7 ms·

Our efforts, in part, define us

295 points by todsacerdoti 1y ago

tolerance 1y ago
Was the pleasure of writing code that the author describes tied to the actual practice or its profits? My impression is that many white collar workers felt that their jobs and accompanying status were immutable. They’re not. Couldn’t they have seen this coming? Nothing prevents people from continuing on with their trades or interests how they did before the AI bubble bloomed. But if they want to earn a living doing it, I guess they need to start thinking outside of the box. I believe prolonged contact with insulation induces hive breakout.
- zwnow 1y ago
  In all honesty I value my craft and doing things without AI and id have much less of an issue with LLMs if people were more understanding of their capabilities and limitations. The tech environment is pushing AI into everything because its a fancy buzz word that's used to increase corporate share value. Personally I am pretty conflicted about using it considering its built upon theft and cheap labor. Making money isn't that nice if its unethical, and id keep that out of my company for as long as possible.
- bartread 1y ago
  I went through something like that transition the first time I moved into management. It took me by surprise how much I tied what I did to who I was, and how much it bothered me that I could no longer so easily articulate what I'd done during a day at work. It was no longer I made this, I made that, I added these features, I fixed those bugs. It was all relational. It was all meetings and conversations. It felt like anyone could be doing it. So I felt like I had no value. Like I was a spare wheel. Three or four years and in all that time I never made my peace with it. So burned out and dejected[0] I went back to software development and performance consulting. I did that for about 3 years. The second time I went into management was different. Maybe I was just older. Maybe I'd done a bit more reading and thinking about management and leadership. I certainly knew what I liked and disliked, and what I admired in other leaders. Because of the consulting I'd seen a variety of leaders at work in lots of different contexts, with different challenges, different styles, and different personalities. At any rate, I had a different and broader view of what good looked like. I also had a clear and strong remit and room to operate: build a new product, build and lead a new team, open an office, rearchitect and rebuild our platform, become CTO. But the critical change was that I now saw my value in enabling the success of others - our team, the teams that relied on our platform and products, our customers and clients - and so I loved my job (for the most part). This doesn't directly relate to AI but does show that it's possible to go through a transition where you lose a big part - or all - of what you thought gave you value, status, and satisfaction in a role, and grow into something new and valuable as a result of that. In my case that took for-fucking-ever - I've always been something of a late developer[1] - and many people reading this have and will adapt much more quickly. I'll say this: it's much easier to let go when you have a stronger idea of what "next" looks like[2], so figure out what that is. Software development is changing, for all of us, and even now nobody really knows what that means, but it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of opportunities. It's also worth bearing in mind that a lot of the more extreme viewpoints published online regarding AI and software development are no better than noise: they're just clickbait designed to generate reaction and engagement. Their real informational value is close to zero. That is obviously not the case with this piece, which describes the author's personal experience in our new AI enabled world. And I get their point about the craft. You really do feel that. But what you have to realise is the craft doesn't go away: it moves to a different level of abstraction. What can you (what can we) do now that you couldn't do before? What do the wrinkles and contours of that, where your (our) finesse will be needed, actually look like? This all reads more like a pile of scattered thoughts than I'd intended, but hopefully there's some value in there for some of you. [0] Not just for these reasons: there were other things - including one or two other major contributors - going on that I don't want to talk about here, but my lack of comfort with the nature of my role was certainly a somewhat chunky factor. Just don't overread or assume too much from what I'm saying. [1] No pun intended - nobody should read anything delivery related into this comment. [2] This touches on some of those issues I didn't want to talk about. Within that organisational context I'd reached a ceiling and no-one, including me, was grown up enough to be real about that. So I kept trying to push on and break through and, well, I guess we all wasted a lot of eachother's time although, from my side, I don't feel too bad about it.
  - tolerance 1y ago
    These passages, right here: > But the critical change was that I now saw my value in enabling the success of others - our team, the teams that relied on our platform and products, our customers and clients - and so I loved my job (for the most part). > This doesn't directly relate to AI but does show that it's possible to go through a transition where you lose a big part - or all - of what you thought gave you value, status, and satisfaction in a role, and grow into something new and valuable as a result of that. > Represent the perspectives I was hoping to invite with my comment. The paragraph immediately following these was equally great. I’ve read a lot of interesting remarks about people who’ve gone back and forth between programming and management positions in tech and I can relate to the experience in some ways. What you and the author are describing is legitimate. And I think that your experience occurring while making an apparent step forward in your profession (as opposed to the step backwards that AI imposes) indicates something…special about man, his craft and its relation to himself and his perceived value to others (or lack thereof) while practicing his craft. I think this is a common thing, generally speaking. On one end, there are plenty of people in other (less-paying, less-appealing) industries who have gone through these kind of experiences—past and present—so it’s easy for someone like me to feel apathetic in this case. For better or worse it’s a privilege that there are some people who are able to articulate their particular circumstances, under a shared shade. I guess this is the point where the Marxists begin to revel in the bourgeois gaining “class consciousness”. I haven’t checked on all the literature to be sure how that often turns out in history.
    - bartread 1y ago
      > (as opposed to the step backwards that AI imposes) I guess this is my only quibble: is it really a step backwards? I can get on board with the idea that maybe the jury is out, but the evidence I've seen and experienced is more that it's a force multiplier than anything else. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we're all fucked. But for now at least I think reports of the death of software development as a profession are greatly exaggerated.
      - tolerance 1y ago
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  I'm not sure we are built for this on a societal scale. I understand the reasoning rationally. Sure, nobody pitied the horseshoe-maker blacksmith who was proud of his craft when the car was invented. Or the tailors when clothing became cheaply mass-produced. Or even the miners after many mines closed. Yeah I get it. "You learned a craft and it's no longer needed. Sucks to suck. Try to be useful in some other way or get bent." Having to reinvent your career when you are 30+/40+/50+ is not so simple. You studied something, amassed experience and tacit knowledge, taste and work habits. It used to be the case that you learned as an apprentice (or simply grew up on a farm and saw the work) and then continued it the rest of your life. We will be more and more efficient at pumping more wealth to the owner classes, but people will be spiritually ground down.
  - tolerance 1y ago
    The loss of self that comes with being effectively severed from society through labor exclusion is…a radical process. I read in a book titled The Technology Trap about how in the past, rulers withheld technological advancements and gave strategic deference to the people whose labor would be most affected by them, so as it not put their own necks at risk. That doesn’t seem to be a concern today.
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      The AI debacle is unusual as it's alive in disinformation at a scale that penetrates every status class. Of course AI is a failure of imagination. But so were symbols, which cannot reference, they can only represent, if at all. The real function of AI appears to be the transition away from symbols, metaphors, folk science cause and effect ideation. We're only barely sensing this, but if you listen to Gary Marcus, Rich Sutton and those willing to see the larger scales, they are bellwethers that are actually sinking their own approaches as well as LLMs. In effect, labor is about to reap the benefits of the AI debacle. I see this in the AI at the major teaching hospital my sister is a department head of. In lead developers in gaming, in media. AI does not function well, it's essentially wax fruit, it's not even mimicry. That's going to lead to an analog rebirth.
- pettertb 1y ago
  That is not how people work, especially if they want to do good work. You need to imbue your career with a little bit of your identity, a little bit of your soul. Coding, auto-repair, horse-rearing, plumbing, accountancy, what have you. You do well to limit this somewhat. But it is inevitable, if you want to achieve anything. You are going to end up smelling somewhat like your work clothes, no matter your industry, no matter the year. We can't all have the mission statement "to make money", if the machines of money-making are to function. You would never have the nevessary skills that way. Not saying that we do well to spend the next 30 years griping, we don't. But don't shame people from being hurt by the whims of business. People need to grieve lost stuff, goes for AI, goes for "auto plant went out of business", goes for anything.
  - tolerance 1y ago
    I reckon that shame was once an effective method of communal correction and accountability. But it wasn’t my intent to affect it. So no, I agree, don’t shame people for being hurt by the whims of business. But I would say, encourage the newcomers to this experience (who I suspect are exceptional in their sociopolitical status compared to their predecessors) to re-envision themselves and the ways that they render their service beyond prior cushiony contexts. Businesses may not need you, you may make much less than before. But society sorely does need you in some capacity and the unfortunate case is that, to be frank, not too many people are going to be quick to boo-hoo with you over your loss because they’ve gone through something like it before already. Them or a loved one. This is an American phenomenon. Join and be of aid to your countrymen. But don’t get SaaSy.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    Online people have this redditism that it's some American weirdness that people "live to work", while in Europe people "work to live" and stretch this too far. People (especially men) throughout the ages and regions have seen their work as a critical component of their identity, whether it be a craft or farming. The honor in completing the day's work, being valued for having a skill, honing that skill over the years, etc. It's not by itself a symptom of a workaholic. This can leave space for family and friends and neighbors too. But the idea that your job is supposed to be purely superficial is way overblown. It's a symptom of the generic alienated work that is full of useless meetings and business-buzzword-bingo-lingo and you can't coherently formulate in words to an outsider what even that job is, or how it concretely contributes to the betterment of the community/world/people (aka bullshit job).
type0 1y ago
Speaking of efforts, Japanese woodworking and carpentry are completely different https://www.arch2o.com/how-japanese-wood-joints-work-without-nails-the-ancient-art-of-kigumi-in-modern-architecture/ https://www.arch2o.com/how-japanese-wood-joints-work-without...
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I can relate. I treat my coding as a craft. That has become much easier, since retiring. I'm quite aware that doing things my way isn't commercially viable, but no one pays me to do it. I do it for myself. That said, I find that it's important to always be challenging myself[0]. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
- heliographe 1y ago
  > I'm quite aware that doing things my way isn't commercially viable Depends what you mean by “commercially viable”. I’ve been making high quality products as an independent software developer in the photography space for a bit over 2 years now, and while I’m nowhere near my former big tech company salary, I still make more than needed to pay for life every month (not living an extravagant lifestyle somewhere with ridiculous cost of living does help). And I still feel like I’m far from having reached full potential in my addressable market and the kind of products I want to build - I have indie developer friends who are pretty close to their former big tech salary, after 5+ years. So, despair not :)
  - eloisius 1y ago
    Cool apps btw. The trichromy one is a lot of fun. Cool that you’re earning money making this.
    - heliographe 1y ago
      Cheers! Got an update coming out soon for that one, it's actually the one that makes the least money haha. I think it's way too nerdy and weird to ever hope to reach a broad audience even amongst photographers, unlike the others that are more approachable. But I still use it on a weekly basis myself so I just can't stop refining it. I've been obsessed with the trichromatic process for 10+ years, ever since I discovered the work of Prokudin Gorsky (even built a website about the process and history: https://trichromy.com https://trichromy.com, due for a refresh some time). Such a clever approach to color photography that results in such a unique aesthetic.
apples_oranges 1y ago
The internet evolved as programming became a sought after path. But with the internet, a irreversible change happened in our society. Old facts are being questioned and it is imho just a matter of time until they materialize „in the real world“. This might include questions of status, achievement, the idea of self worth and the role of work. We should not insist to measure new things with old rulers.
foamdino 1y ago
I can relate to this thought process and had my own conflicted thoughts about AI and the role it (and I) play in the SWE future: https://medium.com/@kev.jackson/two-months-of-an-ai-partnership-c0575416470f https://medium.com/@kev.jackson/two-months-of-an-ai-partners... - I'm still conflicted
- deleted 1y ago
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- nuancebydefault 1y ago
  Your Medium piece is a nice read!
bsenftner 1y ago
Maybe this is a neurodivergent thing, but I have, as long as I can remember, always had the following progression in my mind: "What are you doing? No, that's this situation's name, what is this really?" and I'd continue a few times seeking the "larger problem, the more basic problem being solved" that whatever I was doing "really is". That "basic problem" was "communicating" far more frequently than I expected, and that "communicating" was often just translating between things, people and software, or people and people, or software and software. But it's almost always communicating.
- nuancebydefault 1y ago
  Indeed. If we SW developers define ourselves as 'coders', we could easily end up into this identity crisis which the article seems to refer to. But in fact we are much more than that. We are problem solvers and a big part of it is understanding, defining and refining the problem itself and in finding an elegant solution. The meaningfulness comes from all the communication and experimenting involved with that process, and in the creativity needed to design an elegant solution. In fact the more boring part is often the coding itself.
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    This is the frustrating part of software engineering too; the coding itself is the "boring" part, but for me and many others it's also the most fun and gratifying part, the thing you really want to be doing. Something to grow out of I suppose, but still. The AI vendors want to sell to upper management that that part is what's slowing their company down or costing a lot of money, but I don't think it's that. And in a few years (or now already), AI tooling will probably be an accepted part of the toolchain, but software engineers will always be necessary. Cobol said you won't need coders anymore because it's basically English. Dreamweaver and Frontpage said you won't need to know HTML because you can just build a website by clicking and typing. No-code platforms said you won't need coders anymore because you can just click and drag. AI evangelists say you don't need coders anymore because you just type in a prompt and working software comes out.
    - 1y ago
anovikov 1y ago
I sometimes identify as "ex-programmer" these days, just because whatever coding i could do is now irrelevant due to LLMs, but this isn't entirely honest. Programming was never my job. My job was "convincing people to transfer money to my account under various pretexts, most of which involved me writing some code", and as such, the thing is pretty much alive.
- oytis 1y ago
  Have you got good results with LLMs for low-level development? For embedded I've found them mostly useless.
  - anovikov 1y ago
    I have reworked a lot of code i built myself with AVX2 and Neon, to become much better, more maintainable and faster too, with LLMs.
- kakacik 1y ago
  Don't know your area but llms are not taking many software dev jobs around here. Its like saying clueless juniors who sometimes produce good snippets of code and sometimes struggle to distinguish left from right are taking jobs of some seniors... not happening en masse anytime soon. Some other types of jobs sure.
- slaterbug 1y ago
  You don't program at all now? It's all generated? I only ask because I find myself on the tools most of the time still. The difference in how different people experience this tech is astounding sometimes.
  - anovikov 1y ago
    I debug a lot. LLM tools still can't figure how to use a debugger. That's about it. I'm sure they will soon.
    - 1y ago
repeekad 1y ago
Amish communities have rejected “modern” technology convenience in exchange for good hard work for centuries and never looked back
- falcor84 1y ago
  > never looked back Obviously there are very many Amish people who leave their communities to join the modern world - according to various sources this attrition seems to be between 15-25%. And even amongst those who stay, it's likely that a central reason is the fear of excommunication/shunning, rather than an inherent desire to reject modern technology.
  - spiffytech 1y ago
    Also many Amish people engage in rules lawyering to access forbidden technology without violating the letter of the rules. And even abiding with the spirit of the rules, they use more technology than outsiders realize.
  - raddan 1y ago
    It’s worth mentioning that the Amish aside, there are many groups of people who understand that work has to be done, but do it in a way that elevates the idea that humans can seek transcendence through work. The Shaker communities in my part of the US come to mind. They were not anti-technology by any stretch of the imagination. But they did care about work’s role in being a part of a whole. There are still remnants of that mindset here. For example, I have lately been spending time with people who like to build houses using traditional techniques; while hand tools often play a role, it’s not because they hate technology. There are lots of power tools being used as well. Instead, it’s about asking “what is best?” and “how do I want to spend my working life?”
    - getpokedagain 1y ago
      I vaguely recall a childhood acquaintance who was from a shaker family and they had a computer. I'm very tempted to look them up and see their take on computing and ai. Thanks for the memory stir.
globalhsbc 1y ago
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andrewstuart 1y ago
I became a computer programmer because I want the computer to do things. I’m not a programmer because I wanted to program. Thus AI is incredibly exciting to me because it makes it easier to make computers do things.
- makerofthings 1y ago
  I became a programmer because I like to write code. Having an llm write code for me is like building a robot that eats cake.
  - andrewstuart 1y ago
    I can understand then why you might not enjoy using AI to make a computer do your bidding.
  - andai 1y ago
    For me it is both. I love certain kinds of programming, and don't enjoy other kinds. I'm naturally very good at some kinds, and not good at other kinds, despite putting in enormous effort. I guess ideally I'd get a job that is perfectly aligned with this profile (a work in progress!), but AI allows me to deal with the reality I have now in a much more pleasant and productive way.
    - codr7 1y ago
      Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of research showing that perspective is usually a distortion of some kind. Which makes sense, you have someone at your shoulder constantly reassuring you and bubbling ideas; I can see how it feels productive. Many report feeling more stressed, because the spaces where they used to think are no longer there.
      - pseudalopex 1y ago
        > Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of research showing that perspective is usually a distortion of some kind. I saw 1 study which suggested this.[1] Were there more? [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089 https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089
shubhamjain 1y ago
> For myself, in the last 10 years, my work of writing code has largely defined what I do with my working time. Now I experience large swaths of that work being created and done by AI (sometimes amazingly well, sometimes poorly), and I find myself thinking of the photographer above. Which is ironic, because smartphone photography is astonishingly average to someone who actually understands photography. Phones try to handle every scenario for the user. It has been optimized for bright outdoors, low light conditions, even specific stuff like sunsets. So most people never realize how difficult it really is to shoot in bright daylight with the light source behind the subject. Only when you pick up a traditional camera do you realize that’s one of the worst conditions to take a photo in. Maybe coding is headed toward the same place. AI coding will smooth out complexity for the majority of programmers, but at the same time, we’ll also see a lot of programmers building things that don’t actually need to be built, or not realizing the limits of their solutions, or just hung in the narrow space of what AI can do for them. Having done photography with Sony-a6000, I’ve found that it made me more skilled with a smartphone camera. So, I am still optimistic that knowledge gained through deliberate effort has value, even in a world that increasingly prizes “effortlessness” in everything. But only time will tell how much that belief really holds up.
- sethjgore 1y ago
  One up for a6000! Definitely taught me the same things you mentioned. A great entry level camera.
- skydhash 1y ago
  > AI coding will smooth out complexity for the majority of programmers, but at the same time, we’ll also see a lot of programmers building things that don’t actually need to be built, or not realizing the limits of their solutions, or just hung in the narrow space of what AI can do for them. The computers is a very dumb machine. It does exactly what you tell it to do and nothing else. Complexity in programming stems from the need to formalize things and specifying every single detail of the algorithms. Using AI can give you patterns for the most common things, but everything common is likely to be soon a library or a framework. So what you're instead doing is reinvent the wheel, but differently and the result is likely broken. Good enough for short runs (scripts), but anywhere you want something to last, then the cracks will start to appear. The things with photography is that it's a spectrum. But software is discrete. It either works or it doesn't.
pettertb 1y ago
I can relate. It is important to meet this head-on, and not gloss over it, explain it away, or shame people for feeling this way. I even feel this about the wargame "Warmachine", where in the past you could not measure distance before committing to actions. Deciding if model A and B were 10" or 14" apart was a critical skill, and called "weaponized geometry". I was good at it. The game has changed, and you can now measure to your hearts content, making this skill basically pointless. I still feel a tiny bit conflicted about it. Dublin in the Rare Old Times - The Dubliners Like my house that fell to progress//My trade's a memory
aubanel 1y ago
"And I tell you, you may only avoid an effort in the name of a greater one, for you must grow" Antoine de Saint Exupéry (author of The Little Prince), in Citadelle
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
When you can rattle off reams of code that may or may not solve the right problem, you’ve just shifted the effort.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
> If our efforts, in part, define us, then our efforts have intrinsic value. By definition this is instrumental value rather than intrinsic value.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  Middle class people can't distinguish their work from their identity. They seek a perfect harmony of purpose and output, in order to be the perfect servant. They need to sustain this for a lifetime, so their pleasure must come from the work (or they can supplement this with a hobby that is extremely job-shaped.) If they fail at this, they will be ejected from the middle class, and their children will not be properly educated, therefore never beginning the middle class journey. If you're born poor, it's easy to stay poor all your life; if you're born rich, it's easy to stay rich all your life; the middle class is the class that has to reproduce itself every generation and sustain itself by constant service and sublimation of their desires and dreams. That's why they're simultaneously overpaid and overtaxed - just to keep them caged and desperate, a layoff away from a family annihilation. Loyal to death. Fear of Falling by Barbara Ehrenreich is a good book about this. This essay is pompous. Just say: I'm afraid my job is going to leave me, and it makes me feel insecure. Maybe sympathize a little when all of the storefronts on Main Street in some small town are empty after the dog food plant got obsoleted by Chinese imports, instead of telling them they should learn to code like you and to move to where the jobs are.
  - kakacik 1y ago
    Interesting perspective, I believe its way more valid for US than say Europe which has way more job/career obsession and sort of class system based on career/wealth status. Middle class is squeezed everywhere, that's true. But I sincerely doubt young generations 'can't distinguish their work from their identity' en masse. Thats a recipe for disaster, at latest during retirement, probably with first firing from the job and generally a big stupid no-no. But don't expect state will drill this into you in the schools, its up to everybody to look around and figure these things out for themselves, just like rest if life (TM).
  - alexashka 1y ago
cainxinth 1y ago
The effort is up to you on your own time. I have an e-bike and a regular bike. The regular bike gets way more use because I prefer the satisfaction I get from it. Also, speaking as someone that uses LLMs every day, they take effort! They cannot spin straw into gold. The terrible work I see coming from AI is usually from someone who doesn’t realize that.
- kayo_20211030 1y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's not essentially the effort, it's the satisfaction. The former is the means, the latter the ends. If something is satisfying then the effort seems worth it. If using a push-bike satisfies you then carry on. If you have only five minutes to catch that train and the push-bike's not going to get you there on time, then use the e-bike and catch that train. That's satisfying too; this time as an outcome, but still satisfying.
caerwy 1y ago
Following Karl Popper's thinking on this topic, I'd say that our problems define us, and when we solve our problems we often discover new and interesting children problems demanding attention. “The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.” — Karl Popper
- card_zero 1y ago
  That's not a real Popper quote, is it. The sentiment is nice, but it must be radically paraphrased, because he doesn't generate pithy quotes very often. > To conclude, I think that there is only one way to science—or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part—unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem, or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days. https://archive.org/details/realismaimofscie0000popp/page/8/mode/2up?q=%22to+meet+a+problem%2C+to+see+its+beauty+and+fall+in+love+with+it%22 https://archive.org/details/realismaimofscie0000popp/page/8/... Edit: if I heed the content of the paragraphs just before this quote, maybe I should prefer the rewritten version.
  - jebarker 1y ago
    This feels right to me, but I wonder what he was thinking of when he said “problem”. For me life is most effortless when I’m working on math or cs problems/puzzles but I sometimes get this guilty feeling that I “should” be working on a problem that is useful to the rest of the world.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      Yeah, there's problems, like puzzles and mysteries, and then there's difficulties, and there's no sharp dividing line but the difficulties are less fun. And are also called problems. So far as moral duty goes, play to your strengths, you're at your best when having fun. This conveniently evaluates to "do what you like". It's not perfectly true, but you can get away with it, blamelessly. Nobody needs you miserable, usually. Then there's the wrinkle where the importance of something to humanity (or even the promise of a large cash reward) may make it fun ... if you happen to feel that way.
hermannj314 1y ago
The people convincing you it is a virtue to move fast always happen to be selling a car. Be careful that you aren't optimizing your life in response to someone else's marketing campaign.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago
  Hesitation is another side of the bad decision coin. Good decisions are lost due to overanalysis. Charlie Munger: "A lot of opportunities in life tend to last a short while, due to some temporary inefficiency."
  - deleted 1y ago
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  - gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
    Had Archimedes lived to teach the Romans his calculus we might have reached Mars by 500 AD https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o that's not from hesitation. And one can only call the Syracuse invasion an inefficiency in hindsight. The immediate opportunity of a ~million Roman lives compared to other hypothetical opportunities (One might guess that opportunities of the win-win type weren't covered by Munger's model)
    - tyre 1y ago
      It's highly unlikely that the Romans could have had the industrial revolution[0], so I'm doubtful that calculus alone would have gotten them to Mars. [0]: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
      - gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
        A different take: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-18904-3 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-18904-3 (Maybe the Greeks' themselves could have done it, they already had a rudimentary steam engine )
barrenko 1y ago
Just because you like to paint does by no means entail you'd like doing photography.
dzink 1y ago
We are a cerebellum. Our brain summarizes one layer of data into insights for the layer above that and programming is one layer. AI is now forcing us to think not how things should be built but what should we built - everyone is a promoted to product manager. What should be built now can be answered by what is needed by humans, or companies, or AI, or government. All of the above should be serving humans. So what do people want or need? How can we harness AI to solve more needs. I think of it from another angle. AI is reaching an energy limit. Companies are way overvalued and in a race to spend most of their gains on AI and that may end badly. Governments are on edge and conflict is brewing. All of that and unknown unknowns can put a stop on the amazing stream of affordable AI we have now. I am using the models as fast as possible to build things I find meaningful and to learn as much as possible. Having unlimited help with any idea that I come up with is incredible. It’s akin to infinite VC funding, but you don’t owe equity or a cent back. The world is now what your cerebellum can come up with. And what you know about the needs of people.
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
>If our efforts, in part, define us, then our efforts have intrinsic value. What happens when something we enjoy doing that took effort becomes effortless? And what happens if that original effort was a foundation on which we saw value in ourselves? I found the flaw. Effort is the process of converting energy into value (the state of something being effortless in the future). It's not the efforts themselves that have intrinsic value, but the work ethic that drove the effort in the first place.
darepublic 1y ago
Some friction required for enjoyment. AI too slippery a lubricant
- dostick 1y ago
  You can always squeeze tighter. Or find tighter place to apply the effort.
hn_throw_250926 1y ago
This was written by a dev so it has the usual hallmarks of ascribing some anecdote to a generalized statement about people, their life’s purpose and so on. Take it with a grain of salt.
- falcor84 1y ago
  What does this have to do with devs? Isn't all writing personal at its core?
aeon_ai 1y ago
At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value, and then optimize our entire lives according to that myth. The idea that AI destroys meaning is a false framing. Many people are already experiencing a meaning crisis, and AI is simply an easy scapegoat. Purpose comes from discovering our own values through living, not from accepting meanings imposed by others.
- dangus 1y ago
  I’d also extend this by saying that you can just exist and be happy and then die. There’s no need to be defined by some effort you’re putting into some kind of work or hobby. If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. And that’s a bit of a problem with this article. The photographer that wants to quit because of digital photography? I find that odd, it seems to me like the film community has a really great time with the craft of film photography in the digital age. If anything, the massive shrinkage in available professional labs should make the art of developing your own photos even more validating. Why didn’t this photographer want to quit when Kodak made disposable cameras and CVS would develop your photos in an hour? I submit that it isn’t digital photography that killed their hobby/passion. It’s okay to not love doing something anymore and take a break or move on to something else. I think this idea that it defines you is a bit of a toxic validation mechanism.
  - dfee 1y ago
    > If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. This is written from a different values perspective than mine, but I can understand it. I think you’d have made a stronger point if you’d focused on internal validation, though. For many, the ideal is internal integrity driving oneself forward. I say ideal, because we’re imperfect creatures - external validation, greed, etc. slip in. Overall though, a life on the beach sipping coconuts sounds immediately appealing, but long term empty. I’m not going to tell you it’s working 996, either. For me, the journey is finding what makes me whole - through many failed starts.
joeyhage 1y ago
As others have mentioned, LLMs require a lot of effort to get it right. Personally, I still prefer writing code over writing LLM prompts but I’m trying to find the right balance. I will always enjoy refactoring so I tend to have the LLM get me most of the way there and leave the polishing for myself.
d--b 1y ago
I have a feeling that these feelings come from culture. Protestantism or Japanese cultures really value effort in a way mediterannean culture (for instance) does not. Think about Flemish paintings that have all these very intricate details, while Italian painters invented the messy sfumato. I don't like that digital cameras took over, because I don't like the quality of digital pictures, but I love that LLMs are taking stuff off my plate / brain. I have absolutely zero romanticism associated with effort. I do romanticize smartness. Gauss finding n*(n+1) / 2 because he didn't want to sum numbers by hand is my absolute hero. Of course he was protestant so what I just said really doesn't make much sense.
HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
It's still largely unclear how AI is going to affect the job of software engineers both in the shorter term, pre-AGI, and after that. However, I'm pretty sure that the job of SWE isn't about to disappear, since even when human-level AGI appears, the process of software development isn't about to get any easier than when it was done by actual humans. I don't see non-technical middle managers able to take over as systems architects and lead developers. It'll just mean that the day-to-day of those charged with developing software per PHB's requirements changes. That said, I do feel fortunate to have been from the generation where software was developed entirely by hand, having started in the era of 8-bitters (NASCOM-1 in 1978) and only just in the last year transitioning (against my preference) to a role of overseeing offshore developers rather than being hands-on. Still, I think that those who enjoy the challenge and fun of conjuring up dreams out of software will still find plenty to enjoy in the future, although it will be different, just as it has already changed a lot from the time when we were writing everything in assembler to today arguing about whether Rust is better than C++.
- zwnow 1y ago
  After AGI? AGI is not a reality anyone of us will witness. Its a false promise in the current LLM market and we are as far away from it as we always have been... just listen to actual experts on the topic that dont profit from pushing a certain narrative.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
    Demis Hassabis is estimating 5-10 years to AGI, and is about the only person who's opinion on this I think is worth listening to. His/their (DeepMind) plan is to retain a pretrained LLM but add something like search around it (cf AlphaGo or AlphaFold). He does say a couple of "Transformer-level" major breakthoughs may be needed to get there, and is still only 50% confident because of AGI-requirements he may have missed. Hassabis has the Google DeepMind team of 5000+, very many of who are PhD's, working for him, so a lot can be done in 5-10 years.
    - zwnow 1y ago
thepastisgone 1y ago
> Is it worth the effort? It was. “All that was will always have been somehow never again”
dvcoolarun 1y ago
I’m hearing this argument from a lot of people. I think it’s more of a feeling that anyone can contribute, and now it’s a matter of taste and stamina—who persists and who fizzles out. Probably also tied to changes in neuroplasticity, I guess. Humans are generally good at adopting new behaviors.
sltr 1y ago
What we believe defines us. What we believe directs our efforts.
Insanity 1y ago
Unlike the author, I think that the value of writing code in my free time (or well, the joy more than the value) has diminished greatly. I took a lot of 'pride in the craft', and I used to really enjoy hacking away on new projects with languages that I normally wouldn't use in my day-to-day. But now whenever I start something I think of how much faster I could be if I just used an LLM. Which takes away some of the joy. I'll be honest, I struggled with this for many months.. actually years at this point (since ~GPT3.5). I hardly code in my spare time now, and am spending more time on other hobbies. I think I've kinda come to terms with the fact that I won't really enjoy coding anymore.
- cortesoft 1y ago
  It's funny, because I feel like code AIs have given me a new enthusiasm for creating side projects. When I was young, I would spend so much time creating side projects and I loved it. Then, I got older, got married, had kids, got tired... I know longer have opportunities to lock myself away for 8 hours in a day to bang away on a fun project. Instead, I have small 30-60 minute windows scattered around, without the energy to bury myself in the fun problems. I don't think I am alone in taking at least 30-60 minutes to fully fill up my brain context for a problem in order to do real coding. Without longer chunks of time to be able to do that, I just stopped doing any sort of complex side project. I just don't have the time and mental energy for that in this stage of my life. LLMs have completely changed that for me. I can actually start and do those side projects that have been kicking around in my head for years. I don't need 8 hours just to get to a starting point on a project; I can type up a spec off and on during my spare time, then sit down with an LLM and generate the framework of my project in minutes. I am no longer stymied by my short chunks of free time. I feel like a whole world of creativity has opened up for me again.
w10-1 1y ago
I think the concern is deep, deeper than mitigations like going up the abstraction chain from coding to design, or lessons learned from failure. It's very, very difficult to really realize that one's sacrifice was meaningless or mistaken. Effort - sacrifice - in particular is for the sake of something else; you burn your precious life/time for the sake of X, and then X doesn't work or turns out to be an illusion. You can console yourself with lessons learned, but it's a bit hollow. And worse, if you wasted someone else's time? Almost unrecoverable. Then you're not only less useful (stale skills), but also less susceptible to going gung-ho on the new goal X', making you a poor candidate for any employers or investors since being resilient and formidable are necessary for any uncertain endeavor. The Confucian Ta Hsueh (Great Learning) says "Every day, make it new" was inscribed on the bathtub of the first Shang dynasty emperor: 湯之盤銘曰：「茍日新，日日新，又日新 Traditionally, the solution was a kind of selflessness, where you realize that even if (as with Ecclesiastes) empires you build will fall into dust, you can still help others. But in an age where interactions reduce to endless scrolling and online forums, it's not clear where and how to do that.
- Liquix 1y ago
  > even if ... empires you build will fall into dust, you can still help others A beautiful sentiment reminiscent of Zen. Everything is temporary, nothing lasts, everything you build or accomplish will crumble into dust and be forgotten. On its face this appears as nihilism, but on the other side of the realization, you're still here - so what else could there be to do besides seize the moment and live it to the fullest?
- RataNova 1y ago
  The Ta Hsueh line is such a powerful image, especially in contrast with today's digital haze. The call to "make it new" daily implies presence, intention, and responsibility
RataNova 1y ago
I think the hardest part is that effort wasn't just a means to an end; it was the thing. Not always pleasant, not always noble, but it gave shape to our days, our roles, even our self-worth. It reminds me how fragile that sense of value is when it's tied to output
raincole 1y ago
Every time we invented some higher level of abstraction for software development, it became harder, not easier. The required effort, collectively, has only been increasing. Nature language programming (aka "AI") seems to be on the same track.
siavosh 1y ago
I think the sense of loss and fear is undeniable for most. None of it is unprecedented, although probably never has the potential for both been more extreme than with AI. The spiritual/psychological solution is always the same though, fully surrender to the loss and fear, then find a way to transcend it.
prezdizzle 1y ago
As Mr. Smith points out in the Matrix: "There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us; it is purpose that defines, purpose that binds us."
vishkk 1y ago
Whatever it was — a lie, the truth, or, most likely, their mixture — that caused me to make such a decision, I am immensely grateful to it for what appears to have been my first free act. It was an instinctive act, a walkout. Reason had very little to do with it. I know that, because I've been walking out ever since, with increasing frequency. And not necessarily on account of boredom or of feeling a trap gaping; I've been walking out of perfect setups no less often than out of dreadful ones. However modest the place you happen to occupy, if it has the slightest mark of decency, you can be sure that someday somebody will walk in and claim it for himself or, what is worse, suggest that you share it. Then you either have to fight for that place or leave it. I happened to prefer the latter. Not at all because I couldn't fight, but rather out of sheer disgust with myself: managing to pick something that attracts others denotes a certain vulgarity in your choice. It doesn't matter at all that you came across the place first. It is even worse to get somewhere first, for those who follow will always have a stronger appetite than your partially satisfied one. - Joseph Brodsky
cosinetau 1y ago
Effort is Love. Healthy love is effort in the right direction.
munificent 1y ago
I used to be very into photography before Instagram and smartphones inundated the world with easy acceptably good photos. I was into DJing when that meant buying vinyl and mastering the difficult art of beatmatching by ear before CDJs made acquiring music trivial and automated beatmatching made mixing easy. I was a game developer during the time when casual smartphone games came and ate so much time and attention that players had less time available for other games. I got into making music when that meant fighting with big, slow, complex hardware synthesizers, then watched anyone with a laptop (including me) be able to do all of that a hundred times more easily, and now I watch AI auto-generate passable background music. Time and time again, I've seen this same process play out. Many of the deepest joys in my life involved putting deep time and care into making something to share with others. That feels increasingly out of step with the culture at large.
- s_m_t 1y ago
  OTOH there are more people than ever earnestly doing all those things. If we take the barrier to entry for publishing being as low as it is as a factor in you and many other professionals having written top quality technical books then I for one am thankful for this process you speak of.
- gradschool 1y ago
  I used to enjoy dancing but I don't any more because Boston Dynamics invented a robot that can dance better than I can. I used to enjoy writing but now it's so easy for anyone to self-publish a book on Amazon that I don't see the point. I used to enjoy running but all the fun has gone out of it now that motor vehicles exist that can move faster than I can run. I used to like sky-diving, but then hail stones ...
  - munificent 1y ago
    I have self-published a couple of books. I do enjoy writing, but what I enjoy even more is being read. If I honestly felt my books were never going to be seen by anyone, I wouldn't have written them. Providing value to other people was the main source of meaning and joy for me with those projects.
RamosRamp 1y ago
[dead]

295 points by todsacerdoti 1y ago

Was the pleasure of writing code that the author describes tied to the actual practice or its profits? My impression is that many white collar workers felt that their jobs and accompanying status were immutable. They’re not. Couldn’t they have seen this coming? Nothing prevents people from continuing on with their trades or interests how they did before the AI bubble bloomed. But if they want to earn a living doing it, I guess they need to start thinking outside of the box. I believe prolonged contact with insulation induces hive breakout.

zwnow 1y ago
In all honesty I value my craft and doing things without AI and id have much less of an issue with LLMs if people were more understanding of their capabilities and limitations. The tech environment is pushing AI into everything because its a fancy buzz word that's used to increase corporate share value. Personally I am pretty conflicted about using it considering its built upon theft and cheap labor. Making money isn't that nice if its unethical, and id keep that out of my company for as long as possible.
bartread 1y ago
I went through something like that transition the first time I moved into management. It took me by surprise how much I tied what I did to who I was, and how much it bothered me that I could no longer so easily articulate what I'd done during a day at work. It was no longer I made this, I made that, I added these features, I fixed those bugs. It was all relational. It was all meetings and conversations. It felt like anyone could be doing it. So I felt like I had no value. Like I was a spare wheel. Three or four years and in all that time I never made my peace with it. So burned out and dejected[0] I went back to software development and performance consulting. I did that for about 3 years. The second time I went into management was different. Maybe I was just older. Maybe I'd done a bit more reading and thinking about management and leadership. I certainly knew what I liked and disliked, and what I admired in other leaders. Because of the consulting I'd seen a variety of leaders at work in lots of different contexts, with different challenges, different styles, and different personalities. At any rate, I had a different and broader view of what good looked like. I also had a clear and strong remit and room to operate: build a new product, build and lead a new team, open an office, rearchitect and rebuild our platform, become CTO. But the critical change was that I now saw my value in enabling the success of others - our team, the teams that relied on our platform and products, our customers and clients - and so I loved my job (for the most part). This doesn't directly relate to AI but does show that it's possible to go through a transition where you lose a big part - or all - of what you thought gave you value, status, and satisfaction in a role, and grow into something new and valuable as a result of that. In my case that took for-fucking-ever - I've always been something of a late developer[1] - and many people reading this have and will adapt much more quickly. I'll say this: it's much easier to let go when you have a stronger idea of what "next" looks like[2], so figure out what that is. Software development is changing, for all of us, and even now nobody really knows what that means, but it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of opportunities. It's also worth bearing in mind that a lot of the more extreme viewpoints published online regarding AI and software development are no better than noise: they're just clickbait designed to generate reaction and engagement. Their real informational value is close to zero. That is obviously not the case with this piece, which describes the author's personal experience in our new AI enabled world. And I get their point about the craft. You really do feel that. But what you have to realise is the craft doesn't go away: it moves to a different level of abstraction. What can you (what can we) do now that you couldn't do before? What do the wrinkles and contours of that, where your (our) finesse will be needed, actually look like? This all reads more like a pile of scattered thoughts than I'd intended, but hopefully there's some value in there for some of you. [0] Not just for these reasons: there were other things - including one or two other major contributors - going on that I don't want to talk about here, but my lack of comfort with the nature of my role was certainly a somewhat chunky factor. Just don't overread or assume too much from what I'm saying. [1] No pun intended - nobody should read anything delivery related into this comment. [2] This touches on some of those issues I didn't want to talk about. Within that organisational context I'd reached a ceiling and no-one, including me, was grown up enough to be real about that. So I kept trying to push on and break through and, well, I guess we all wasted a lot of eachother's time although, from my side, I don't feel too bad about it.
- tolerance 1y ago
  These passages, right here: > But the critical change was that I now saw my value in enabling the success of others - our team, the teams that relied on our platform and products, our customers and clients - and so I loved my job (for the most part). > This doesn't directly relate to AI but does show that it's possible to go through a transition where you lose a big part - or all - of what you thought gave you value, status, and satisfaction in a role, and grow into something new and valuable as a result of that. > Represent the perspectives I was hoping to invite with my comment. The paragraph immediately following these was equally great. I’ve read a lot of interesting remarks about people who’ve gone back and forth between programming and management positions in tech and I can relate to the experience in some ways. What you and the author are describing is legitimate. And I think that your experience occurring while making an apparent step forward in your profession (as opposed to the step backwards that AI imposes) indicates something…special about man, his craft and its relation to himself and his perceived value to others (or lack thereof) while practicing his craft. I think this is a common thing, generally speaking. On one end, there are plenty of people in other (less-paying, less-appealing) industries who have gone through these kind of experiences—past and present—so it’s easy for someone like me to feel apathetic in this case. For better or worse it’s a privilege that there are some people who are able to articulate their particular circumstances, under a shared shade. I guess this is the point where the Marxists begin to revel in the bourgeois gaining “class consciousness”. I haven’t checked on all the literature to be sure how that often turns out in history.
  - bartread 1y ago
    > (as opposed to the step backwards that AI imposes) I guess this is my only quibble: is it really a step backwards? I can get on board with the idea that maybe the jury is out, but the evidence I've seen and experienced is more that it's a force multiplier than anything else. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we're all fucked. But for now at least I think reports of the death of software development as a profession are greatly exaggerated.
    - tolerance 1y ago
bonoboTP 1y ago
I'm not sure we are built for this on a societal scale. I understand the reasoning rationally. Sure, nobody pitied the horseshoe-maker blacksmith who was proud of his craft when the car was invented. Or the tailors when clothing became cheaply mass-produced. Or even the miners after many mines closed. Yeah I get it. "You learned a craft and it's no longer needed. Sucks to suck. Try to be useful in some other way or get bent." Having to reinvent your career when you are 30+/40+/50+ is not so simple. You studied something, amassed experience and tacit knowledge, taste and work habits. It used to be the case that you learned as an apprentice (or simply grew up on a farm and saw the work) and then continued it the rest of your life. We will be more and more efficient at pumping more wealth to the owner classes, but people will be spiritually ground down.
- tolerance 1y ago
  The loss of self that comes with being effectively severed from society through labor exclusion is…a radical process. I read in a book titled The Technology Trap about how in the past, rulers withheld technological advancements and gave strategic deference to the people whose labor would be most affected by them, so as it not put their own necks at risk. That doesn’t seem to be a concern today.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    The AI debacle is unusual as it's alive in disinformation at a scale that penetrates every status class. Of course AI is a failure of imagination. But so were symbols, which cannot reference, they can only represent, if at all. The real function of AI appears to be the transition away from symbols, metaphors, folk science cause and effect ideation. We're only barely sensing this, but if you listen to Gary Marcus, Rich Sutton and those willing to see the larger scales, they are bellwethers that are actually sinking their own approaches as well as LLMs. In effect, labor is about to reap the benefits of the AI debacle. I see this in the AI at the major teaching hospital my sister is a department head of. In lead developers in gaming, in media. AI does not function well, it's essentially wax fruit, it's not even mimicry. That's going to lead to an analog rebirth.
pettertb 1y ago
That is not how people work, especially if they want to do good work. You need to imbue your career with a little bit of your identity, a little bit of your soul. Coding, auto-repair, horse-rearing, plumbing, accountancy, what have you. You do well to limit this somewhat. But it is inevitable, if you want to achieve anything. You are going to end up smelling somewhat like your work clothes, no matter your industry, no matter the year. We can't all have the mission statement "to make money", if the machines of money-making are to function. You would never have the nevessary skills that way. Not saying that we do well to spend the next 30 years griping, we don't. But don't shame people from being hurt by the whims of business. People need to grieve lost stuff, goes for AI, goes for "auto plant went out of business", goes for anything.
- tolerance 1y ago
  I reckon that shame was once an effective method of communal correction and accountability. But it wasn’t my intent to affect it. So no, I agree, don’t shame people for being hurt by the whims of business. But I would say, encourage the newcomers to this experience (who I suspect are exceptional in their sociopolitical status compared to their predecessors) to re-envision themselves and the ways that they render their service beyond prior cushiony contexts. Businesses may not need you, you may make much less than before. But society sorely does need you in some capacity and the unfortunate case is that, to be frank, not too many people are going to be quick to boo-hoo with you over your loss because they’ve gone through something like it before already. Them or a loved one. This is an American phenomenon. Join and be of aid to your countrymen. But don’t get SaaSy.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Online people have this redditism that it's some American weirdness that people "live to work", while in Europe people "work to live" and stretch this too far. People (especially men) throughout the ages and regions have seen their work as a critical component of their identity, whether it be a craft or farming. The honor in completing the day's work, being valued for having a skill, honing that skill over the years, etc. It's not by itself a symptom of a workaholic. This can leave space for family and friends and neighbors too. But the idea that your job is supposed to be purely superficial is way overblown. It's a symptom of the generic alienated work that is full of useless meetings and business-buzzword-bingo-lingo and you can't coherently formulate in words to an outsider what even that job is, or how it concretely contributes to the betterment of the community/world/people (aka bullshit job).

type0 1y ago

Speaking of efforts, Japanese woodworking and carpentry are completely different https://www.arch2o.com/how-japanese-wood-joints-work-without-nails-the-ancient-art-of-kigumi-in-modern-architecture/ https://www.arch2o.com/how-japanese-wood-joints-work-without...

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I can relate. I treat my coding as a craft. That has become much easier, since retiring. I'm quite aware that doing things my way isn't commercially viable, but no one pays me to do it. I do it for myself. That said, I find that it's important to always be challenging myself[0]. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...

heliographe 1y ago
> I'm quite aware that doing things my way isn't commercially viable Depends what you mean by “commercially viable”. I’ve been making high quality products as an independent software developer in the photography space for a bit over 2 years now, and while I’m nowhere near my former big tech company salary, I still make more than needed to pay for life every month (not living an extravagant lifestyle somewhere with ridiculous cost of living does help). And I still feel like I’m far from having reached full potential in my addressable market and the kind of products I want to build - I have indie developer friends who are pretty close to their former big tech salary, after 5+ years. So, despair not :)
- eloisius 1y ago
  Cool apps btw. The trichromy one is a lot of fun. Cool that you’re earning money making this.
  - heliographe 1y ago
    Cheers! Got an update coming out soon for that one, it's actually the one that makes the least money haha. I think it's way too nerdy and weird to ever hope to reach a broad audience even amongst photographers, unlike the others that are more approachable. But I still use it on a weekly basis myself so I just can't stop refining it. I've been obsessed with the trichromatic process for 10+ years, ever since I discovered the work of Prokudin Gorsky (even built a website about the process and history: https://trichromy.com https://trichromy.com, due for a refresh some time). Such a clever approach to color photography that results in such a unique aesthetic.

apples_oranges 1y ago

The internet evolved as programming became a sought after path. But with the internet, a irreversible change happened in our society. Old facts are being questioned and it is imho just a matter of time until they materialize „in the real world“. This might include questions of status, achievement, the idea of self worth and the role of work. We should not insist to measure new things with old rulers.

foamdino 1y ago

I can relate to this thought process and had my own conflicted thoughts about AI and the role it (and I) play in the SWE future: https://medium.com/@kev.jackson/two-months-of-an-ai-partnership-c0575416470f https://medium.com/@kev.jackson/two-months-of-an-ai-partners... - I'm still conflicted

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nuancebydefault 1y ago
Your Medium piece is a nice read!

bsenftner 1y ago

Maybe this is a neurodivergent thing, but I have, as long as I can remember, always had the following progression in my mind: "What are you doing? No, that's this situation's name, what is this really?" and I'd continue a few times seeking the "larger problem, the more basic problem being solved" that whatever I was doing "really is". That "basic problem" was "communicating" far more frequently than I expected, and that "communicating" was often just translating between things, people and software, or people and people, or software and software. But it's almost always communicating.

nuancebydefault 1y ago
Indeed. If we SW developers define ourselves as 'coders', we could easily end up into this identity crisis which the article seems to refer to. But in fact we are much more than that. We are problem solvers and a big part of it is understanding, defining and refining the problem itself and in finding an elegant solution. The meaningfulness comes from all the communication and experimenting involved with that process, and in the creativity needed to design an elegant solution. In fact the more boring part is often the coding itself.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  This is the frustrating part of software engineering too; the coding itself is the "boring" part, but for me and many others it's also the most fun and gratifying part, the thing you really want to be doing. Something to grow out of I suppose, but still. The AI vendors want to sell to upper management that that part is what's slowing their company down or costing a lot of money, but I don't think it's that. And in a few years (or now already), AI tooling will probably be an accepted part of the toolchain, but software engineers will always be necessary. Cobol said you won't need coders anymore because it's basically English. Dreamweaver and Frontpage said you won't need to know HTML because you can just build a website by clicking and typing. No-code platforms said you won't need coders anymore because you can just click and drag. AI evangelists say you don't need coders anymore because you just type in a prompt and working software comes out.
  - 1y ago

anovikov 1y ago

I sometimes identify as "ex-programmer" these days, just because whatever coding i could do is now irrelevant due to LLMs, but this isn't entirely honest. Programming was never my job. My job was "convincing people to transfer money to my account under various pretexts, most of which involved me writing some code", and as such, the thing is pretty much alive.

oytis 1y ago
Have you got good results with LLMs for low-level development? For embedded I've found them mostly useless.
- anovikov 1y ago
  I have reworked a lot of code i built myself with AVX2 and Neon, to become much better, more maintainable and faster too, with LLMs.
kakacik 1y ago
Don't know your area but llms are not taking many software dev jobs around here. Its like saying clueless juniors who sometimes produce good snippets of code and sometimes struggle to distinguish left from right are taking jobs of some seniors... not happening en masse anytime soon. Some other types of jobs sure.
slaterbug 1y ago
You don't program at all now? It's all generated? I only ask because I find myself on the tools most of the time still. The difference in how different people experience this tech is astounding sometimes.
- anovikov 1y ago
  I debug a lot. LLM tools still can't figure how to use a debugger. That's about it. I'm sure they will soon.
  - 1y ago

repeekad 1y ago

Amish communities have rejected “modern” technology convenience in exchange for good hard work for centuries and never looked back

falcor84 1y ago
> never looked back Obviously there are very many Amish people who leave their communities to join the modern world - according to various sources this attrition seems to be between 15-25%. And even amongst those who stay, it's likely that a central reason is the fear of excommunication/shunning, rather than an inherent desire to reject modern technology.
- spiffytech 1y ago
  Also many Amish people engage in rules lawyering to access forbidden technology without violating the letter of the rules. And even abiding with the spirit of the rules, they use more technology than outsiders realize.
- raddan 1y ago
  It’s worth mentioning that the Amish aside, there are many groups of people who understand that work has to be done, but do it in a way that elevates the idea that humans can seek transcendence through work. The Shaker communities in my part of the US come to mind. They were not anti-technology by any stretch of the imagination. But they did care about work’s role in being a part of a whole. There are still remnants of that mindset here. For example, I have lately been spending time with people who like to build houses using traditional techniques; while hand tools often play a role, it’s not because they hate technology. There are lots of power tools being used as well. Instead, it’s about asking “what is best?” and “how do I want to spend my working life?”
  - getpokedagain 1y ago
    I vaguely recall a childhood acquaintance who was from a shaker family and they had a computer. I'm very tempted to look them up and see their take on computing and ai. Thanks for the memory stir.

globalhsbc 1y ago

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andrewstuart 1y ago

I became a computer programmer because I want the computer to do things. I’m not a programmer because I wanted to program. Thus AI is incredibly exciting to me because it makes it easier to make computers do things.

makerofthings 1y ago
I became a programmer because I like to write code. Having an llm write code for me is like building a robot that eats cake.
- andrewstuart 1y ago
  I can understand then why you might not enjoy using AI to make a computer do your bidding.
- andai 1y ago
  For me it is both. I love certain kinds of programming, and don't enjoy other kinds. I'm naturally very good at some kinds, and not good at other kinds, despite putting in enormous effort. I guess ideally I'd get a job that is perfectly aligned with this profile (a work in progress!), but AI allows me to deal with the reality I have now in a much more pleasant and productive way.
  - codr7 1y ago
    Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of research showing that perspective is usually a distortion of some kind. Which makes sense, you have someone at your shoulder constantly reassuring you and bubbling ideas; I can see how it feels productive. Many report feeling more stressed, because the spaces where they used to think are no longer there.
    - pseudalopex 1y ago
      > Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of research showing that perspective is usually a distortion of some kind. I saw 1 study which suggested this.[1] Were there more? [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089 https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

shubhamjain 1y ago

> For myself, in the last 10 years, my work of writing code has largely defined what I do with my working time. Now I experience large swaths of that work being created and done by AI (sometimes amazingly well, sometimes poorly), and I find myself thinking of the photographer above. Which is ironic, because smartphone photography is astonishingly average to someone who actually understands photography. Phones try to handle every scenario for the user. It has been optimized for bright outdoors, low light conditions, even specific stuff like sunsets. So most people never realize how difficult it really is to shoot in bright daylight with the light source behind the subject. Only when you pick up a traditional camera do you realize that’s one of the worst conditions to take a photo in. Maybe coding is headed toward the same place. AI coding will smooth out complexity for the majority of programmers, but at the same time, we’ll also see a lot of programmers building things that don’t actually need to be built, or not realizing the limits of their solutions, or just hung in the narrow space of what AI can do for them. Having done photography with Sony-a6000, I’ve found that it made me more skilled with a smartphone camera. So, I am still optimistic that knowledge gained through deliberate effort has value, even in a world that increasingly prizes “effortlessness” in everything. But only time will tell how much that belief really holds up.

sethjgore 1y ago
One up for a6000! Definitely taught me the same things you mentioned. A great entry level camera.
skydhash 1y ago
> AI coding will smooth out complexity for the majority of programmers, but at the same time, we’ll also see a lot of programmers building things that don’t actually need to be built, or not realizing the limits of their solutions, or just hung in the narrow space of what AI can do for them. The computers is a very dumb machine. It does exactly what you tell it to do and nothing else. Complexity in programming stems from the need to formalize things and specifying every single detail of the algorithms. Using AI can give you patterns for the most common things, but everything common is likely to be soon a library or a framework. So what you're instead doing is reinvent the wheel, but differently and the result is likely broken. Good enough for short runs (scripts), but anywhere you want something to last, then the cracks will start to appear. The things with photography is that it's a spectrum. But software is discrete. It either works or it doesn't.

pettertb 1y ago

I can relate. It is important to meet this head-on, and not gloss over it, explain it away, or shame people for feeling this way. I even feel this about the wargame "Warmachine", where in the past you could not measure distance before committing to actions. Deciding if model A and B were 10" or 14" apart was a critical skill, and called "weaponized geometry". I was good at it. The game has changed, and you can now measure to your hearts content, making this skill basically pointless. I still feel a tiny bit conflicted about it. Dublin in the Rare Old Times - The Dubliners Like my house that fell to progress//My trade's a memory

aubanel 1y ago

"And I tell you, you may only avoid an effort in the name of a greater one, for you must grow" Antoine de Saint Exupéry (author of The Little Prince), in Citadelle

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

When you can rattle off reams of code that may or may not solve the right problem, you’ve just shifted the effort.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

> If our efforts, in part, define us, then our efforts have intrinsic value. By definition this is instrumental value rather than intrinsic value.

pessimizer 1y ago
Middle class people can't distinguish their work from their identity. They seek a perfect harmony of purpose and output, in order to be the perfect servant. They need to sustain this for a lifetime, so their pleasure must come from the work (or they can supplement this with a hobby that is extremely job-shaped.) If they fail at this, they will be ejected from the middle class, and their children will not be properly educated, therefore never beginning the middle class journey. If you're born poor, it's easy to stay poor all your life; if you're born rich, it's easy to stay rich all your life; the middle class is the class that has to reproduce itself every generation and sustain itself by constant service and sublimation of their desires and dreams. That's why they're simultaneously overpaid and overtaxed - just to keep them caged and desperate, a layoff away from a family annihilation. Loyal to death. Fear of Falling by Barbara Ehrenreich is a good book about this. This essay is pompous. Just say: I'm afraid my job is going to leave me, and it makes me feel insecure. Maybe sympathize a little when all of the storefronts on Main Street in some small town are empty after the dog food plant got obsoleted by Chinese imports, instead of telling them they should learn to code like you and to move to where the jobs are.
- kakacik 1y ago
  Interesting perspective, I believe its way more valid for US than say Europe which has way more job/career obsession and sort of class system based on career/wealth status. Middle class is squeezed everywhere, that's true. But I sincerely doubt young generations 'can't distinguish their work from their identity' en masse. Thats a recipe for disaster, at latest during retirement, probably with first firing from the job and generally a big stupid no-no. But don't expect state will drill this into you in the schools, its up to everybody to look around and figure these things out for themselves, just like rest if life (TM).
- alexashka 1y ago

cainxinth 1y ago

The effort is up to you on your own time. I have an e-bike and a regular bike. The regular bike gets way more use because I prefer the satisfaction I get from it. Also, speaking as someone that uses LLMs every day, they take effort! They cannot spin straw into gold. The terrible work I see coming from AI is usually from someone who doesn’t realize that.

kayo_20211030 1y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's not essentially the effort, it's the satisfaction. The former is the means, the latter the ends. If something is satisfying then the effort seems worth it. If using a push-bike satisfies you then carry on. If you have only five minutes to catch that train and the push-bike's not going to get you there on time, then use the e-bike and catch that train. That's satisfying too; this time as an outcome, but still satisfying.

caerwy 1y ago

Following Karl Popper's thinking on this topic, I'd say that our problems define us, and when we solve our problems we often discover new and interesting children problems demanding attention. “The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.” — Karl Popper

card_zero 1y ago
That's not a real Popper quote, is it. The sentiment is nice, but it must be radically paraphrased, because he doesn't generate pithy quotes very often. > To conclude, I think that there is only one way to science—or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part—unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem, or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days. https://archive.org/details/realismaimofscie0000popp/page/8/mode/2up?q=%22to+meet+a+problem%2C+to+see+its+beauty+and+fall+in+love+with+it%22 https://archive.org/details/realismaimofscie0000popp/page/8/... Edit: if I heed the content of the paragraphs just before this quote, maybe I should prefer the rewritten version.
- jebarker 1y ago
  This feels right to me, but I wonder what he was thinking of when he said “problem”. For me life is most effortless when I’m working on math or cs problems/puzzles but I sometimes get this guilty feeling that I “should” be working on a problem that is useful to the rest of the world.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Yeah, there's problems, like puzzles and mysteries, and then there's difficulties, and there's no sharp dividing line but the difficulties are less fun. And are also called problems. So far as moral duty goes, play to your strengths, you're at your best when having fun. This conveniently evaluates to "do what you like". It's not perfectly true, but you can get away with it, blamelessly. Nobody needs you miserable, usually. Then there's the wrinkle where the importance of something to humanity (or even the promise of a large cash reward) may make it fun ... if you happen to feel that way.

hermannj314 1y ago

The people convincing you it is a virtue to move fast always happen to be selling a car. Be careful that you aren't optimizing your life in response to someone else's marketing campaign.

1970-01-01 1y ago
Hesitation is another side of the bad decision coin. Good decisions are lost due to overanalysis. Charlie Munger: "A lot of opportunities in life tend to last a short while, due to some temporary inefficiency."
- deleted 1y ago
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- gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
  Had Archimedes lived to teach the Romans his calculus we might have reached Mars by 500 AD https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o https://youtu.be/h0gPomI3h8o that's not from hesitation. And one can only call the Syracuse invasion an inefficiency in hindsight. The immediate opportunity of a ~million Roman lives compared to other hypothetical opportunities (One might guess that opportunities of the win-win type weren't covered by Munger's model)
  - tyre 1y ago
    It's highly unlikely that the Romans could have had the industrial revolution[0], so I'm doubtful that calculus alone would have gotten them to Mars. [0]: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
    - gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
      A different take: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-18904-3 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-18904-3 (Maybe the Greeks' themselves could have done it, they already had a rudimentary steam engine )

barrenko 1y ago

Just because you like to paint does by no means entail you'd like doing photography.

dzink 1y ago

We are a cerebellum. Our brain summarizes one layer of data into insights for the layer above that and programming is one layer. AI is now forcing us to think not how things should be built but what should we built - everyone is a promoted to product manager. What should be built now can be answered by what is needed by humans, or companies, or AI, or government. All of the above should be serving humans. So what do people want or need? How can we harness AI to solve more needs. I think of it from another angle. AI is reaching an energy limit. Companies are way overvalued and in a race to spend most of their gains on AI and that may end badly. Governments are on edge and conflict is brewing. All of that and unknown unknowns can put a stop on the amazing stream of affordable AI we have now. I am using the models as fast as possible to build things I find meaningful and to learn as much as possible. Having unlimited help with any idea that I come up with is incredible. It’s akin to infinite VC funding, but you don’t owe equity or a cent back. The world is now what your cerebellum can come up with. And what you know about the needs of people.

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

>If our efforts, in part, define us, then our efforts have intrinsic value. What happens when something we enjoy doing that took effort becomes effortless? And what happens if that original effort was a foundation on which we saw value in ourselves? I found the flaw. Effort is the process of converting energy into value (the state of something being effortless in the future). It's not the efforts themselves that have intrinsic value, but the work ethic that drove the effort in the first place.

darepublic 1y ago

Some friction required for enjoyment. AI too slippery a lubricant

dostick 1y ago
You can always squeeze tighter. Or find tighter place to apply the effort.

hn_throw_250926 1y ago

This was written by a dev so it has the usual hallmarks of ascribing some anecdote to a generalized statement about people, their life’s purpose and so on. Take it with a grain of salt.

falcor84 1y ago
What does this have to do with devs? Isn't all writing personal at its core?

aeon_ai 1y ago

At some point -- sometimes early, often too late -- we realize we're going to die. Our time is finite. We have only so many days to do anything, let alone something that matters. Meaning is found in how and why we spend that time. When we're fooled into believing money matters more than time, we trade far too much of the latter for the former. Worse, we can mistake the monetary value of our time for its actual value, and then optimize our entire lives according to that myth. The idea that AI destroys meaning is a false framing. Many people are already experiencing a meaning crisis, and AI is simply an easy scapegoat. Purpose comes from discovering our own values through living, not from accepting meanings imposed by others.

dangus 1y ago
I’d also extend this by saying that you can just exist and be happy and then die. There’s no need to be defined by some effort you’re putting into some kind of work or hobby. If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. And that’s a bit of a problem with this article. The photographer that wants to quit because of digital photography? I find that odd, it seems to me like the film community has a really great time with the craft of film photography in the digital age. If anything, the massive shrinkage in available professional labs should make the art of developing your own photos even more validating. Why didn’t this photographer want to quit when Kodak made disposable cameras and CVS would develop your photos in an hour? I submit that it isn’t digital photography that killed their hobby/passion. It’s okay to not love doing something anymore and take a break or move on to something else. I think this idea that it defines you is a bit of a toxic validation mechanism.
- dfee 1y ago
  > If there’s someone out there who just sits on the beach all day and survives by eating coconuts they don’t have to be defined by photography or coding or whatever hobby is being used to seek external validation. This is written from a different values perspective than mine, but I can understand it. I think you’d have made a stronger point if you’d focused on internal validation, though. For many, the ideal is internal integrity driving oneself forward. I say ideal, because we’re imperfect creatures - external validation, greed, etc. slip in. Overall though, a life on the beach sipping coconuts sounds immediately appealing, but long term empty. I’m not going to tell you it’s working 996, either. For me, the journey is finding what makes me whole - through many failed starts.

joeyhage 1y ago

As others have mentioned, LLMs require a lot of effort to get it right. Personally, I still prefer writing code over writing LLM prompts but I’m trying to find the right balance. I will always enjoy refactoring so I tend to have the LLM get me most of the way there and leave the polishing for myself.

d--b 1y ago

I have a feeling that these feelings come from culture. Protestantism or Japanese cultures really value effort in a way mediterannean culture (for instance) does not. Think about Flemish paintings that have all these very intricate details, while Italian painters invented the messy sfumato. I don't like that digital cameras took over, because I don't like the quality of digital pictures, but I love that LLMs are taking stuff off my plate / brain. I have absolutely zero romanticism associated with effort. I do romanticize smartness. Gauss finding n*(n+1) / 2 because he didn't want to sum numbers by hand is my absolute hero. Of course he was protestant so what I just said really doesn't make much sense.

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago

It's still largely unclear how AI is going to affect the job of software engineers both in the shorter term, pre-AGI, and after that. However, I'm pretty sure that the job of SWE isn't about to disappear, since even when human-level AGI appears, the process of software development isn't about to get any easier than when it was done by actual humans. I don't see non-technical middle managers able to take over as systems architects and lead developers. It'll just mean that the day-to-day of those charged with developing software per PHB's requirements changes. That said, I do feel fortunate to have been from the generation where software was developed entirely by hand, having started in the era of 8-bitters (NASCOM-1 in 1978) and only just in the last year transitioning (against my preference) to a role of overseeing offshore developers rather than being hands-on. Still, I think that those who enjoy the challenge and fun of conjuring up dreams out of software will still find plenty to enjoy in the future, although it will be different, just as it has already changed a lot from the time when we were writing everything in assembler to today arguing about whether Rust is better than C++.

zwnow 1y ago
After AGI? AGI is not a reality anyone of us will witness. Its a false promise in the current LLM market and we are as far away from it as we always have been... just listen to actual experts on the topic that dont profit from pushing a certain narrative.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
  Demis Hassabis is estimating 5-10 years to AGI, and is about the only person who's opinion on this I think is worth listening to. His/their (DeepMind) plan is to retain a pretrained LLM but add something like search around it (cf AlphaGo or AlphaFold). He does say a couple of "Transformer-level" major breakthoughs may be needed to get there, and is still only 50% confident because of AGI-requirements he may have missed. Hassabis has the Google DeepMind team of 5000+, very many of who are PhD's, working for him, so a lot can be done in 5-10 years.
  - zwnow 1y ago

thepastisgone 1y ago

> Is it worth the effort? It was. “All that was will always have been somehow never again”

dvcoolarun 1y ago

I’m hearing this argument from a lot of people. I think it’s more of a feeling that anyone can contribute, and now it’s a matter of taste and stamina—who persists and who fizzles out. Probably also tied to changes in neuroplasticity, I guess. Humans are generally good at adopting new behaviors.

sltr 1y ago

What we believe defines us. What we believe directs our efforts.

Insanity 1y ago

Unlike the author, I think that the value of writing code in my free time (or well, the joy more than the value) has diminished greatly. I took a lot of 'pride in the craft', and I used to really enjoy hacking away on new projects with languages that I normally wouldn't use in my day-to-day. But now whenever I start something I think of how much faster I could be if I just used an LLM. Which takes away some of the joy. I'll be honest, I struggled with this for many months.. actually years at this point (since ~GPT3.5). I hardly code in my spare time now, and am spending more time on other hobbies. I think I've kinda come to terms with the fact that I won't really enjoy coding anymore.

cortesoft 1y ago
It's funny, because I feel like code AIs have given me a new enthusiasm for creating side projects. When I was young, I would spend so much time creating side projects and I loved it. Then, I got older, got married, had kids, got tired... I know longer have opportunities to lock myself away for 8 hours in a day to bang away on a fun project. Instead, I have small 30-60 minute windows scattered around, without the energy to bury myself in the fun problems. I don't think I am alone in taking at least 30-60 minutes to fully fill up my brain context for a problem in order to do real coding. Without longer chunks of time to be able to do that, I just stopped doing any sort of complex side project. I just don't have the time and mental energy for that in this stage of my life. LLMs have completely changed that for me. I can actually start and do those side projects that have been kicking around in my head for years. I don't need 8 hours just to get to a starting point on a project; I can type up a spec off and on during my spare time, then sit down with an LLM and generate the framework of my project in minutes. I am no longer stymied by my short chunks of free time. I feel like a whole world of creativity has opened up for me again.

w10-1 1y ago

I think the concern is deep, deeper than mitigations like going up the abstraction chain from coding to design, or lessons learned from failure. It's very, very difficult to really realize that one's sacrifice was meaningless or mistaken. Effort - sacrifice - in particular is for the sake of something else; you burn your precious life/time for the sake of X, and then X doesn't work or turns out to be an illusion. You can console yourself with lessons learned, but it's a bit hollow. And worse, if you wasted someone else's time? Almost unrecoverable. Then you're not only less useful (stale skills), but also less susceptible to going gung-ho on the new goal X', making you a poor candidate for any employers or investors since being resilient and formidable are necessary for any uncertain endeavor. The Confucian Ta Hsueh (Great Learning) says "Every day, make it new" was inscribed on the bathtub of the first Shang dynasty emperor: 湯之盤銘曰：「茍日新，日日新，又日新 Traditionally, the solution was a kind of selflessness, where you realize that even if (as with Ecclesiastes) empires you build will fall into dust, you can still help others. But in an age where interactions reduce to endless scrolling and online forums, it's not clear where and how to do that.

Liquix 1y ago
> even if ... empires you build will fall into dust, you can still help others A beautiful sentiment reminiscent of Zen. Everything is temporary, nothing lasts, everything you build or accomplish will crumble into dust and be forgotten. On its face this appears as nihilism, but on the other side of the realization, you're still here - so what else could there be to do besides seize the moment and live it to the fullest?
RataNova 1y ago
The Ta Hsueh line is such a powerful image, especially in contrast with today's digital haze. The call to "make it new" daily implies presence, intention, and responsibility

RataNova 1y ago

I think the hardest part is that effort wasn't just a means to an end; it was the thing. Not always pleasant, not always noble, but it gave shape to our days, our roles, even our self-worth. It reminds me how fragile that sense of value is when it's tied to output

raincole 1y ago

Every time we invented some higher level of abstraction for software development, it became harder, not easier. The required effort, collectively, has only been increasing. Nature language programming (aka "AI") seems to be on the same track.

siavosh 1y ago

I think the sense of loss and fear is undeniable for most. None of it is unprecedented, although probably never has the potential for both been more extreme than with AI. The spiritual/psychological solution is always the same though, fully surrender to the loss and fear, then find a way to transcend it.

prezdizzle 1y ago

As Mr. Smith points out in the Matrix: "There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us; it is purpose that defines, purpose that binds us."

vishkk 1y ago

Whatever it was — a lie, the truth, or, most likely, their mixture — that caused me to make such a decision, I am immensely grateful to it for what appears to have been my first free act. It was an instinctive act, a walkout. Reason had very little to do with it. I know that, because I've been walking out ever since, with increasing frequency. And not necessarily on account of boredom or of feeling a trap gaping; I've been walking out of perfect setups no less often than out of dreadful ones. However modest the place you happen to occupy, if it has the slightest mark of decency, you can be sure that someday somebody will walk in and claim it for himself or, what is worse, suggest that you share it. Then you either have to fight for that place or leave it. I happened to prefer the latter. Not at all because I couldn't fight, but rather out of sheer disgust with myself: managing to pick something that attracts others denotes a certain vulgarity in your choice. It doesn't matter at all that you came across the place first. It is even worse to get somewhere first, for those who follow will always have a stronger appetite than your partially satisfied one. - Joseph Brodsky

cosinetau 1y ago

Effort is Love. Healthy love is effort in the right direction.

munificent 1y ago

I used to be very into photography before Instagram and smartphones inundated the world with easy acceptably good photos. I was into DJing when that meant buying vinyl and mastering the difficult art of beatmatching by ear before CDJs made acquiring music trivial and automated beatmatching made mixing easy. I was a game developer during the time when casual smartphone games came and ate so much time and attention that players had less time available for other games. I got into making music when that meant fighting with big, slow, complex hardware synthesizers, then watched anyone with a laptop (including me) be able to do all of that a hundred times more easily, and now I watch AI auto-generate passable background music. Time and time again, I've seen this same process play out. Many of the deepest joys in my life involved putting deep time and care into making something to share with others. That feels increasingly out of step with the culture at large.

s_m_t 1y ago
OTOH there are more people than ever earnestly doing all those things. If we take the barrier to entry for publishing being as low as it is as a factor in you and many other professionals having written top quality technical books then I for one am thankful for this process you speak of.
gradschool 1y ago
I used to enjoy dancing but I don't any more because Boston Dynamics invented a robot that can dance better than I can. I used to enjoy writing but now it's so easy for anyone to self-publish a book on Amazon that I don't see the point. I used to enjoy running but all the fun has gone out of it now that motor vehicles exist that can move faster than I can run. I used to like sky-diving, but then hail stones ...
- munificent 1y ago
  I have self-published a couple of books. I do enjoy writing, but what I enjoy even more is being read. If I honestly felt my books were never going to be seen by anyone, I wouldn't have written them. Providing value to other people was the main source of meaning and joy for me with those projects.

RamosRamp 1y ago

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