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The Programmer Identity Crisis

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Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#61

Post by veegee »

whynotminot wrote: post #49
bcrosby95 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of most jobs in the world is to "solve problems". So why did you pick software over those?

Why would someone who likes solving problems choose a very lucrative career path solving problems… hmmm You can also solve problems as a local handyman but that doesn’t pad the 401K quite as well as a career in software. I feel like there’s a lot of tech-fetishist right now on the “if you don’t deeply love to write code then just leave!” train without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to…

Sounds like a mediocre developer. No respect for people like you.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#62

Post by commandlinefan »

oldestofsports wrote: post #29

Getting rid of the programmer has always been the wet dream of managers, and LLMs are being sold as the solution. Maybe it is

This comes up whenever _anything_ is automated: "this is the end of programming as a career!" I heard this about Rational Rose in the 90's, and Visual Basic in the 80's.

I don't think I'm sticking my head in the sand - an advanced enough intelligence could absolutely take over programming tasks - but I also think that such an intelligence would be able to take over _every_ thought-related task. And that may not be a bad thing! Although the nature of our economy would have to change quite a bit to accommodate it.

I might be wrong: Doug Hofstadter, who is way, way smarter than me, once predicted that no machine would ever beat a human at chess unless it was the type of machine that said "I'm bored of chess now, I would prefer to talk about poetry". Maybe coding can be distilled to a set of heuristics the way chess programs have (I don't think so, but maybe).

Whether we're right or wrong, there's not much we can do about it except continue to learn.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#63

Post by OkayPhysicist »

MountDoom wrote: post #41
bcrosby95 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of most jobs in the world is to "solve problems". So why did you pick software over those?

The honest answer that applies to almost everyone here is that as a kid, they liked playing computer games and heard that the job pays well. It's interesting, because to become a plumber, you pretty much need a plumber parent or a friend to get you interested in the trade show you the ropes. Meanwhile, software engineering is closer to the universal childhood dream of "I want to become an astronaut" or "I want to be…

I think you're grossly underestimating the number of people here who fell into software development because it's one of the best outlets for "the knack" in existence. Sure, this site is split between the "tech-bro entrepreneur"-types and developers, and there are plenty of developers who got into this for the cash, but in my experience about a quarter of developers (so maybe 10-15% of users on this site) got into this profession due to getting into programming because it fed an innate need to tinker, and then after they spent a ton of time on it discovered that it was the best way to pay the bills available to them.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#65

Post by kharak »

I'm in the opposite camp. Programming has never been fun to me, and LLMs are a godsend to deal with all the parts I don't care for. LLMs have accelerated my learning speed and productivity, and believe it or not, programming even started to become fun and engaging!

I will never, ever go back to the time before.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#66

Post by whynotminot »

veegee wrote: post #61
whynotminot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone who likes solving problems choose a very lucrative career path solving problems… hmmm You can also solve problems as a local handyman but that doesn’t pad the 401K quite as well as a career in software. I feel like there’s a lot of tech-fetishist right now on the “if you don’t deeply love to write code then just leave!” train without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to…

Sounds like a mediocre developer. No respect for people like you.

It’s a good thing I haven’t needed your respect so far to have a pretty successful career as a software engineer.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#67

Post by muldvarp »

I think in a few years, we will realize that LLMs have impacted our lives in a deeply negative way. The relatively small improvements LLMs bring to my life will be vastly outweighted by the negatives.

If LLM abilities stagnate around the current level it's not even out of the question that LLMs will negatively impact productivity simply because of all of the AI slop we'll have to deal with.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#68

Post by debo_ »

As an aside, I've been using copilot code review before handing off any of my code to colleagues. It's a bit pedantic, but it generally catches all the most stupid things I've done so that the final code review tends to be pretty smooth.

I hate to suggest that the fix to LLM slop is more LLMs, but in this case it's working for me. My coworkers also seem to appreciate the gesture.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#69

Post by veegee »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #45

Full disclosure: I am old. When I started programming for Corporate™ back 1995, it was a wildly different career than what it has become. Say what you want about the lunatics running the asylum, but we liked it that way. Engineering knew their audience, knew the tech stack, knew what was going on in "the industry", ultimately called the shots. Your code was your private sandbox. Want to rewrite it every other release…

[flagged]

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#70

Post by cool_man_bob »

ares623 wrote: post #43
greymalik wrote: post #27

> One could only wonder why they became a programmer in the first place, given their seeming disinterest in coding. To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself. > careful configuration of our editor, tinkering with dot files, and dev environments That may be fun for you, but it doesn’t add value. It’s accidental complexity that I am happy to delegate.

Careful with the “doesn’t add value” talk. If you follow it far enough to its logical end, you get to “Existence doesn’t add value”

That’s the point lol.
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