI craze makes me feel like something is taken away from me.

I really don't know how to fill the minutes that AI takes to write code. Maybe if AI gets faster I will be able to enjoy it.

I either switch between two projects, or I keep an eye on what Claude is doing, because it often gets off the rails or in a direction I don't like and then it's easier to just stop it there and tell it what to do instead.

That said, like many people here I have invested quite some time in becoming a skilled and experienced coder, so there is no denying that this whole AI craze makes me feel like something is taken away from me.

I might have felt like that when I was younger (almost 44 now, programming since 10), but over time I realized that the thing I enjoy is not really writing code itself, but coming up with ideas, solving puzzles, etc. LLMs are like insanely fast junior programmers, so they do the more mundane part of the task, but they need me to come up with good ideas, good taste, and solve design challenges. Otherwise it ends up as a pile of unmaintainable junior programmer code.

It is possible that LLMs might replace the other parts of being a good programmer as well, but for the time being it makes my work more pleasant, because I can work on interesting problems.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#587

Post by skeeter2020 »

pmarreck wrote: post #538
Thanemate wrote: post #511

To those of you reading the comment section thinking something like the following: >"Wait a moment! Being forced to use AI gave me depression, and I'm really aware of the fact that it's only going to become better and better the more developers are using it, to the point where the 10 job openings of yesterday are 1 job opening tomorrow. Why are people so excited", remember this: You are reading HN, the survivorship b…

> LLM watch-six-agents-writing-and-you-proofreading gave me so much existential crisis and depression this is extremely bizarre because I’m 53, been coding since 12, and it has had literally the exact opposite effect on me, I find it tremendously exciting, like riding a snowmobile instead of manually cross-country skiing but I do think that if you’re not ready to work like this, you may need to consider a career pivo…

Way to blame the poster for their problems, and what the hell is a "short term career pivot"?

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#588

Post by agenticbanana »

tqwhite wrote: post #534
kdheiwns wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I never really see people say wtf they're making. It's always "AI bot wrote 200k lines of code for me!" Alright, cool. Is the project something completely new? Useful? A rushed remake of a project that already exists in GitHub with actual human support behind it? I never see an answer.

I wrote SuperSecretCrypt.com, ScoreRummy.com. Other stuff, too. I have integrated Claude Code with a graph database to support an assistant with structured memory and many helpful capabilities. I have clients. I automated a complicated data ingestion pipeline into a desktop app with a bulletproof process queue, localhost control panel and many features. For another, I am writing an AI-specific app that is so cool. I…

SuperSecretCrypt.com doesn't work.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#589

Post by ineedasername »

Thanemate wrote: post #511

To those of you reading the comment section thinking something like the following: >"Wait a moment! Being forced to use AI gave me depression, and I'm really aware of the fact that it's only going to become better and better the more developers are using it, to the point where the 10 job openings of yesterday are 1 job opening tomorrow. Why are people so excited", remember this: You are reading HN, the survivorship b…

60 is relevant because it's inherent to the point they are making in having experienced something that inherently requires having lived through a longer period of time.

Its not uncommon for people to lose interest or find the passion has gone out of things they enjoyed when they were younger, especially in their professional lives where the enjoyment eroded through forced contact with aspects of it that were less enjoyable or contaminated by unpleasant work environments and uninteresting projects.

Having that passion reignited isn't something given to all people.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#590

Post by tqwhite »

canoodling wrote: post #537

I too had the "ok, I better dive in", rather than ducking out epiphany. Similar story, 37 years of IT, many roles, top performer, yada yada yada. I bought a MacBook pro 3 weeks ago(all the cool kids are doing it). I've been developing various automated audit and compliance based projects with Claude and openai. Having been a developer for perhaps 20 of those years, I find this new experience amazing. I've been levera…

A thing I think a lot in the conversations about AI is this:

You don't have any choice. Good or bad. It's here. Get over it.

I know that back in the day, people said automobiles were bad and evil and costing the buggywhip makers their jobs. Unfortunately for them, the decision to use cars had already been made.

I do AI with fervor because I live in the real world and the decision has already been made. You can't stop AI by pretending it's optional.

Adapt or die.

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