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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

#791

Post by sph »

paulkrush wrote: post #683
sph wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’ve been around for a while. You didn’t have a game changing new framework or library every month.

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

#792

Post by ares623 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #367
ares623 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is 2-3 centralized providers of this new technology "democratization"?

You're right! And cars when they were invented didn't give increased mobility to millions of people, because they came from just a few manufacturers. Cell phones made communication easier for exactly zero people even though billions have been sold. Why? Because they come from just a few different companies.

cars, up to relatively recently, have been pure hardware machines that when a consumer buys, they can own. Now that's starting to change. Let's see how "democratized" cars are when the manufacturers can hard-lock "owners" from them.

Similar story to cell phones.

LLMs are in this state right out the gate.

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

#793

Post by sph »

echelon wrote: post #736
sph wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Claude Code has killed my ADHD and turned me into an always-on hyper-focused machine. > I am getting 20x done. This is a literal superpower. Adding this comment to favourites to revisit in half a decade. I've already "made fun" of your exaggerated hype comments, so I'll use this opportunity to say that I hope you remain sane and grounded in your discoveries. You wouldn't be the first to go psychotic after interacti…

Don't you have anything better to do with your time? I told you people back in 2019 that these models would replace Hollywood and you and others have been calling me all kinds of names, and every step of the way calling me an idiot. I'm a filmmaker - I know what I'm talking about. And now we're almost here. We have million dollar VFX services at our disposal for pennies. Claude Code is doing the exact same thing for…

> I told you people back in 2019 that these models would replace Hollywood

What kind of alternate reality are you living in?

I wish you would disclose your credentials (though I admit privacy is an inalienable right of yours) so I could place the biggest AI hype-man on this forum. Actually, there is hype, and there is being completely gone with hubris and you’re towards the latter end of the spectrum, given your doomsday calls on other comments that software engineering is done for and that you believe AI is close to ‘putting all the HN engineers out of work’ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185284)

> I wish I could slap sense into you grumpy folks. You're so stiff in your beliefs. This is a train headed your way. Pay attention.

Lay off the violent thoughts and get some rest, man. Sounds like you need it.

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

#794

Post by suzzer99 »

sigseg1v wrote: post #649
suzzer99 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also absolutely LOVE that non-programmers have access to this stuff now too. I am always in favor of tools that democratize abilities. Here's the other edge of that sword. A couple back-end devs in my department vibe-coded up a standard AI-tailwind front-end of their vision of revamping our entire platform at once, which is completely at odds with the modular approach that most of the team wants to take, and woul…

This scenario is not new with AI at all though? 14 years ago I watched a group of 3 front-end devs spin up a proof of concept in ember.js that has a flashy front end, all fake data, and demo it to execs. They wowed the execs and every time the execs asked "how long would it take to fix (blank) to actually show (blank)?" the devs hit f12, inspect element, and typed in what they asked for and said "already done!". It w…

The difference is now anyone can spin up a vibe-coded site that wows execs.

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

#795

Post by bluemario »

The "occasional goofing off and wrecking everything" part is so real. What I've found is that the longer a context window gets, the more Claude starts confidently hallucinating its own previous decisions. We've started treating sessions like shifts: fresh context, explicit state summary at the top, specific task scope. Dramatically fewer "why did you just rewrite the entire auth module" moments.

The re-ignition thing resonates though. There's something about having a collaborator that removes the activation energy of starting. The blank file problem is real and brutal at 25, probably more so at 60 when you know exactly how much work lies ahead. AI doesn't eliminate the hard parts but it compresses the "ok where do I even begin" phase from hours to minutes.

What are you building?

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

#796

Post by GeoAtreides »

tqwhite wrote: post #551
nly wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this baffling tbh as I regularly ask Claude for basic components and they come out completely broken, wrong and buggy. The last: I asked for a quick TCP server in C++ that handled just a single client (disconnecting the existing client when a new client connected), with a send() that I could call from another thread. It was holding mutexes over read(), and trying to set the SO_REUSEPORT port socket option on a…

You are simply doing it wrong. I could do this TCP server in another time at all and it would be perfect. I have done stuff that complicated and more many times. You need to rethink how you are using the tool because you absolutely could get excellent results like I do. The biggest things I suggest are... Treat it as collaboration or pair programming. Make sure to work through a design before programming and have it…

this is an abysmal level of condescension, the kind that makes me wish mods actively moderated it, as it's that insulting

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

#797

Post by jmtame »

I remember my first few weeks of Claude Code. The high will wear off as you bump into the limitations, and then it starts to feel like you're more of a "manager of a junior-ish dev." The work shifts to clarity of intent and capturing edge cases, rather than purely coding. It's a fun time when you first jump in, but don't be surprised when your excitement reverts back to baseline.

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

#798

Post by talkvoix »

Going from static HTML to dynamic ASP felt like suddenly gaining superpowers. We've been missing that true 'Rapid Application Development' (RAD) energy for a long time. Today’s AI agents are basically the modern incarnation of dragging and dropping a button in VB6 and writing logic behind it, but on a massive scale. It's great to hear you've found that spark again!

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

#799

Post by darkwater »

kitd wrote: post #709
burnstek wrote: post #614

50 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…

Tools like Claude Code are the ultimate cheat code for me and have breathed new life into my desire to create I'm in my 60s and retiring this summer. I feel the opposite. Agents have removed most of the satisfaction and fulfilment from designing, building, testing and completing a feature or component. And if frameworks are a problem, learning to create simply and efficiently without them has its own sense of satisfa…

> I'm in my 60s and retiring this summer.

Congrats! I'm in that age where I'm envying more the ones like you than the 20-something :)

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