4 ms·

Does this value translate to anything real, like tons of money or tons of free time?

by wruza 2y ago

paulcole 2y ago
Not sure how to answer that because I’ve always had enough money and enough free time since I was 25 or so. I’m 40ish now and that’s not because I earn a ton but because I don’t need a ton and don’t dream about having a ton of money. I’ve been using ChatGPT for about the past 18 months to write scripts in minutes that would’ve taken me hours before (my role is not programming, I just learned how to do it because it was interesting and helpful). I try to set aside most Friday mornings (7-9AM) to automate tasks and work on scripting projects for the agency I work at. After 9AM I stop working unless I want to do something else. Without ChatGPT, I’d be getting less done even if I worked until 12 or 1PM. Is that a ton? It doesn’t feel like it to me but I work 30ish hours most weeks. In my opinion, the real value is that in the past, I was limited by my programming skill but am now limited by my creativity and knowledge of how our business works. It’s fun and interesting and I get more time where I can think more about the underlying business and spend almost no time learning how to do something technically. I’ve made quite a few things that have cut hours or days off of different projects or processes done by other team members I work with. I’m sure they don’t mind having less to do. I think about hiring someone to take this kind of work on for us and am sure I wouldn’t hire a trained programmer to do it. It just needs to be someone smart and curious regardless of background.
- wruza 2y ago
  Thanks for the answer, this makes a lot of sense. I'm approaching AI from the "deeper" dev perspective and it doesn't shine as much there. I spend basically the same amount of time, but get more annoyed. Although for getting into the unknown it's the best (mostly because search sucks like hell, but still). That said, in my experience the layer of people like you (iiuc) who can code but aren't fulltime repeatable-tasks developers is pretty thin. Maybe AI can add more people to it? One of my professional goals always was including more humans into the basic ad-hoc programming, but the "industry" was running away like hell from that. You are a perfect model of my idea, glad you finally found the way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810175
  - paulcole 2y ago
    From the article in that link: > It’s highly unlikely that software developers are going away any time soon. The job is definitely going to change, but I think there are going to be even more opportunities for software developers to make a comfortable living making cool stuff. And then what you said: > I think this effect will be even greater this time (last time being higher-level “slow” languages like python and js), because AI will allow for a new wave of developers who won’t care about the “right” code that much and will perceive it as a disposable resource rather than a form of art I agree. The problem up until now is that Learn to Code has always been a massive chasm to cross for most people. So like doing anything let alone anything useful felt like it was miles away for most people just getting started. I’m at a digital marketing agency and recently started our new hires on a AI 101 course I made that introduces them to how we use AI and various scripting/automation tools and just challenges them to make something useful and show it to me. We’re not really using ChatGPT to summarize an email or something like that. I mean like being able to chain together Google Apps Scripts, Asana API, Zapier, and something else to automate and simplify one of the repetitive tasks that you do everyday. And using ChatGPT to generate the code for each step of the chain. It’s been interesting to see how nearly all of them just go with it and don’t have any doubt or hesitation. But I think if you gave those same people a “learn to code” course, they’d think, “This isn’t something I’ll be good at.”

Does this value translate to anything real, like tons of money or tons of free time?

by wruza 2y ago

Does this value translate to anything real, like tons of money or tons of free time?

Not sure how to answer that because I’ve always had enough money and enough free time since I was 25 or so. I’m 40ish now and that’s not because I earn a ton but because I don’t need a ton and don’t dream about having a ton of money. I’ve been using ChatGPT for about the past 18 months to write scripts in minutes that would’ve taken me hours before (my role is not programming, I just learned how to do it because it was interesting and helpful). I try to set aside most Friday mornings (7-9AM) to automate tasks and work on scripting projects for the agency I work at. After 9AM I stop working unless I want to do something else. Without ChatGPT, I’d be getting less done even if I worked until 12 or 1PM. Is that a ton? It doesn’t feel like it to me but I work 30ish hours most weeks. In my opinion, the real value is that in the past, I was limited by my programming skill but am now limited by my creativity and knowledge of how our business works. It’s fun and interesting and I get more time where I can think more about the underlying business and spend almost no time learning how to do something technically. I’ve made quite a few things that have cut hours or days off of different projects or processes done by other team members I work with. I’m sure they don’t mind having less to do. I think about hiring someone to take this kind of work on for us and am sure I wouldn’t hire a trained programmer to do it. It just needs to be someone smart and curious regardless of background.

wruza 2y ago
Thanks for the answer, this makes a lot of sense. I'm approaching AI from the "deeper" dev perspective and it doesn't shine as much there. I spend basically the same amount of time, but get more annoyed. Although for getting into the unknown it's the best (mostly because search sucks like hell, but still). That said, in my experience the layer of people like you (iiuc) who can code but aren't fulltime repeatable-tasks developers is pretty thin. Maybe AI can add more people to it? One of my professional goals always was including more humans into the basic ad-hoc programming, but the "industry" was running away like hell from that. You are a perfect model of my idea, glad you finally found the way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42810175
- paulcole 2y ago
  From the article in that link: > It’s highly unlikely that software developers are going away any time soon. The job is definitely going to change, but I think there are going to be even more opportunities for software developers to make a comfortable living making cool stuff. And then what you said: > I think this effect will be even greater this time (last time being higher-level “slow” languages like python and js), because AI will allow for a new wave of developers who won’t care about the “right” code that much and will perceive it as a disposable resource rather than a form of art I agree. The problem up until now is that Learn to Code has always been a massive chasm to cross for most people. So like doing anything let alone anything useful felt like it was miles away for most people just getting started. I’m at a digital marketing agency and recently started our new hires on a AI 101 course I made that introduces them to how we use AI and various scripting/automation tools and just challenges them to make something useful and show it to me. We’re not really using ChatGPT to summarize an email or something like that. I mean like being able to chain together Google Apps Scripts, Asana API, Zapier, and something else to automate and simplify one of the repetitive tasks that you do everyday. And using ChatGPT to generate the code for each step of the chain. It’s been interesting to see how nearly all of them just go with it and don’t have any doubt or hesitation. But I think if you gave those same people a “learn to code” course, they’d think, “This isn’t something I’ll be good at.”