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The Programmer Identity Crisis

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Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#91

Post by sharadov »

Legend2440 wrote: post #9
pteetor wrote: post #7

When COBOL was born, some people said, "It's English! We won't need programmers anymore!" When SQL was born, some people said, "It's English! We won't need programmers anymore!" Now we have AI prompting, and some people are saying, "It's English! We won't need programmers anymore!" Really?

The problem I have with this argument is that it actually is English this time. COBOL and SQL aren't English, they're formal languages with keywords that look like English. LLMs work with informal language in a way that computers have never been able to before.

I can't agree more.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#92

Post by Ekaros »

Etheryte wrote: post #89
strix_varius wrote: post #57

To me, the most salient point was this: > Code reviewing coworkers are rapidly losing their minds as they come to the crushing realization that they are now the first layer of quality control instead of one of the last. Asked to review; forced to pick apart. Calling out freshly added functions that are never called, hallucinated library additions, and obvious runtime or compilation errors. All while the author—who cl…

In my opinion this is another case where people look at it as a technical problem when it's actually a people problem. If someone does it once, they get a stern message about it. If it happens twice, it gets rejected and sent to their manager. Regardless of how you authored a pull request, you are signing off on it with your name. If it's garbage, then you're responsible.

Maybe the process should have actual two stage pull requests. First stage is you have to comment the request and show some test cases against it. And only then next person has to take a look. Not sure if such flow is even possible with current tools.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#93

Post by pmg101 »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #58
senordevnyc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the point of being a chef is the food, not the knives. If there's a better way to prepare food than a knife, but you refuse to change, are you really a chef? Or are you a chef knife enthusiast?

>The point of being a chef is the food, not the knives They will never be able to undestand this, unfortunately

But what if the New Way to prepare food was to put a box into a microwave , wait 60 seconds, then hand it to the customer?

Sure the customer still gets fed but it's a far inferior product... And is that chef really cheffing?

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#94

Post by jay_kyburz »

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…

Try game dev. It's still like that today.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#95

Post by lordnacho »

Truly, the ideas in this essay are reflected in this comment section.

It's like that trope of the little angel and demon sitting on the protagonist's shoulders.

"I can get more work done"

"But it's not proper work"

"Sometimes it doesn't matter if it's proper work, not everything is important"

"But you won't learn the tools"

"Tools are incidental"

"I feel like I'm not close to the craft"

"Your colleagues weren't really reading your PRs anyway"

"This isn't just another tool"

"This is just another tool"

And so on forever.

I'm staying to think that if you don't have both these opposing views swirling around in your mind, you haven't thought enough about it.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#96

Post by emerongi »

furyofantares wrote: post #47

Ignoring LLMs for a second, some code I write is done in sort of full-craft full-diligence mode, where I am only committing something where I am very proud of it's structure and of every line of code. I know it inside and out, I have reasons for every decision, major or minor, and I don't know of any ways to make it better. Not only is the code excellent, I've also produced a person (me) who is an expert in that code…

Within the past 2 months, as I've started to use AI more, I've had this trajectory:

  1. only using AI for small things, very impressed by it
  2. giving AI bigger tasks and figuring out how to use it well for those bigger tasks
  3. full-agentic mode where AI just does its thing and I review the code at the end
  4. realising that I still need to think through all the code and that AI is not the shortcut I was hoping it to be (e.g. where I can give it a high-level plan and be reasonably satisfied with the final code)
  5. going back to giving AI small tasks
I've found AI is very useful for research, proof-of-concepts and throwaway code of "this works, but is completely unacceptable in production". It's work I tend to do anyway before I start tackling the final solution.

Big-picture coding is in my hands, but AI is good at filling in the logic for functions and helping out with other small things.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#97

Post by pmg101 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #62
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…

Visual Basic didn't exist in the 80's. First release was 1991.

Thanks for reminding me about Rational Rose though! That was a nostalgia trip

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#99

Post by apprentice7 »

BubbleRings wrote: post #82

Hi op. “Conform or be cast out” ha. Read your article then right after got an email announcing Rush tickets going on sale. Must be a sign I should go. I forwarded your article to my son the dev, since your post captured the magic of being a programmer so well. And yes Levy’s book Hackers is most excellent.

Subdivisions is my favourite song of all time and I thought about Rush as well while reading that line.

Re: The Programmer Identity Crisis

#100

Post by whynotminot »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #86
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…

> " ...without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to pay bills... " Oh, I wouldn't say that. The hacker culture of the 1970s from which the word hacker originated often poked fun at incurious corporate programmers and IIRC even Edsger Dijkstra wrote a fair bit of acerbic comments about them and their disinterest in the craft and science of computing.

Well, most of them (the hackers from the 70s) probably did do it solely for the love of the game.

We’re 50 years past that now. We’re in the era of boot camps. I feel semi confident saying “most of us” meaning the current developer work force are here for well paying jobs.

Don’t get me wrong I like software development! I enjoy my work. And I think I’d probably like it better than most things I’d otherwise be doing.

But what I’ve been getting at is that I enjoy it for the solving problems part. The actual writing of code itself for me just happens to be the best way to enjoy problem solving while making good money that enables a comfortable life.

To be put it another way, if being a SWE paid a poverty wage, I would not be living in a trailer doing this for my love of coding. I would go be a different kind of engineer.

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