This is me. Different music, same deal. Finding you’re not as alone as you thought you were is what the internet is for.
For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
71–80 of 191 posts
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#72Programming with Claude is still engineering. It is like designing a bridge, which remains engineering even when a worker pours the concrete instead of you. In the past we were forced to pour the concrete ourselves. I understand how many of us enjoyed the sound and the smell of the concrete being poured. Myself, I’m happy to never get my hands dirty again, and focus on the actual engineering.
Thanks for this perspective. Do we really miss typing ascii characters into an editor? That seems to me the least consequential and least interesting part of building software systems. Always has been. Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work? Now that coding is automated, we have to elevate ou…
> Do we really miss typing ascii characters into an editor?
Yes.
> Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work
I care about the outcome, which is why I don't trust it to a fucking LLM
Valuing quality over velocity is not selfish
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#73I wonder if he was listening to Phish while playing Doom.
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#74Programming with Claude is still engineering. It is like designing a bridge, which remains engineering even when a worker pours the concrete instead of you. In the past we were forced to pour the concrete ourselves. I understand how many of us enjoyed the sound and the smell of the concrete being poured. Myself, I’m happy to never get my hands dirty again, and focus on the actual engineering.
Thanks for this perspective. Do we really miss typing ascii characters into an editor? That seems to me the least consequential and least interesting part of building software systems. Always has been. Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work? Now that coding is automated, we have to elevate ou…
I think concentrating on the physical act of typing on the keyboard is maybe taking it a little too far. The author of the OP talks more about holding a lot of the problem in their head and entering a "flow" state where they figure out a solution.
Most of my interaction with AI models and agents is still mediated by a keyboard and still requires a lot of "typing ascii characters". ;-)
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#75The grateful dead were definitely my introduction to flow state. It wasn't just programming, it was using a MUD in the late 1980s. In my case, the Dark Star from Live/Dead (a long, extended jam that explores the outer reaches), I like a subset of the dead and phish for flow state programming but like the author find that modern work requires too many distractions to enter and stay in the flow state for a long time. In my case, large portions of the dead and phish don't work for me at all- the worst is when Phish is doing a great job and then suddenly they sort of lose the groove, or when they get stuck in repetitive loops.
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sentences 5 and 6 of the article, top of the second paragraph: > That move is Phish fans in miniature. Someone cared enough about the song and the bit that they rebuilt a piece of pop culture around the band.
That doesn’t really clarify
It explicitly says "the band". All the context in the first paragraphs is about the music. It absolutely clarifies. The rest of the article talks about listening to the music, watching them (or wanting to watch them) in concert or in tour.
Read the article. Or just look at the top search result for Phish. Stop being lazy.
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#77just make your claude code task completed notification sound play tweezer
feel this though. also how the era of debating like the best code styles and which new frontend framework is etc best that used to be fun to talk about feels like its coming to an end because no one really cares anymore as long as the bot can build the feature.
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#78Where you get your satisfaction matters. Is it in the end product? Or the journey producing it? I've been writing code for 30 years. I welcome AI. It brings different challenges and can reduce the time needed for the end product.
absolutely the journey.
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#79For me it's Toto. Musically they are incredible; a supergroup of the best session musicians in the industry who worked on some of the most iconic albums of all time. But lyrically it's complete nonsense, so you can lose yourself in the music while still being focused on what you're doing, since the words are just basically gibberish.
Re: For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for this perspective. Do we really miss typing ascii characters into an editor? That seems to me the least consequential and least interesting part of building software systems. Always has been. Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work? Now that coding is automated, we have to elevate ou…
I think concentrating on the physical act of typing on the keyboard is maybe taking it a little too far. The author of the OP talks more about holding a lot of the problem in their head and entering a "flow" state where they figure out a solution. Most of my interaction with AI models and agents is still mediated by a keyboard and still requires a lot of "typing ascii characters". ;-)
The "typing ascii characters" angle is a bit hyperbolic, I admit. But my intention is to get people to think about their software, not their personal experience of it.
BTW, there's nothing preventing you from using AI agents and staying in the flow state. If you want that, the universe is not stopping you. In fact, not dealing with the minutia of source code may well free us up and allow even greater flow experiences.