Thread

1. alkonaut · 1785999287 · focus · HN ↗

   Programming has five phases effectively:

   1) You figure out what problem to solve.

   2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem.

   3) You actually implement the solution.

   4) You see the solution work, for yourself.

   5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on.

   If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you see steps 2-4 as mostly a chore. If you're a tinkerer, you don't care much for 1 and 5, and you see 2-4 as the whole point of programming. I'm a tinkerer. I'd be happy to just write code and throw it away. Coding is like solving sudokus. I could skip steps 1 and 5 forever. I don't ever need to show any code to anyone. In fact, most of the time when programming I do steps 2 and 3 and even skip 4. I don't even finish! I work weeks on something until I lose interest, and I know that in order to even run it, it would be several more weeks. A PoC is enough. Or just a half one. It's just code-to-structure-thoughts, not to create anything finished.

   The 5 phases look kind of symmetric. The outermost layer (1 and 5) are the entrepreneurial steps. If you're a product owner or CEO, you might work strictly at steps 1,5. Then steps 2-4 are the managerial/architectural steps. If you're a very senior IC at a large company, you might work at this level, without actually doing much coding. Only the inner most step (3) is the manual creation of source code. Even though it's 5 different phases, it's just "3 layers" of programming.

   The problem as I see it is that I enjoy step 3. And LLMs are good at step 3 almost exclusively. So they just pick the best bit of this dish, and leave me with the rest.

   If you're an entrepreneurial type, the LLM appears to take the _worst_ bit of the work from you. Great.

   1. shiomiru · 1786005924 · focus · HN ↗

      There's also the economic problem that programmers had until recently been highly regarded because steps 2-3 were hard. "Open source" solved this partially by utilizing the labor such (relatively) well-paid people gave away "for the love of it", but it was not nearly enough to put most out of work.

      Now there is a plagiarism machine built on top of decades of this work that seemingly solves 3 and promises to solve 2 (badly, but usually this matters little), the programmers that (indirectly) helped build it are told they're fools for doing so, and threatened by losing their status if they don't adapt to the "entrepreneurial way" (well, the full promise is "you'll lose it anyway, but if you cooperate in stuffing sama's pockets then maybe you get to keep it a bit longer").

      So what really surprises me is not that people are upset but that so few are.

      1. kypro · 1786010702 · focus · HN ↗

         This is unfortunately just the result of technological progress. People for centuries have crafted extremely hard to acquire skills over decades only to find their labour being made completely worthless due to automation or better alternatives disrupting their industry.

         Carpenters, hatters, cobblers, miners, weavers, calculators, etc...

         We can get mad about it, but it just is what it is. Ultimately for most people the loss of these jobs are a net-benefit because it's the result of better or cheaper alternatives.

         The thing that worries me more specifically about AI is that it has the potential not to just disrupt an industry, or handful of industries, but in theory everything.

         If machines are faster, strong, and more intelligent than humans, then you don't need human workers for anything. In the same way machines suddenly becoming faster and stronger than horses meant that the role of the horse in labour dropped rapidly during the industrial revolution.

         It's not clear how civilisation functions if humans become effectively useless and the only thing of value is one's ownership of wealth producing assets.

         Still, there's really no point in thinking about how we stop this. Humans are humans and we'll do the stupid thing then try to deal with the consequences after the fact. All regular people should be doing now is prepping for this outcome.

         1. gliall_err · 1786012202 · focus · HN ↗

            This is a sophomoric oversimplification.

            The US and Europe might have lost a lot of craftsmanship knowledge at a social level. Yet, what is left is so far ahead of what has ever existed in countries in South America for example. And China has gained a lot. Witness that youtuber trying to make grill brushes in the US. These differences have an impact in terms of opportunities and competition.

            It's easy to sit at home, watch documentaries and picture history progressing along logical lines and imagine that the "industrial revolution" was this massive shift from craftsmanship to automation. Look closer and you'll see that what happened in the UK in the 1700s was in fact enabled by a long and deep tradition of craftsmanship that only got enriched by the rise of new power sources. Craftsmanship today is vastly more advanced than it ever was before industry.

            And there is a lot to lose in the decline of craftsmanship, and it is by no means some sort of historical inevitability.

            When you really start digging deep into history you realize most arguments of logical trends therein are mostly just misconceptions.

            1. lp4v4n · 1786018060 · focus · HN ↗

               It certainly doesn't feel like craftsmanship has gained any kind of higher social standing in our time though. The Zeitgeist of the modern times seems to be one of 'try to do the cheapest sellable thing while paying people the least possible'.

               Real craftsmanship, the kind that leaves you in awe and feels like an exceptional display of human capacity, seems to be relegated, from my point of view, to a minority of well-off hobbyists who are already free from work and can do what they want without worrying about paying bills.

               1. trollbridge · 1786027951 · focus · HN ↗

                  Every craftsman I know expresses discomfort that the only way they can turn a profit is to sell goods to wealthy people.

                  1. SoftTalker · 1786029673 · focus · HN ↗

                     That seems odd. I'd rather turn a profit selling goods to people who can easily afford them than selling goods to people who will have to make hard choices or struggle to find the money.

                     1. seanw444 · 1786039486 · focus · HN ↗

                        That's one way to spin it. The other is that good quality things have become so low-demand and expensive due to barely-passable-quality things becoming so cheap, that people buying good quality things is now ironically more uneconomical than ever.
                     2. trollbridge · 1786043236 · focus · HN ↗

                        If you make really nice, high quality goods, you often want common people who would appreciate them to have it as opposed to an ultra wealthy person who is buying a door for their 2nd home they visit 3 times a year. (To use a real life example.) I needed a new door at the time and the craftsman told me how frustrated he was he wasn’t making nice doors for people like me.

                        I’ve felt the same frustration doing excellent quality work on a 2nd or 3rd home that is empty most of the year.

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