But it makes me happy in such an immediate serotonin spike it’s akin to a drug. It used to be that I’d sit there dreaming every night of new things I wanted to build. It was fun to think, “what if I devoted the next year to this idea?”, but that was always met with the realities of a 9-5 after.
Now I can build those ideas as fast as they hit me. They’re fleeting fancies though. A game here, an app there. It’s fun to see but there’s so much more digital waste.
It does make me happy though. I’d rather be able to live my dreams than let them pass me by. I do wonder about the addictiveness of it though - that hit it gives you is very, very real.
Agreed. I think there are people who like coding for the sake of it, akin to solving a puzzle. Then there are those who like building, and coding is a necessary step in that. The former are sad, the latter are happy.
That is how I feel. The first couple things I build with AI were exciting.
Now I derive no satisfaction from anything 'I' have built with it. At some point I am just stuck asking myself "Why am I doing this if someone can prompt an LLM the same way I have and get a similar result?". I can have the LLM write documentation, only to think "who am 'I' writing this for?". Why bother if someone isnt even going to read it, its just going to become context for someone else's LLM session.
I know there are other ways to look at but this is where I am at currently.
There are certainly people that are a mix of both, i lean towards the latter group, but still enjoy the feeling of being lost in the flow of certain tasks. What i lost was the hard problems, instead of considering how to solve those problems, that time is spent thinking up the next features or whatever, its a funny pivot and certainly pushes me towards being more of a generalist.
I still wouldn't say im "happy" with the current state of things though, despite mostly fitting in that latter group. AI is still fairly tiring to interact with, and everything feels contested. If its not contested, it feels like putting almost anything out there... means it will become contested when certain people see it and decide "that is a solid idea", and just throw agents at mirroring it.
It's not a dichotomy, though. I loved coding for the sake of it. I found it relaxing, meditative, and I was very good at it. I also like building things where coding is a necessary step.
And while I don't go all in on the notion of revealed preferences, a few facts stand out to me:
1. Nothing is actually stopping me from writing code by hand for fun, but I don't
2. There is no practical reason to manually write homebrew SNES games in assembly language, but some people do
3. I still have no deficit of fun problems to dig into, to sit and ponder, and then experiment with. They just aren't coding problems, and I have far more powerful tools to help me navigate prior art, test out hypotheses, and so on.
I like both. From an economic perspective I'm a little sad my programming skills give me less of an edge in the job market, but I still hand program here and there for fun.
I’m in the former group and I’m happy. I don’t think many people enjoy all coding. I like working on intricate details of difficult systems. I don’t like screwing around with build systems or writing a bunch of tests that are almost but not quite the same in order to cover all cases. I get to do what I like and delegate what I don’t.
This seems overly reductive. I’m firmly in the second camp, I don’t enjoy typing code, I want to be solving real world problems, not riddles. But I don’t consider a problem solved until I have understood it entirely, until I’ve anchored that new piece of understanding within my mental model of the domain, until I feel like I’m able to deploy that knowledge on demand and build upon it.
Working with AI tools the way many people seem to be doing it (multiple sessions at once, not even reading the output, rubber-stamping MRs) makes me anxious and paranoid, and it’s definitely NOT because I miss punching in if statements.
I didn't mean to make the options seem mutually exclusive, you just typically hear from one side or the other but there are plenty of people in the middle.
It's not the middle though, it's a rejection of that binary entirely. (I feel the same way as GP and also resent - not you per se, but we hear the more aggressive or reductionist version of this all the time - the world being framed such that the only possible reason we could have qualms about handing off understanding to the machine is that we just were too up our own butts in love with for loops.)
I’ve got a foot in both worlds and I feel pretty discombobulated. It’s amazing to be able to build whatever I imagine, but I also feel like something I loved has been taken away from me.
I keep thinking it would be interesting to do a series of interviews with software engineers on how they’re dealing with this change.
I think that’s not really true, it just looks that way from HN. I did a series of UXR interviews maybe 3 months ago for an unrelated project but one where we had to gain an understanding of how people use AI in their workflow, and it really still runs the gamut.
This dichotomy keeps coming up, but I think there are actually three phases of making, and three phases of pleasure, and people keep overlooking the third phase:
1. The joy of the process itself. If you're a programmer, it's writing code, running it, fixing bugs, making tests pass. If you're a woodworker, it's the feel of wood sliding under your fingers, a deft hand on a chisel.
2. The satisfaction of a completed work. For a programmer, that's an app you can run and click around and see the features up and running. For a woodworker, it's a sanded finished piece of furniture sitting there in the workshop.
3. Seeing the completed work make a difference in someone's life. For a programmer, that's a user telling you how your app helped them achieve a goal. For a woodworker, it's seeing that furniture in a room, watching it accumulate the patina of use.
So much of people talking past each other about AI comes from people who care a lot about 1 and people who never really cared about 1 but care about 2. It turns out there are many programmers who never really liked programming, they just wanted to have made an app. They are delighted about AI because it lets them skip a lot of step 1 and get right to 2.
But what I think is critically missing is that for most people, step 2 is marginal. It's step 3 where most of the real joy is. An app with zero users does not get you up in the morning. A piece of furniture collecting dust in an attic is not a source of meaning.
And the core problem with AI is that it gives you 2 by burning a whole lot of 3. Yes, you can whip up your "exercise tracker for cats" app in a tiny fraction of the time. So can a million other people. Your app is going to drown in a sea of other forgotten apps. Probably none of them will be maintained and none will reach critical mass.
I've done a lot of creative work over the years and time and again, as digital technology has lowered the barrier of entry, I've watched a horde of enthusiastic new people become disillusioned when it turns out they can make things now, but it's harder than ever to actually connect those things to people because everyone else can too.
I remember when DSLRs got a million people excited about being professional photographers, but now almost none are because photos are a mostly worthless commodity. I remember when CD mixers and Serato opened the doors to a million DJs who no longer had to buy expensive vinyl and struggle with beatmatching records. Now DJ mixes are a dime a dozen and it's harder than ever to be a working DJ. Recording an album used to require a room full of very expensive gear. Now anyone with a laptop and a DAW can do it. Publishing a novel required getting one of a small number of publishers to like it enough to print a thousand copies. Now anyone can upload a PDF to Amazon and share it with the world.
What happens when the barrier of entry gets radically lowered is that it requires some other extrinsic attribute to rise above the competition. In practice, that is either being rich and connected already, or getting extremely lucky. Domains where anyone can play have the steepest power law distributions. You have a few stars that everyone wishes they were and a million people doing it in their limited spare time. Unless you're already one of the elites, it's basically a lottery.
Now that's going to happen with software development.
Hmm, very pessimistic conclusion. Not that there's anything to disagree with, it's just putting it all down to luck or being born rich sounds too limited and narrow. If it isn't, then the only option would be becoming an activist no? But, maybe those are the only two things you see because you're putting the end goal way too high... as in being a renowned novelist to take one example, instead of someone with some following.
> If it isn't, then the only option would be becoming an activist no?
It certainly wouldn't hurt! I think a lot about how many people in the US would be willing to be artists barely making ends meet if doing so didn't also mean losing access to healthcare.
> But, maybe those are the only two things you see because you're putting the end goal way too high... as in being a renowned novelist to take one example, instead of someone with some following.
Yeah, I agree that it's important to set your sights lower. You can be a successful novelist without being the next J.K. Rowling.
But power laws and the way word of mouth works iteratively within social media is a merciless popularity engine. The best way to get popular is to be popular. There is a positive feedback loop that consolidates most attention on a small number of winners.
You can still find your niche (my two books did!), but it's hard. And finding a niche small enough to not get dwarfed by the superstars but large enough to be a sustainable source of income is nearly impossible. Almost every creative has a day job these days.
what is pessimistic about it? it seems spot-on to me. it is so weird how so many people in tech who should be capable at analysing seem to see logic and deductive thinking as pessimism these days.
I like coding for the sake of it, like solving a puzzle. for example I love Advent of Code challenges each year. I don't use AI for it (except for documentation look up) even though it could solve it trivially.
I used to like coding, and I did look at it as a puzzle. But at the end of the day I always thought it didn't go fast enough, and I had to do so much more work to be able to finish my own projects. That actually made me sad. Now I actually can do all of that. And while Claude is doing that, I just play Minecraft or something.
jjcm · · focus · HN ↗
But it makes me happy in such an immediate serotonin spike it’s akin to a drug. It used to be that I’d sit there dreaming every night of new things I wanted to build. It was fun to think, “what if I devoted the next year to this idea?”, but that was always met with the realities of a 9-5 after.
Now I can build those ideas as fast as they hit me. They’re fleeting fancies though. A game here, an app there. It’s fun to see but there’s so much more digital waste.
It does make me happy though. I’d rather be able to live my dreams than let them pass me by. I do wonder about the addictiveness of it though - that hit it gives you is very, very real.
jrflo · · focus · HN ↗
kyguy23 · · focus · HN ↗
tempest_ · · focus · HN ↗
Now I derive no satisfaction from anything 'I' have built with it. At some point I am just stuck asking myself "Why am I doing this if someone can prompt an LLM the same way I have and get a similar result?". I can have the LLM write documentation, only to think "who am 'I' writing this for?". Why bother if someone isnt even going to read it, its just going to become context for someone else's LLM session.
I know there are other ways to look at but this is where I am at currently.
tortilla · · focus · HN ↗
assumed_throwaw · · focus · HN ↗
There is more to software engineering than just "coding" or "building," and it's not even correct to oppose the two.
sidrag22 · · focus · HN ↗
I still wouldn't say im "happy" with the current state of things though, despite mostly fitting in that latter group. AI is still fairly tiring to interact with, and everything feels contested. If its not contested, it feels like putting almost anything out there... means it will become contested when certain people see it and decide "that is a solid idea", and just throw agents at mirroring it.
mistercow · · focus · HN ↗
And while I don't go all in on the notion of revealed preferences, a few facts stand out to me:
1. Nothing is actually stopping me from writing code by hand for fun, but I don't
2. There is no practical reason to manually write homebrew SNES games in assembly language, but some people do
3. I still have no deficit of fun problems to dig into, to sit and ponder, and then experiment with. They just aren't coding problems, and I have far more powerful tools to help me navigate prior art, test out hypotheses, and so on.
derangedHorse · · focus · HN ↗
throwaway89864 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
juanani · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
wat10000 · · focus · HN ↗
Toutouxc · · focus · HN ↗
Working with AI tools the way many people seem to be doing it (multiple sessions at once, not even reading the output, rubber-stamping MRs) makes me anxious and paranoid, and it’s definitely NOT because I miss punching in if statements.
jrflo · · focus · HN ↗
_dwt · · focus · HN ↗
slopinthebag · · focus · HN ↗
vigilantpuma · · focus · HN ↗
I keep thinking it would be interesting to do a series of interviews with software engineers on how they’re dealing with this change.
amelius · · focus · HN ↗
Beware of survivor bias though.
vigilantpuma · · focus · HN ↗
amelius · · focus · HN ↗
vigilantpuma · · focus · HN ↗
munificent · · focus · HN ↗
1. The joy of the process itself. If you're a programmer, it's writing code, running it, fixing bugs, making tests pass. If you're a woodworker, it's the feel of wood sliding under your fingers, a deft hand on a chisel.
2. The satisfaction of a completed work. For a programmer, that's an app you can run and click around and see the features up and running. For a woodworker, it's a sanded finished piece of furniture sitting there in the workshop.
3. Seeing the completed work make a difference in someone's life. For a programmer, that's a user telling you how your app helped them achieve a goal. For a woodworker, it's seeing that furniture in a room, watching it accumulate the patina of use.
So much of people talking past each other about AI comes from people who care a lot about 1 and people who never really cared about 1 but care about 2. It turns out there are many programmers who never really liked programming, they just wanted to have made an app. They are delighted about AI because it lets them skip a lot of step 1 and get right to 2.
But what I think is critically missing is that for most people, step 2 is marginal. It's step 3 where most of the real joy is. An app with zero users does not get you up in the morning. A piece of furniture collecting dust in an attic is not a source of meaning.
And the core problem with AI is that it gives you 2 by burning a whole lot of 3. Yes, you can whip up your "exercise tracker for cats" app in a tiny fraction of the time. So can a million other people. Your app is going to drown in a sea of other forgotten apps. Probably none of them will be maintained and none will reach critical mass.
I've done a lot of creative work over the years and time and again, as digital technology has lowered the barrier of entry, I've watched a horde of enthusiastic new people become disillusioned when it turns out they can make things now, but it's harder than ever to actually connect those things to people because everyone else can too.
I remember when DSLRs got a million people excited about being professional photographers, but now almost none are because photos are a mostly worthless commodity. I remember when CD mixers and Serato opened the doors to a million DJs who no longer had to buy expensive vinyl and struggle with beatmatching records. Now DJ mixes are a dime a dozen and it's harder than ever to be a working DJ. Recording an album used to require a room full of very expensive gear. Now anyone with a laptop and a DAW can do it. Publishing a novel required getting one of a small number of publishers to like it enough to print a thousand copies. Now anyone can upload a PDF to Amazon and share it with the world.
What happens when the barrier of entry gets radically lowered is that it requires some other extrinsic attribute to rise above the competition. In practice, that is either being rich and connected already, or getting extremely lucky. Domains where anyone can play have the steepest power law distributions. You have a few stars that everyone wishes they were and a million people doing it in their limited spare time. Unless you're already one of the elites, it's basically a lottery.
Now that's going to happen with software development.
card_zero · · focus · HN ↗
aquentinn · · focus · HN ↗
munificent · · focus · HN ↗
It certainly wouldn't hurt! I think a lot about how many people in the US would be willing to be artists barely making ends meet if doing so didn't also mean losing access to healthcare.
> But, maybe those are the only two things you see because you're putting the end goal way too high... as in being a renowned novelist to take one example, instead of someone with some following.
Yeah, I agree that it's important to set your sights lower. You can be a successful novelist without being the next J.K. Rowling.
But power laws and the way word of mouth works iteratively within social media is a merciless popularity engine. The best way to get popular is to be popular. There is a positive feedback loop that consolidates most attention on a small number of winners.
You can still find your niche (my two books did!), but it's hard. And finding a niche small enough to not get dwarfed by the superstars but large enough to be a sustainable source of income is nearly impossible. Almost every creative has a day job these days.
jambalaya8 · · focus · HN ↗
harpersealtako · · focus · HN ↗
I also like using AI to make things
I am happy
skerit · · focus · HN ↗