Yes, taking the bus to work will make me a worse runner than jogging there. Sometimes, I just want to get to a place.
Secondly, I'm not convinced the best way to learn to be a good programmer is just to do a whole project from 0 to 100. International practice is a thing.
> It's probably fine--unless you care about self-improvement or taking pride in your work.
I’m hired to solve business problems with technology, not to self-improve or get on my high horse because I hand-wrote a silly abstraction layer for the n-th time
> I love to write code. I very much do not love to read, review, and generate feedback on other people's code. I understand it's a good skill to develop and can be instrumental in helping to shape less experienced colleagues into more productive collaborators, but I still hate it.
Same.
Writing code is easy.
Reading code is very very hard.
Is it just me, or does anyone else use AI not just to write code, but to learn. Since I've been using Claude I've learned a lot about Rust by having it build things for me, then working with that code. I've never been a front end guy, but I had it write a Chrome plugin for me, then I used that code to learn how it works. It's not a black box to me, but I don't need to look up some CSS stuff I've never used. I can prompt Claude to write it and then I can look at it then "Huh, that's how it works". Better than researching it myself, I can see an example of exactly how it's done, then I learn from that.
I'm doing a lot of new things I never would have done before. Yes, I could have googled APIs and read tutorials, but I learn best by doing, and AI helps me learn a lot faster.
Exactly 2 years ago I remember people calling AI stochastic parrots with no actual intellectual capability and people on HN weren’t remotely worried that AI would take over there jobs.
I mean in 2 years the entire mentality shifted. Most people on HN were just completely and utterly wrong (also quite embarrassing if you read how self assured these people were, this is like 70 percent of HN at the time).
First AI is clearly not a stochastic parrot and second it hasn’t taken our jobs yet but we can all see that potential up ahead.
Now we get articles like this saying your skills will atrophy with AI because the entire industry is using it now.
I think it’s clear. Everyone’s skills will atrophy. This is the future. I fully expect in the coming decades that the generation after zoomers have never coded ever without the assistance of AI and they will have an even harder time finding jobs in software.
Also: because the change happened so fast you see tons of pockets of people who aren’t caught up yet. People who don’t realize that the above is the overarching reality. You’ll know you’re one of these people if AI hasn’t basically taken over your work place and you and your coworkers aren’t going all in on Claude or Codex. Give it another 2 years and everyone will flip here too.
I think, for those of us who have been in this industry for 20 years, AI isn't going to magically make me lose everything I learned.
However, for those in the first few years of their career, I'm definitely seeing the problem where junior devs are reaching for AI on everything, and aren't developing any skills that would allow them to do anything more than the AI can do or catch any of the mistakes that AI makes. I don't see them on a path that leads them from where they are to where I am.
A lot of my generation of developers is moving into management, switching fields, or simply retiring in their 40s. In theory there should be some of us left who can do what AI can't for another 20 years until we reach actual retirement age, but programming isn't a field that retains its older developers well. So this problem is going to catch up with us quickly.
Then again, I don't feel like I ever really lived up to any of the programmers I looked up to from the 80s and 90s, and I can't really point to many modern programmers I look up to in the same way. Moxie and Rob Nystrom, maybe? And the field hasn't collapsed, so maybe the next generation will figure out how to make it work.
So this author loves the easy part (writing code), hates the hard part (reading and reviewing), and lacks so much self awareness that he is going to lecture people on skill atrophy?
If you want to be an artist be an artist, that's fine, don't confuse artististry with engineering.
I write art code for myself, I engineer code professionally.
The author wraps with a false dichotomy that uses emotionally loaded language at the end: "You Believe We have Entered a New Post-Work Era, and Trust the Corporations to Shepherd Us Into It". I mean, what? Why can't I think it's quickly becoming a new era _and_ not trust corporations? Why does the author take that idea off the table? Is this logic or rhetoric? Who is this author trying to convince?
SWE life has always had smatterings of weird gatekeeping, self identities wrapped up in external tooling or paradigms, fragile egos, general misanthropy, post-hoc rationalization, etc. but... man watching the progressions of the crash outs these last few years has been wild.
I'm just enjoying the last few years of this career. Let me have fun!
Joking aside, we have to understand that this is the way software is being created and this tool is going to be the tool most trivial software (which most of us make) will be created with.
I feel like the industry is telling me: Adopt of become irrelevant
I get your points here; I've had a similar discussion with my VP of Engineering. His argument is that I'm not hired to write `if` statements, I'm hired to solve problems. AI can solve it faster that's what he cares about at the end of the day.
However I agree there's a different category here under the idea of 'craft'. I don't have a good way to express this. It's not that I'm writing these 'if' statements in a particular way, it's how the whole system is structured and I understand every single line and it's an expression of my clarity of the system in code.
I believe there a split between these two and both are focusing on different problems. Again I don't want to label, but if I *had to* I would say one side is business focused. Here's the thing though - your end customers don't give a fuck if it's built with AI or crafted by hand.
The other side is the craftsmanship, and I don't know how to express this to make sense.
I'm looking for a good way to express this - feeling? Reality? Practice?
IDK, but I do understand your side of it; However, I don't think many companies will give a shit.
If they can go to market in 2 weeks vs 2 month's you know what they'll choose.
While I agree with much of the sentiment, I believe a point will approach where the amount of code and likely its complexity; due to having been written by ai, will require ai to work with and maintain
I have always found it way easier to write code than to understand code written by someone else. I use Claude for research and architectural discussions, but only allow it to present code snippets, not to change any files. I treat those the same way I treat code from Stack Overflow and manually adapt them to the present coding guidelines and my aesthetics. Not a recipe for 10x, but it gets road blocks out of the way quickly.
Its honestly a phenomenal time to be a developer that doesnt use AI tooling. Its easier now than ever to differentiate yourself from increasingly knowledge-less devs who can only recite buzzwords but cant actually create, maintain, and improve remotely complex systems.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 62.9 ms ] threadYes, taking the bus to work will make me a worse runner than jogging there. Sometimes, I just want to get to a place.
Secondly, I'm not convinced the best way to learn to be a good programmer is just to do a whole project from 0 to 100. International practice is a thing.
I’m hired to solve business problems with technology, not to self-improve or get on my high horse because I hand-wrote a silly abstraction layer for the n-th time
Same. Writing code is easy. Reading code is very very hard.
I'm doing a lot of new things I never would have done before. Yes, I could have googled APIs and read tutorials, but I learn best by doing, and AI helps me learn a lot faster.
I mean in 2 years the entire mentality shifted. Most people on HN were just completely and utterly wrong (also quite embarrassing if you read how self assured these people were, this is like 70 percent of HN at the time).
First AI is clearly not a stochastic parrot and second it hasn’t taken our jobs yet but we can all see that potential up ahead.
Now we get articles like this saying your skills will atrophy with AI because the entire industry is using it now.
I think it’s clear. Everyone’s skills will atrophy. This is the future. I fully expect in the coming decades that the generation after zoomers have never coded ever without the assistance of AI and they will have an even harder time finding jobs in software.
Also: because the change happened so fast you see tons of pockets of people who aren’t caught up yet. People who don’t realize that the above is the overarching reality. You’ll know you’re one of these people if AI hasn’t basically taken over your work place and you and your coworkers aren’t going all in on Claude or Codex. Give it another 2 years and everyone will flip here too.
However, for those in the first few years of their career, I'm definitely seeing the problem where junior devs are reaching for AI on everything, and aren't developing any skills that would allow them to do anything more than the AI can do or catch any of the mistakes that AI makes. I don't see them on a path that leads them from where they are to where I am.
A lot of my generation of developers is moving into management, switching fields, or simply retiring in their 40s. In theory there should be some of us left who can do what AI can't for another 20 years until we reach actual retirement age, but programming isn't a field that retains its older developers well. So this problem is going to catch up with us quickly.
Then again, I don't feel like I ever really lived up to any of the programmers I looked up to from the 80s and 90s, and I can't really point to many modern programmers I look up to in the same way. Moxie and Rob Nystrom, maybe? And the field hasn't collapsed, so maybe the next generation will figure out how to make it work.
If you want to be an artist be an artist, that's fine, don't confuse artististry with engineering.
I write art code for myself, I engineer code professionally.
The author wraps with a false dichotomy that uses emotionally loaded language at the end: "You Believe We have Entered a New Post-Work Era, and Trust the Corporations to Shepherd Us Into It". I mean, what? Why can't I think it's quickly becoming a new era _and_ not trust corporations? Why does the author take that idea off the table? Is this logic or rhetoric? Who is this author trying to convince?
SWE life has always had smatterings of weird gatekeeping, self identities wrapped up in external tooling or paradigms, fragile egos, general misanthropy, post-hoc rationalization, etc. but... man watching the progressions of the crash outs these last few years has been wild.
C makes you a bad programmer. Real men code in assembler.
IDEs make you a bad programmer. Real men code in a text editor.
Intellisense / autocomplete makes you a bad programmer. Real men RTFM.
Round and round we go...
Anybody know any weavers making > 100k a year?
Joking aside, we have to understand that this is the way software is being created and this tool is going to be the tool most trivial software (which most of us make) will be created with.
I feel like the industry is telling me: Adopt of become irrelevant
However I agree there's a different category here under the idea of 'craft'. I don't have a good way to express this. It's not that I'm writing these 'if' statements in a particular way, it's how the whole system is structured and I understand every single line and it's an expression of my clarity of the system in code.
I believe there a split between these two and both are focusing on different problems. Again I don't want to label, but if I *had to* I would say one side is business focused. Here's the thing though - your end customers don't give a fuck if it's built with AI or crafted by hand.
The other side is the craftsmanship, and I don't know how to express this to make sense.
I'm looking for a good way to express this - feeling? Reality? Practice?
IDK, but I do understand your side of it; However, I don't think many companies will give a shit.
If they can go to market in 2 weeks vs 2 month's you know what they'll choose.
I know plenty of 50-something developers out of work because they stuck to their old ways and the tech world left them behind.