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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

#921

Post by oblio »

satvikpendem wrote: post #677
xigoi wrote: post #379

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. Programming was already “democratized” in the sense that anyone could learn to program for free, using only open-source software. Making everyone reliant on a few evil megacorporations is the opposite of democratization.

You know what they mean by that term, it's about building things without needing to put in the learning effort. I have bosses building small POCs via vibe coding, something they would not have done via learning to code and typing it manually. It's the same sort of argument artists use when it comes to AI generated media, there obviously is a qualitative difference in the people now able to generate whatever they want…

Nobody needs to maintain the average painting. The average painting doesn't have security vulnerabilities.

This is like democratizing house building.

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

#923

Post by monkey26 »

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…

50s here. I love building and designing software to solve problems. For years now I haven’t liked the actual coding part. AI has given me a super power.

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

#924

Post by crazygringo »

latexr wrote: post #899
crazygringo wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs aren’t “democratising” anything. They absolutely are. Anytime new knowledge or skills become widely available to everyone, that's a term used for it. > There’s no democracy in being mostly beholden to a few companies which own the largest and most powerful models, who can cut you off at any time, jack up the prices to inaccessibility, or unilaterally change the terms of the deal. None of that has anything to d…

Those things were already available. That’s the point. What do you think LLMs are trained on?

Huh?

There was no tool that could easily whip up a 300 line script to do something for me when I didn't know how to code, and do it in just seconds.

The topic here is the democratization of a whole set of new abilities. Not just knowledge.

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

#925

Post by r_lee »

heddycrow wrote: post #836
r_lee wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear that there will be a point where it won't be a choice, although a part of me wonders why there is such a hurry to get rid of devs in the first place, as these tech companies have insane margins But I also like to work the way you described it, and also by using Claude Code for e.g. K8s stuff (kubectl, helm) where you'd otherwise have to use a TUI or do a lot of typing just to get logs/status/etc. and a bunch o…

Fear is the mind killer.

So just have no fear? Then when should we have fear?

Fear is a natural response, one that in this case is perfectly appropriate imo. I don't fear for my life, but I'm not optimistic at the moment

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

#926

Post by firemelt »

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…

agree with u papa, fuck leetcode!

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

#927

Post by [deleted] »

mlrtime wrote: post #903
codazoda wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main point is that we need to expertly drive these tools. I forgot the trivial instruction and ended up with something that more closely resembles modern software instead of what I personally value. AI still requires our expertise to guide it. I'm not sure if that will be the case in a year, but it is today.

You seem intelligent so it is probably confusing to many why you are posting this. You call it a trivial instruction, but it is not trivial. It was a core requirement for your own design that you neglected to specify. This is not different than leaving out any other core requirement for a engineering specification. Most people would NOT want this requirement. Meaning most people wouldn't care if there are package dep…

[deleted]

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

#928

Post by pmarreck »

matsemann wrote: post #689
pmarreck wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think this era has divided developers into 2 types:

1) Those who are interested in the journey

2) Those who are interested in getting to the new destination

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

#929

Post by pmarreck »

amelius wrote: post #556
pmarreck wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Coding since 11. Using AI makes me completely lethargic. I really don't know how to fill the minutes that AI takes to write code. Maybe if AI gets faster I will be able to enjoy it. That said, like many people here I have invested quite some time in becoming a skilled and experienced coder, so there is no denying that this whole AI craze makes me feel like something is taken away from me.

> I really don't know how to fill the minutes that AI takes to write code

At any given time I have at least 4 terminals working on various pieces of a main project and/or side projects.

Whenever I have to wait on 1, I just flip to another. I find it very engaging because I can work on multiple pieces that all contribute to some overarching goal at the same time, concurrently.

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

#930

Post by pmarreck »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #587
pmarreck wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Way to blame the poster for their problems, and what the hell is a "short term career pivot"?

Who is blaming anyone?

Does someone blame the manual loom operators when automated weaving comes out? The elevator operators? The carriage drivers? The milkmen? No. So please stop reading your preconceived grievances into what I said.

I just see this as something that is not going to go away so the only rational choice is to get ahead of it and master it before it runs you over. If you love the act of creation and can adapt to a certain amount of change (or even see it as exciting), you'll be fine at this. If you have emotional hangups, well, that's irrational (no blame or judgment implied, it just... is literally irrational), and you might have to make some difficult choices that sit better with you.

I'm well-familiar with making irrational choices. I left a well-paid Microsoft shop and joined a startup and took a pay cut just so I could work with open source, years ago. It ended up paying off.

Do what your gut says. It's making the bets, after all.

And guess what. The people who have stared at code for years now are the ones who best stand to gain.

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