Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I want to be a Journey Programmer Again

hexhowells.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 79 posts

Re: I want to be a Journey Programmer Again

#5

Post by d3ckard »

bowsamic wrote: post #2

LLMs offered a much needed contrast that allowed me to understand the true value of what I do. Before LLMs I took it for granted

This is a very good point.

I have very similar thoughts after working with Cursor for a month and reviewing a lot of “vibe” code. I see the value of LLMs, but I also see what they don’t deliver.

At the same time, I am fully aware of different skill levels, backgrounds and approaches to work in the industry.

I expect two trends - salaries will become much higher, as an individual leverage will continue to grow. At the same time, demand for relatively low skill work will go to zero.

Re: I want to be a Journey Programmer Again

#6

Post by pyman »

Feels like we're heading towards a world where computer languages disappear, and we just use human language to tell machines what to do. Kinda like how typewriters got replaced by computers in the 80s. Back then, people spent so much time making sure there were no typos, they'd lose focus on the actual story they were trying to write.

Same thing's happening now with code. We waste so much time dealing with syntax, fixing bugs, naming variables, setting up configs, etc, and not enough time thinking about the real problem we're trying to solve.

From Assembly to English. What do you reckon?

Re: I want to be a Journey Programmer Again

#7

Post by Ciantic »

I often think this too. I'm both. When working for a client, I'm clearly a destination programmer. Choosing boring tech that I know of to get things done, which these days coincides with a tech that is also good for LLMs, as they are famously good with boring tech.

However, when I don't have deadlines, like in my Github creations, I'm clearly a journey programmer; I don't get anything fully finished usually. In these projects tech I use is something I usually wouldn't pick if I worked for a client.

Re: I want to be a Journey Programmer Again

#8

Post by ctoth »

Let me share a problem I solved recently (well, a year ago god I'm getting old)!

I had to write this template loader for my space sim... reference resolution, type mapping, and YAML parsing. This isn't the code I wanted to write. The code I wanted to write was behavior trees for AI traders, I'm playing with an idea where successful traders can combine behavior trees yada yada, fun side project.

But before I could touch any of that, I had to solve this reference resolution problem. I had to figure out how to handle cross-references between YAML files, map string types to Python classes, recursively fix nested references. Is this "journey programming"? Sure, technically. Did I learn something? I guess. But what I really learned is that I'd already solved variations of this problem a dozen times before.

This is exactly where I'd use Claude Code or Aider + plan.md now - not because I'm lazy or don't care about the journey, but because THIS isn't my journey. My journey is watching AI merchants discover trade routes, seeing factions evolve new strategies, debugging why the economy collapsed when I introduced a new resource.

OP treats all implementation details as equally valuable parts of "the journey," but that's like saying a novelist should grind their own ink. Maybe some writers find that meaningful. Most just want to write. I don't want to be a "destination programmer" - I want to be on a different journey than the one through template parsing hell.

Re: I want to be a Journey Programmer Again

#9

Post by sanderjd »

pyman wrote: post #6

Feels like we're heading towards a world where computer languages disappear, and we just use human language to tell machines what to do. Kinda like how typewriters got replaced by computers in the 80s. Back then, people spent so much time making sure there were no typos, they'd lose focus on the actual story they were trying to write. Same thing's happening now with code. We waste so much time dealing with syntax, fi…

As much as I'm finding LLMs incredibly useful, this "world where computer languages disappear" doesn't resonate with me at all. I have yet to see any workflows where the computer language is no longer a critical piece of the puzzle, or even significantly diminished in importance.

I think there is an important difference between LLM-interpreted English, and compiler-emitted Assembly, which is determinism.

The reason we're still going from human prompt to code to execution, rather than just prompt to execution, is that the code is the point at which determinism can be introduced. And I suspect it will always be useful to have this determinism capability. We certainly spend a lot of time debugging and fixing bugs, but we'd spend even more time on those activities if we couldn't encode the solutions to those bugs in a deterministic language.

Now, I won't be at all surprised if this determinism layer is reimplemented in totally different languages, that maybe are not even recognizable as "computer language". But I think we will always need some way to say "do exactly this thing" and the current computer languages remain much better for this than the current techniques to prompt AI models.

Re: I want to be a Journey Programmer Again

#10

Post by PartiallyTyped »

pyman wrote: post #6

Feels like we're heading towards a world where computer languages disappear, and we just use human language to tell machines what to do. Kinda like how typewriters got replaced by computers in the 80s. Back then, people spent so much time making sure there were no typos, they'd lose focus on the actual story they were trying to write. Same thing's happening now with code. We waste so much time dealing with syntax, fi…

Perhaps solving the real problem implies using programming languages?
Post reply on HN