It is an amazing time for programmers • Hacker News Board

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#91

Post by raffael_de » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 12:38 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #64

laughing_man wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my brother said once with exasperation: "I got into this business to write code, and now I'm just an integrator."

integrator -> plumber

personally I don't find this particularly unappealing and have often referred to myself as some sort of plumber. plumbing is all about connecting standardized interfaces (threads) and then some improvisation. in IT the amount of improvisation is higher due to less standardized interfaces and interfaces are more complex. but the analogy works and I enjoy thinking about how to make interfaces exchange information efficiently.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#92

Post by raffael_de » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 12:46 PM UTC

jdw64 wrote: post #7

I also want to communicate with someone and have programming conversations. There's no one around me to talk about programming with. I'm the only programmer around. Aside from AI and books, I sometimes want to talk with a real person.

back in the days of LAN parties, assembling PCs, making your own website with HTML/CSS/Perl, torrenting music etc. it seemed like a lot of random people around me had some level of competence and enthusiasm for at least one IT area. this is all gone. while one can argue that given how comfortable UX got and so you no longer need to know what a file is, I nonetheless believe such enthusiasm has never been more important. instead people are happy with what a bunch of mega corporations spoon feed them.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#93

Post by alf42red » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

I think it's great that you can still follow people like Lawrence Paulson and Moshe Vardi. It's not only a great time for programmers but also for computer scientists. Platforms like LinkedIn make it easy to share a quick observation or question, and occasionally getting a reaction from leading researchers is one of the things that keeps me interested in the field.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#94

Post by FrayedKnot » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #80

It's not a great time to be a programmer, it's a great time to be a marketer that can program passably. While 10x programmers are getting ignored on social media, you can use your marketing skills to hype your half baked project into a few thousand GitHub stars, then into investment from a VC. The exception is game programmers. With AI/engines, making games has never been easier, Steam takes a lot of the guesswork ou…

Damn, sounds like you can make some easy money if you teamed up with a guy who is really good at marketing then, or taught yourself after market.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#95

Post by lelanthran » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

brookst wrote: post #75

lelanthran wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a previous post I lamented that my I should no longer call myself a software developer - after all, I write my own code! Maybe there should be a distinction between software creators and programmers.

In the same way there’s a distinction between writers and typists, and you really don’t hear anything about typists these days.

> In the same way there’s a distinction between writers and typists, and you really don’t hear anything about typists these days.

Not sure that analogy applies. I'd compare it to the difference between an engineer building a bridge and a politician ring-fencing the funds for it.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#96

Post by jlundberg » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

suncemoje wrote: post #63

austin-cheney wrote: post #58

Quite the gap. The legends the article talks about are legends because they either started a project that blew up in popularity and/or solved a demanded problem with original code. For most people writing software for a living that is gone. Its been gone since I started writing software 20 years ago. The goal post has moved. Its no longer about solving any problem. Its about hiring. The distinction is massive. Most o…

Reminds me of when Jensen Huang recently compared Linux to OpenClaw and showed this ridiculous GitHub star comparison. To me these projects are incomparable.

Yeah, GitHub stars is becoming a vanity metric and not indication of quality.

I have been contemplating a rating system for open source software with a mandatory tag for each star. Allows you to filter out perspectives you don’t care about.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#97

Post by embedding-shape » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

jlundberg wrote: post #96

suncemoje wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when Jensen Huang recently compared Linux to OpenClaw and showed this ridiculous GitHub star comparison. To me these projects are incomparable.

Yeah, GitHub stars is becoming a vanity metric and not indication of quality. I have been contemplating a rating system for open source software with a mandatory tag for each star. Allows you to filter out perspectives you don’t care about.

> GitHub stars is becoming a vanity metric and not indication of quality

Becoming? :D Since day one, me and other's have called it a vanity metric, and trying to push back on hiring decisions being made over what developers have the most starred repositories/followers (no joke, one place I worked at almost hired one developer over another because of their "total star count" :'( ).

Stars been around for as long as GitHub been around, and people actively shouting to get people to stop caring so much about stars been around for the same time yet.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#98

Post by jlundberg » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

alf42red wrote: post #93

I think it's great that you can still follow people like Lawrence Paulson and Moshe Vardi. It's not only a great time for programmers but also for computer scientists. Platforms like LinkedIn make it easy to share a quick observation or question, and occasionally getting a reaction from leading researchers is one of the things that keeps me interested in the field.

Very much this. Especially Daniel Stenberg or for Sweden more locally famous coders like Christian Landgren are very approachable on LinkedIn.

Makes for an intresting conversation and you can learn a lot by posting a well thought comment :)

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#99

Post by seba_dos1 » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

jlundberg wrote: post #96

suncemoje wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when Jensen Huang recently compared Linux to OpenClaw and showed this ridiculous GitHub star comparison. To me these projects are incomparable.

Yeah, GitHub stars is becoming a vanity metric and not indication of quality. I have been contemplating a rating system for open source software with a mandatory tag for each star. Allows you to filter out perspectives you don’t care about.

Have these stars ever been useful at all? For me they've been just a cute noise ever since they were introduced. A rough proxy for project's visibility in a certain specific context, nothing more.

Re: It is an amazing time for programmers

#100

Post by abc123abc123 » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #36

abc123abc123 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way! Email is great. I've written to many famous people, and from time to time, gotten replies. I've sold SaaS and consultants for 100s of k of USD, all through emails. It's an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.

Yeah, surely this will come to an end soon. My personal email is full of AI-generated recruiter email. I still read all my email (well, not the Updates or Promotions tabs in gmail), but I 'm not in any way famous.

Pro tip! Don't share your email with recruiters, and you won't get AI-generated recruiter emails. I get about 1 spam message every 2 months or so.