Is this a repost? I saw an extremely similar post a few months ago, even down to that last line.
Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#68250 here. Years ago I completely stopped coding, becoming tired of the never ending rat race of keeping up with the latest bizarre web stacks, frameworks for everything, node for this, npm for that, Angular, React, Vue, whatever - as if solving business problems just became too boring for software developers, so we decided to spend our cycles on the new hotness at every turn. Tools like Claude Code are the ultimate ch…
You know you could just choose a framework and stick with it? The way you look down on "the whole profession" for what's basically a straw man and your own decision is a bit bizarre. Especially coupled with the fact that tech has never moved so fast as right now, being on top of the AI-game is a target changing a hundred times faster than frontend frameworks back in the days.
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#68350 here. Years ago I completely stopped coding, becoming tired of the never ending rat race of keeping up with the latest bizarre web stacks, frameworks for everything, node for this, npm for that, Angular, React, Vue, whatever - as if solving business problems just became too boring for software developers, so we decided to spend our cycles on the new hotness at every turn. Tools like Claude Code are the ultimate ch…
> Years ago I completely stopped coding, becoming tired of the never ending rat race of keeping up with the latest bizarre web stacks, frameworks for everything, node for this, npm for that, Angular, React, Vue, whatever Have you tried Claude? No, Opus? No, not that version, it's two weeks old, positively ancient lol. Oh wait, now OpenClaw is the cool thing around the block. My dude, the rat race just became a rat sp…
Your comment is timeless. Just replace your tech keywords with those from the past or the future.
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#684To 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…
If you're "proofreading" the agents' work in detail, you're doing it wrong. You need to invest that time productively into planning out what the agents are going to do (with AI help, of course) then once the plan has gotten detailed enough you can set the agent to work and treat the result as something to just read through and quickly accept/revise/reject (upon which rejection you go back to an earlier stage of plann…
There is a fine line between "not proofreading" and "not paying attention at all to the output." There are many things that look like they work, but won't pass a sniff test, especially when it comes to security or performance. I witnessed agents create "private" endpoints that had no authentication, but sent user IDs as part of the payload and trusted them.
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#685I feel this so, so much. It is a very exciting time. I have had a very specific goal in mind and I could work out large parts on my own. But there is a lot that I didn't have any basis or time to build expertise on. Using Claude Code to fill out those gaps and educate me along the way has meant I've gotten little sleep in the last two months. And I managed to make the thing I was envisioning: https://gridpaper.org/ex…
Nice project. That must have been fun to make. Congratulations.
It has been so much fun. :)
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#686To 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…
I'm mostly reading the comments section thinking "wow, anthropic is putting a lot of work into astroturfing Hacker News right now in reponse to the new ChatGPT release"
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#687To 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…
As for you, OP, I have no idea why age is a factor to consider to this. This is one only data point but my dad was a programmer and frequently complained about cognitive decline once he hit his mid 50s. From talking to him, he remained sharp at a conceptual and high level, knowing what he wanted to do and how it would be done, but struggled with the tooling, the logistical details, etc. He didn't make it to the AI er…
I'm sure there are cognitive declines as you age, but even discounting those there's some fundamental change happening to the opportunity space.
I'm in my mid 40s, I've had a really fulfilling career working on interesting things and making decent money, and over that time have accumulated a few passion projects that I knew were always out of my reach.
Well, technically within my reach but I'd need to somehow find someone to pay for me and a team for some period of time to work on stuff.
When I started playing around with these tools, it started feeling like maybe some of my ideas were within reach. Some time after, it felt plausible enough that I've decided to go for it. I'm actively in the middle of some deep performance research that I simply would not have the bandwidth or capacity for without these tools.
I've also managed to acquire enough confidence in the likelyhood of some degree of success that I'm investing in starting a company (self-funded) to develop and release and license the stuff i'm building.
I don't know exactly how my ideas will turn out, but that's part of the excitement and anticipation. Point is I never felt I had enough breathing room to really go for it (between normal life obligations like mortgage, feeding kids, etc.)
These tools have changed the equation enough that it's made it more feasible for me to pursue some of these ideas on my own. Things I would have shelved for the rest of my life, probably.. or maybe tried to encourage and interest others into doing.
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#688To 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…
>You are reading HN, the survivorship bias and groupthink is just as high as any other self-calibrating online community
Agreed. To expand IMHO and somewhat tangentially: recognizing the importance of software/technology and using it as tool is the hallmark of a person with balanced mental makeup. Someone who has ever had 'passion' for software (or in general technology) extended beyond a few weeks can be considered to have something abnormal going on - for example autism. This is like a carpenter becoming obsessed with his chisel and deriving his entire sense of purpose and happiness from delving into the minutiae of chisels.
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#689To 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…
Your analogy is a bit weird to me. Snowmobile is exciting for a short while, but I'm much more fond of cross country skiing. The connection with nature, the silence.
Or maybe your analogy is correct. AI is a bit as if everyone in the mountains drove around in a snowmobile, noisy and a smell of gasoline.
Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, software engineering as a career only went down hill for me from when I began to when I retired. (And I hesitate to even air that view in front of others that are already in the field because I am a kind of Pollyanna and don't want to foment bad vibes.) But since I retired a few years ago it was clearly not LLMs that precipitated the decline of my enjoyment of the profession. Instead it was the slow erosion…
Do you still code? What’s your take on working with LLMs and agents? Does it reignite the same spark OP is talking about?
"Spark" might be putting too fine a point on it if I am being honest (and I always am, ha ha).
But I vibe-coded a web site [1] that I would not have otherwise attempted (I just didn't want to have to figure out how to learn a map-type framework in order to put little points-of-interest on a web page.)
I also vote-coded an extremely esoteric app for turning .mpo files into stereograms that you can then print to display in an old-fashioned stereoscope [2].
I have lately been learning (I hope?) to build a hobbyist analog computer. This a deep dive into electronics—something I have no training in.
And I have already queued up a couple of my abandoned projects (also esoteric) that I hope to turn an LLM loose on when I free up some time (from my current analog computing obsession).
It's hard to say if I would not have pursued all the above without an LLM. I am giving examples though of projects that I feel were sort of on the tipping point for me as to whether they were worth the effort to pursue or not—the learning-curve-required vs. useful-end-product balance. I am finding the LLMs are a finger on the scale tipping it more often toward "Go for it." Maybe you would call that a "spark"?
[1] (where I map out the location of a pair of YouTubers that have been road-tripping the U.S. for over three years) https://engineersneedart.com/OneAdvanture/
[2] https://engineersneedart.com/stereographer/stereographer.htm...