8 ms·

I do not want to be a programmer anymore

80 points by ednite 1y ago

ednite 1y ago
Is anyone else finding that the real job now is pushing back against AI-backed “suggestions” , from clients, managers, and even so-called “AI experts”? They sound confident, but too often collapse in design and practice. How are you handling this shift? Do you find yourself spending more time explaining “why not” than actually building?
- lifestyleguru 1y ago
  AI chat is the ultimate coach, influencer, and MBA.
- rufius 1y ago
  It’s more of the same. At least in my experience, much of work amounts to “yes sir. Will that be all sir?” You take the input, mostly ignore it, and move on. YMMV on that strategy, but if you are deft with it then you can dodge a lot of bullshit. It does require that the things you do decide to do pan out though. You’ll need results to back it up.
  - ednite 1y ago
    Yeah, that’s pretty much been my approach too. I try to take both the positive and the negative, since even bad input can help a project evolve. The tricky part now is the energy it takes to sift through it, feedback that sounds like it came from an MIT grad one minute, or my Italian grandma (who’s never touched a device) the next.
- washadjeffmad 1y ago
  Search for "workshop labor rates meme". It's just part of knowing the business beyond the craft.
- sublinear 1y ago
  If you are going to be involved, especially as the developer, you cannot let anything undermine your authority over the implementation details. This was always true before and AI is just a new source of noise.
  - ednite 1y ago
    Yes, that’s always been true. What feels different now is the volume of undermining authority that’s popped up and how so many people feel overconfident. For example, that recent dating app that went viral and became a security nightmare. Most likely created by a very confident non-dev person. Or like the author in the piece (spoiler: that’s me) now has the confidence to give people advice, thanks to AI. I’m not really questioning that it happens, I’m stating how much energy it now takes to keep pushing back (or approving) and how easy it is to just agree with an AI output these days. Just my experience and two cents.
- scuff3d 1y ago
  Comments like this make me really grateful I work in a company run entirely by engineers.
robthebrew 1y ago
Would you accept the view of a total stranger? No, you would ask someone else to review that opinion. Same with AI, don't just fire up ChatGPT and be finished. Cross reference the answer with other LLMs
- ednite 1y ago
  Exactly, well put. More and more I’m seeing people who are great at persuading others selling “insights” straight from AI to executives.
- ZenoArrow 1y ago
  > Cross reference the answer with other LLMs Really? That's your solution? A better way to put it is don't run anything in production that you don't have the knowledge to understand yourself. You should be able to code review anything that is written by an LLM, and if you don't have sufficient knowledge to do this, don't feel tempted to run the code if you're not responsible enough to maintain it.
  - DrewADesign 1y ago
    1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters
    - ZenoArrow 1y ago
      Yes, and if you don't know how to discern the wheat from the chaff by code reviewing and testing what is produced, your chances of landing on a good solution are very low.
- card_zero 1y ago
  Remember, don't seek advice from an idiot! Always ask three idiots.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    just call them the the wise men instead and we can start a new religion!
oldpersonintx2 1y ago
[dead]
foobarbecue 1y ago
Nurtiing is such an important step in the process that it appears three times in the diagram.
- ednite 1y ago
  lol,same with cinnamon in my stew ai suggested. Btw, the real flowchart was worse.
  - tdeck 1y ago
    Cinnamon in stews is at least a real thing though (for example, tagine sometimes contains cinnamon).
    - foobarbecue 1y ago
      And, cinnamon is a real thing, stew or no stew. Nurtiing is not.
k310 1y ago
Sunday morning insight. Relying on AI is like copying someone else's homework solution. A "C" student.
- an0malous 1y ago
  the world is run by C students
  - maxbond 1y ago
    You know what they call someone who studied computer science and was a C student? An embedded engineer.
    - dmoy 1y ago
      Wait you mean like embedded as in sales eng, or embedded as in microcontroller/etc?
      - maxbond 1y ago
        As in microcontrollers, it's a silly pun.
        ryandrake 1y ago
        I give you a C++ for that joke.
        fragmede 1y ago
        That joke was well embedded in context.
152334H 1y ago
amazing meta-level joke spanning months of effort... all articles on the author's site are themselves AI generated, and the article purporting to bemoan the impact of AI is itself AI Generated Content
- artimaeis 1y ago
  Sorry if I'm missing something obvious -- but how have you come to the conclusion that all the articles are AI generated?
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    I think in this day and age people should start assuming content is AI and then working backwards to a place of trust. For example: Ed Nite says he doesn't want to be a programmer anymore. Who is Ed Nite? Is he even a programmer at all? As far as I can tell, Ed Nite: Programmer doesn't really exist, must be a pen name. As far as his content, he mostly talks about being a writer and using AI. There's no real technical content to speak of. He doesn't link to a Github or work record. I found a youtube page of his with a single AI video on it from 6 months ago. As far as I can tell Ed Nite was invented 6 months ago to start blogging about blogging, self improvement and AI at mindthenerd.com. So do I trust him? No. Assume AI and move on.
    - Epitaque 1y ago
      He's also got several nudges to enter your email and subscribe to his blog. And mentions getting 50+ emails a day that he has to respond to and mentions he uses AI to respond to them. He seems to like blasting people with AI content, and also as this blog post mentions, gets sent a lot of AI content himself. It's kinda weird, why is he doing this lol
      - ModernMech 1y ago
        He's writing the kind of stuff that might get popular on HN, then posting it here so we go interact with his blog. He'll collect emails and gain a reader base and maybe start a substack or throw up ads on the side. I could see this kind of AI astroturfing being a real problem communities face in the future, where you just scrape the top posts on a community and then generate blog content related to those, then post your content back at the community. Rinse and repeat and you don't have to be a programmer anymore.
sublinear 1y ago
> And these AI-fueled proposals aren’t necessarily bad. That’s what makes them so tricky. [...] Every idea has costs, trade-offs, resources, and explanations attached. And guess who must explain them? Me. Don't explain. Don't argue. Simply confirm that the person fully understands what they're asking for despite using AI to generate it. 99% of the time the person doesn't. 50% of the time the person leaves the conversation better off. The other 50% the lazy bastards get upset and they can totally fuck off anyway and you've dodged a bullet.
onion2k 1y ago
If you need authority over someone to persuade them then your argument isn't compelling enough, either because your reasoning is flawed or you're not communicating it well enough. In the case in the article the author believed they were the expert, and believed their wife should accept their argument on that basis alone. That isn't authority; that's ego. They were wrong so they clearly weren't drawing on their expertise or they weren't as much of an expert as they thought, which often happens if you're talking about a topic that's only adjacent to what you're an expert in. This is the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy. It's easy to believe you're the authority in question. ...we’ve allowed AI to become the authority word, leaving the rest of us either nodding along or spending our days explaining why the confident answer may not survive contact with reality. The AI aspect is irrelevant. Anyone could have pointed out the flaw in the author's original argument, and if it was reasoned well enough he'd have changed his mind. That's commendable. We should all be like that instead of dogmatically holding on to an idea in the face of a strong argument against it. The fact that argument came from some silicon and a fancy random word generator just shows how cool AI is these days. You still have to question what it's saying though. The point is that sometimes it'll be right. And sometimes it won't. Deciding which it is lies entirely with us humans.
- philipov 1y ago
  > and if it was reasoned well enough he'd have changed his mind. In my experience, motivated reasoning rules the day. People have an agenda beyond their reasoning, and if your proposal goes against that agenda, you'll never convince them with logic and evidence. At the end of the day, it's not a marketplace of ideas, but a war of conflicting interests. To convince someone requires not the better argument, but the better politics to make their interests align with yours. And in AI there are a lot of adverse interests you're going to be hard pressed to overcome. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
  - ednite 1y ago
    Well said, AI definitely amplifies agendas, and the lure of “bigger, better, more profitable” usually beats the status quo.
loloquwowndueo 1y ago
> And these AI-fueled proposals aren’t necessarily bad. That’s what makes them so tricky. They’re often plausible, sometimes even smart, but some come with strings. Every idea has costs, trade-offs, resources, and explanations attached. And guess who must explain them? Me. The guy who’s now debating not just people, but people plus the persuasive ghostwriter in their pocket Don’t spend your time analyzing or justifying your position on an AI-written proposal (which by definition someone else did not spend time creating in the first place). Take the proposal, give it to YOUR AI, and ask it to refute it. Maybe nudge it in your desired direction based on a quick skim of the original proposal. I guarantee you the original submitter probably did something similar in the first place.
- lkey 1y ago
  You dream of a world where isolation is all that remains. You have attained the outlook of a billionaire, detachment is virtue, every interaction is mediated through your servants. When people do this in their relationships, marriages fail, friendships are lost, children forget who you were without the veil. There are already stories like this cropping up every day. Do you really not understand that connecting with other flawed, unpolished people is its own reward? There is beauty and value in those imperfections.
  - loloquwowndueo 1y ago
    Very poetic but you either misunderstand me or think I intend for my advice to apply all the time, in all situations. I’m 100% an AI skeptic but also I won’t invest time and emotion replying to communications where it’s clear the other side a priori also didn’t invest at all. Let machines deal with machines and let me deal with humans. And believe you me, I reserve this for contexts where I’m not jeopardizing my real interaction with someone I care about. > Do you really not understand that connecting with other flawed, unpolished people is its own reward? Oh I understand that perfectly - the above sentence shows that it’s you who didn’t understand what I said in the first place.
    - lkey 1y ago
rvz 1y ago
This isn’t an issue for experienced software engineers who understand the limitations of these LLMs and also will scrutinise the chatbot’s answer if they see a bug it generated. Non-engineers, vibe-coders won’t know any better and click “Accept all”. Everyone wants to be a “programmer” but in reality, no-one wants to maintain the software and assume that an “AI” can do all of it i.e Vibe coding. What they really are signing up for is the increased risk that someone more experienced will break your software left and right, costing you $$$ and you end up paying them to fix it. A great time to break vibe coded apps for a bounty.
- coliveira 1y ago
  Nobody needs to break these apps, they are broken themselves. Any change may end up in the whole app breaking down, and the person using the AI will never know how to fix it.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    More money for those who can fix it for them!
    - rvz 1y ago
      This.
the_other 1y ago
Why on earth hadn’t the wife bought the domain name before it even got to this stage. Neither the author nor the AI will be able to argue with a auccessful project. ‘til the thing isnout there, this is just chin-stroking. The domain name incident absolutely isn’t a strong enough case to justify pivoting a career. The clients suggesting features and changes might be a reason to pivot a career, but towards programming and away from product/system development. I mean, let the client make the proposal, accept the commission at a lower rate that doesn’t include what you’d have charged to design it, and then build it. AI ought to help get through these things faster, anyway, and you’ve saved time on design by outsourcing to the client. In theory, you should have spare time for a break, a hobby, or to repeat this process with the next client that’s done the design work for you. I agree with all the points about agency, confidence, experience (the author used “authority”). We must not let LLMs rob us of our agency and critical thinking.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  > I mean, let the client make the proposal, accept the commission at a lower rate that doesn’t include what you’d have charged to design it, and then build it. The client will still blame you when it doesn’t meet their real needs. And rightfully so, as much as a doctor would still be blamed if he followed a cancer treatment plan the patient brought in from ChatGPT
  - the_other 1y ago
    When I talked about taking on the work at a lower rate, I had imagined that being part of a negotiation in which the provider says somethibg like “I have a strong feeling based on experience that this suggestion the client is determined get implemented wont work as well as they hope for the stated problem. I would like to work with them at my usual rate on refining the design, or I can just build it, and they must accept responsibility for the non-functional consequences, for this other fee.” Sorry that wasn’t clear.
- ednite 1y ago
  My wife and I bounce ideas around all the time for fun. She would’ve registered the domain anyway because she believed in it, and that’s what really matters to me is conviction and passion. What worries me is when AI interrupts that, and people start following shadows in Plato’s cave instead of their own judgment. Thanks.
voidmain 1y ago
If you use AI to communicate with me, you won't get a reply from me. I have no further interest in communication with you.
- patrulek 1y ago
  Understood. I’ll end the conversation here. If you change your mind in the future, you can simply start a new chat. Take care.
pulsarsky 1y ago
>Mind The Nerd is an independent publication built for thinkers, creators... Every article on this website looks to be almost wholly AI generated. Pure slop. Trust me, put in the work and you'll thank yourself for it, you'll learn to enjoy the process and your content will be more interesting.
- ednite 1y ago
  Your comment is appreciated and heard. That’s the beauty of learning new things, you try, you stumble, and you learn from your mistakes. As I’ve shared before, my blog started out heavily relying on AI for editing and grammar to get my ideas into words. I quickly realized that wasn’t the best approach and that I needed to respect my readers’ time. If you look at my newer articles, you’ll see they’re shifting, becoming more me. I’m lightly revising my earlier posts, but honestly I won’t change them much. I think it’s valuable for readers to see the progression, stumbles and all. Thanks for your comment, it might even become the subject of my next article.
  - xantronix 1y ago
    Humans are not this quick to be gratifyingly sycophantic, as your posts (note that I am careful not to say "you") in nearly every comment reply on this post. I sincerely must ask you, what are you getting out of all this? If it is the satisfaction of having conveyed a compelling story, does it not feel hollow? If it is the satisfaction of gamifying Hacker News, what insights could you possibly gain from this other than "people really hate AI writing"? If it is to waste people's time, congratulations. What is the point of you? Please don't bother copy-pasting my comment into your AI to prompt it for a response. I want to know what YOU value in your life, not some premasticated, overly-positive nonsense.
Herring 1y ago
Just cross-check and recheck everything it tells you. Like how people are discovering that writing extensive AI unit tests integration tests etc is great for software engineering. It works for building your world-view too. I think a lot of people are not in the habit of doing this (just look at politics) so they get easily fooled by a firm handshake and a bit of glazing.
- ednite 1y ago
  so true-thanks.
bwfan123 1y ago
I saw no mention of Brandolini's law [1] - or Bullshit Asymmetry principle. In fact, the piece hints at a corollary to it. Which is: Bullshit from "an authoritative sounding source" takes 100x as much effort to refute. There is a bias in us to prefer form over function. Persuasion and signaling are things. I know this as I have to battle code-review tools which needlessly put out sequence diagrams and nicely formatted README.md .for.every.single.PR. Just reading those are tiresome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
travisgriggs 1y ago
So, what was the domain? I’m dying to know! I want to pass my own judgement on it. I loved this article. It put in words a subliminal brewing angst I’ve been feeling as I happily use LLMs in multiple parts of my life. Just yesterday, a debate between a colleague and I devolved into both of us quipping “well, the tool is saying…”, as we both tried to out-authoritate each other.
- ednite 1y ago
  To nourish your curiosity, the real domain was meant as a community platform to help others going through something personal my wife has experienced. She has a beautiful soul and wants to share that journey. As an example and not the real name, but in true HN style, imagine losing sight in one eye, still learning to code like anyone else, and wanting to share that story. You might come up with something like TheCyclopsCoder.com. (Totally made up just now, no comments needed.) I debated it, since I worried it could alienate or offend blind coders. She disagreed, felt it was genuine. I hope that helps feed your curiosity and who knows, one day i might just promote her site if she moves forward with it.
zenethian 1y ago
It sounds less like that you "give in" to AI and more like that you have some weird opposition to your wife's ideas and always believe her to be wrong. I stopped reading after the first paragraph or two.
ednite 1y ago
Didn’t expect this one to get flagged, thank you everyone for the great feedback.Learning as a i go.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Office jobs that pay enough to achieve "middle-class" lifestyles are decreasing and mostly closed to new generations. Software engineering and similar STEM fields that were once one of the few that promised the illusion of meritocratic security and class mobility are fading away. And like Upton Sinclair's quote[0], when I sounded the alarm (prematurely) ~2018-2021 in industry to other software engineers that big salaries and high demand were on the decline, I was met with resistance and disbelief. What the future holds for 99.999% of humanity who isn't an owner or somehow locating a lucrative niche specialty is more or less globally flattening into similar states of declining real wages for almost everyone. Meanwhile, megacorp capital owners and their enabling corrupt government regimes are more and more resembling racketeering and organized crime syndicate aristocracies with extreme wealth distribution disparities that generally aren't getting any better. The situation of greater desperation for income invariably drives people to non-ideal choices: a. Find a new field of work that make less money b. Sacrifice ethics to work at companies that cause greater harm in exchange for more money c. Assume the on-going risks of launching a business or private consulting practice d. Stay and agree to greater demands for productivity, inconvenience, bureaucracy, and micromanagement for less pay e. Give up looking for work, semi-retire, and move to somewhere like another state or country where the cost-of-living cheaper --- 0. It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

80 points by ednite 1y ago

Is anyone else finding that the real job now is pushing back against AI-backed “suggestions” , from clients, managers, and even so-called “AI experts”? They sound confident, but too often collapse in design and practice. How are you handling this shift? Do you find yourself spending more time explaining “why not” than actually building?

lifestyleguru 1y ago
AI chat is the ultimate coach, influencer, and MBA.
rufius 1y ago
It’s more of the same. At least in my experience, much of work amounts to “yes sir. Will that be all sir?” You take the input, mostly ignore it, and move on. YMMV on that strategy, but if you are deft with it then you can dodge a lot of bullshit. It does require that the things you do decide to do pan out though. You’ll need results to back it up.
- ednite 1y ago
  Yeah, that’s pretty much been my approach too. I try to take both the positive and the negative, since even bad input can help a project evolve. The tricky part now is the energy it takes to sift through it, feedback that sounds like it came from an MIT grad one minute, or my Italian grandma (who’s never touched a device) the next.
washadjeffmad 1y ago
Search for "workshop labor rates meme". It's just part of knowing the business beyond the craft.
sublinear 1y ago
If you are going to be involved, especially as the developer, you cannot let anything undermine your authority over the implementation details. This was always true before and AI is just a new source of noise.
- ednite 1y ago
  Yes, that’s always been true. What feels different now is the volume of undermining authority that’s popped up and how so many people feel overconfident. For example, that recent dating app that went viral and became a security nightmare. Most likely created by a very confident non-dev person. Or like the author in the piece (spoiler: that’s me) now has the confidence to give people advice, thanks to AI. I’m not really questioning that it happens, I’m stating how much energy it now takes to keep pushing back (or approving) and how easy it is to just agree with an AI output these days. Just my experience and two cents.
scuff3d 1y ago
Comments like this make me really grateful I work in a company run entirely by engineers.

robthebrew 1y ago

Would you accept the view of a total stranger? No, you would ask someone else to review that opinion. Same with AI, don't just fire up ChatGPT and be finished. Cross reference the answer with other LLMs

ednite 1y ago
Exactly, well put. More and more I’m seeing people who are great at persuading others selling “insights” straight from AI to executives.
ZenoArrow 1y ago
> Cross reference the answer with other LLMs Really? That's your solution? A better way to put it is don't run anything in production that you don't have the knowledge to understand yourself. You should be able to code review anything that is written by an LLM, and if you don't have sufficient knowledge to do this, don't feel tempted to run the code if you're not responsible enough to maintain it.
- DrewADesign 1y ago
  1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters
  - ZenoArrow 1y ago
    Yes, and if you don't know how to discern the wheat from the chaff by code reviewing and testing what is produced, your chances of landing on a good solution are very low.
card_zero 1y ago
Remember, don't seek advice from an idiot! Always ask three idiots.
- fragmede 1y ago
  just call them the the wise men instead and we can start a new religion!

oldpersonintx2 1y ago

[dead]

foobarbecue 1y ago

Nurtiing is such an important step in the process that it appears three times in the diagram.

ednite 1y ago
lol,same with cinnamon in my stew ai suggested. Btw, the real flowchart was worse.
- tdeck 1y ago
  Cinnamon in stews is at least a real thing though (for example, tagine sometimes contains cinnamon).
  - foobarbecue 1y ago
    And, cinnamon is a real thing, stew or no stew. Nurtiing is not.

k310 1y ago

Sunday morning insight. Relying on AI is like copying someone else's homework solution. A "C" student.

an0malous 1y ago
the world is run by C students
- maxbond 1y ago
  You know what they call someone who studied computer science and was a C student? An embedded engineer.
  - dmoy 1y ago
    Wait you mean like embedded as in sales eng, or embedded as in microcontroller/etc?
    - maxbond 1y ago
      As in microcontrollers, it's a silly pun.
      - ryandrake 1y ago
        I give you a C++ for that joke.
        fragmede 1y ago
        That joke was well embedded in context.

152334H 1y ago

amazing meta-level joke spanning months of effort... all articles on the author's site are themselves AI generated, and the article purporting to bemoan the impact of AI is itself AI Generated Content

artimaeis 1y ago
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious -- but how have you come to the conclusion that all the articles are AI generated?
- ModernMech 1y ago
  I think in this day and age people should start assuming content is AI and then working backwards to a place of trust. For example: Ed Nite says he doesn't want to be a programmer anymore. Who is Ed Nite? Is he even a programmer at all? As far as I can tell, Ed Nite: Programmer doesn't really exist, must be a pen name. As far as his content, he mostly talks about being a writer and using AI. There's no real technical content to speak of. He doesn't link to a Github or work record. I found a youtube page of his with a single AI video on it from 6 months ago. As far as I can tell Ed Nite was invented 6 months ago to start blogging about blogging, self improvement and AI at mindthenerd.com. So do I trust him? No. Assume AI and move on.
  - Epitaque 1y ago
    He's also got several nudges to enter your email and subscribe to his blog. And mentions getting 50+ emails a day that he has to respond to and mentions he uses AI to respond to them. He seems to like blasting people with AI content, and also as this blog post mentions, gets sent a lot of AI content himself. It's kinda weird, why is he doing this lol
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      He's writing the kind of stuff that might get popular on HN, then posting it here so we go interact with his blog. He'll collect emails and gain a reader base and maybe start a substack or throw up ads on the side. I could see this kind of AI astroturfing being a real problem communities face in the future, where you just scrape the top posts on a community and then generate blog content related to those, then post your content back at the community. Rinse and repeat and you don't have to be a programmer anymore.

sublinear 1y ago

> And these AI-fueled proposals aren’t necessarily bad. That’s what makes them so tricky. [...] Every idea has costs, trade-offs, resources, and explanations attached. And guess who must explain them? Me. Don't explain. Don't argue. Simply confirm that the person fully understands what they're asking for despite using AI to generate it. 99% of the time the person doesn't. 50% of the time the person leaves the conversation better off. The other 50% the lazy bastards get upset and they can totally fuck off anyway and you've dodged a bullet.

onion2k 1y ago

If you need authority over someone to persuade them then your argument isn't compelling enough, either because your reasoning is flawed or you're not communicating it well enough. In the case in the article the author believed they were the expert, and believed their wife should accept their argument on that basis alone. That isn't authority; that's ego. They were wrong so they clearly weren't drawing on their expertise or they weren't as much of an expert as they thought, which often happens if you're talking about a topic that's only adjacent to what you're an expert in. This is the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy. It's easy to believe you're the authority in question. ...we’ve allowed AI to become the authority word, leaving the rest of us either nodding along or spending our days explaining why the confident answer may not survive contact with reality. The AI aspect is irrelevant. Anyone could have pointed out the flaw in the author's original argument, and if it was reasoned well enough he'd have changed his mind. That's commendable. We should all be like that instead of dogmatically holding on to an idea in the face of a strong argument against it. The fact that argument came from some silicon and a fancy random word generator just shows how cool AI is these days. You still have to question what it's saying though. The point is that sometimes it'll be right. And sometimes it won't. Deciding which it is lies entirely with us humans.

philipov 1y ago
> and if it was reasoned well enough he'd have changed his mind. In my experience, motivated reasoning rules the day. People have an agenda beyond their reasoning, and if your proposal goes against that agenda, you'll never convince them with logic and evidence. At the end of the day, it's not a marketplace of ideas, but a war of conflicting interests. To convince someone requires not the better argument, but the better politics to make their interests align with yours. And in AI there are a lot of adverse interests you're going to be hard pressed to overcome. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- ednite 1y ago
  Well said, AI definitely amplifies agendas, and the lure of “bigger, better, more profitable” usually beats the status quo.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago

> And these AI-fueled proposals aren’t necessarily bad. That’s what makes them so tricky. They’re often plausible, sometimes even smart, but some come with strings. Every idea has costs, trade-offs, resources, and explanations attached. And guess who must explain them? Me. The guy who’s now debating not just people, but people plus the persuasive ghostwriter in their pocket Don’t spend your time analyzing or justifying your position on an AI-written proposal (which by definition someone else did not spend time creating in the first place). Take the proposal, give it to YOUR AI, and ask it to refute it. Maybe nudge it in your desired direction based on a quick skim of the original proposal. I guarantee you the original submitter probably did something similar in the first place.

lkey 1y ago
You dream of a world where isolation is all that remains. You have attained the outlook of a billionaire, detachment is virtue, every interaction is mediated through your servants. When people do this in their relationships, marriages fail, friendships are lost, children forget who you were without the veil. There are already stories like this cropping up every day. Do you really not understand that connecting with other flawed, unpolished people is its own reward? There is beauty and value in those imperfections.
- loloquwowndueo 1y ago
  Very poetic but you either misunderstand me or think I intend for my advice to apply all the time, in all situations. I’m 100% an AI skeptic but also I won’t invest time and emotion replying to communications where it’s clear the other side a priori also didn’t invest at all. Let machines deal with machines and let me deal with humans. And believe you me, I reserve this for contexts where I’m not jeopardizing my real interaction with someone I care about. > Do you really not understand that connecting with other flawed, unpolished people is its own reward? Oh I understand that perfectly - the above sentence shows that it’s you who didn’t understand what I said in the first place.
  - lkey 1y ago

rvz 1y ago

This isn’t an issue for experienced software engineers who understand the limitations of these LLMs and also will scrutinise the chatbot’s answer if they see a bug it generated. Non-engineers, vibe-coders won’t know any better and click “Accept all”. Everyone wants to be a “programmer” but in reality, no-one wants to maintain the software and assume that an “AI” can do all of it i.e Vibe coding. What they really are signing up for is the increased risk that someone more experienced will break your software left and right, costing you $$$ and you end up paying them to fix it. A great time to break vibe coded apps for a bounty.

coliveira 1y ago
Nobody needs to break these apps, they are broken themselves. Any change may end up in the whole app breaking down, and the person using the AI will never know how to fix it.
- fragmede 1y ago
  More money for those who can fix it for them!
  - rvz 1y ago
    This.

the_other 1y ago

Why on earth hadn’t the wife bought the domain name before it even got to this stage. Neither the author nor the AI will be able to argue with a auccessful project. ‘til the thing isnout there, this is just chin-stroking. The domain name incident absolutely isn’t a strong enough case to justify pivoting a career. The clients suggesting features and changes might be a reason to pivot a career, but towards programming and away from product/system development. I mean, let the client make the proposal, accept the commission at a lower rate that doesn’t include what you’d have charged to design it, and then build it. AI ought to help get through these things faster, anyway, and you’ve saved time on design by outsourcing to the client. In theory, you should have spare time for a break, a hobby, or to repeat this process with the next client that’s done the design work for you. I agree with all the points about agency, confidence, experience (the author used “authority”). We must not let LLMs rob us of our agency and critical thinking.

SoftTalker 1y ago
> I mean, let the client make the proposal, accept the commission at a lower rate that doesn’t include what you’d have charged to design it, and then build it. The client will still blame you when it doesn’t meet their real needs. And rightfully so, as much as a doctor would still be blamed if he followed a cancer treatment plan the patient brought in from ChatGPT
- the_other 1y ago
  When I talked about taking on the work at a lower rate, I had imagined that being part of a negotiation in which the provider says somethibg like “I have a strong feeling based on experience that this suggestion the client is determined get implemented wont work as well as they hope for the stated problem. I would like to work with them at my usual rate on refining the design, or I can just build it, and they must accept responsibility for the non-functional consequences, for this other fee.” Sorry that wasn’t clear.
ednite 1y ago
My wife and I bounce ideas around all the time for fun. She would’ve registered the domain anyway because she believed in it, and that’s what really matters to me is conviction and passion. What worries me is when AI interrupts that, and people start following shadows in Plato’s cave instead of their own judgment. Thanks.

voidmain 1y ago

If you use AI to communicate with me, you won't get a reply from me. I have no further interest in communication with you.

patrulek 1y ago
Understood. I’ll end the conversation here. If you change your mind in the future, you can simply start a new chat. Take care.

pulsarsky 1y ago

>Mind The Nerd is an independent publication built for thinkers, creators... Every article on this website looks to be almost wholly AI generated. Pure slop. Trust me, put in the work and you'll thank yourself for it, you'll learn to enjoy the process and your content will be more interesting.

ednite 1y ago
Your comment is appreciated and heard. That’s the beauty of learning new things, you try, you stumble, and you learn from your mistakes. As I’ve shared before, my blog started out heavily relying on AI for editing and grammar to get my ideas into words. I quickly realized that wasn’t the best approach and that I needed to respect my readers’ time. If you look at my newer articles, you’ll see they’re shifting, becoming more me. I’m lightly revising my earlier posts, but honestly I won’t change them much. I think it’s valuable for readers to see the progression, stumbles and all. Thanks for your comment, it might even become the subject of my next article.
- xantronix 1y ago
  Humans are not this quick to be gratifyingly sycophantic, as your posts (note that I am careful not to say "you") in nearly every comment reply on this post. I sincerely must ask you, what are you getting out of all this? If it is the satisfaction of having conveyed a compelling story, does it not feel hollow? If it is the satisfaction of gamifying Hacker News, what insights could you possibly gain from this other than "people really hate AI writing"? If it is to waste people's time, congratulations. What is the point of you? Please don't bother copy-pasting my comment into your AI to prompt it for a response. I want to know what YOU value in your life, not some premasticated, overly-positive nonsense.

Herring 1y ago

Just cross-check and recheck everything it tells you. Like how people are discovering that writing extensive AI unit tests integration tests etc is great for software engineering. It works for building your world-view too. I think a lot of people are not in the habit of doing this (just look at politics) so they get easily fooled by a firm handshake and a bit of glazing.

ednite 1y ago
so true-thanks.

bwfan123 1y ago

I saw no mention of Brandolini's law [1] - or Bullshit Asymmetry principle. In fact, the piece hints at a corollary to it. Which is: Bullshit from "an authoritative sounding source" takes 100x as much effort to refute. There is a bias in us to prefer form over function. Persuasion and signaling are things. I know this as I have to battle code-review tools which needlessly put out sequence diagrams and nicely formatted README.md .for.every.single.PR. Just reading those are tiresome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

travisgriggs 1y ago

So, what was the domain? I’m dying to know! I want to pass my own judgement on it. I loved this article. It put in words a subliminal brewing angst I’ve been feeling as I happily use LLMs in multiple parts of my life. Just yesterday, a debate between a colleague and I devolved into both of us quipping “well, the tool is saying…”, as we both tried to out-authoritate each other.

ednite 1y ago
To nourish your curiosity, the real domain was meant as a community platform to help others going through something personal my wife has experienced. She has a beautiful soul and wants to share that journey. As an example and not the real name, but in true HN style, imagine losing sight in one eye, still learning to code like anyone else, and wanting to share that story. You might come up with something like TheCyclopsCoder.com. (Totally made up just now, no comments needed.) I debated it, since I worried it could alienate or offend blind coders. She disagreed, felt it was genuine. I hope that helps feed your curiosity and who knows, one day i might just promote her site if she moves forward with it.

zenethian 1y ago

It sounds less like that you "give in" to AI and more like that you have some weird opposition to your wife's ideas and always believe her to be wrong. I stopped reading after the first paragraph or two.

ednite 1y ago

Didn’t expect this one to get flagged, thank you everyone for the great feedback.Learning as a i go.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Office jobs that pay enough to achieve "middle-class" lifestyles are decreasing and mostly closed to new generations. Software engineering and similar STEM fields that were once one of the few that promised the illusion of meritocratic security and class mobility are fading away. And like Upton Sinclair's quote[0], when I sounded the alarm (prematurely) ~2018-2021 in industry to other software engineers that big salaries and high demand were on the decline, I was met with resistance and disbelief. What the future holds for 99.999% of humanity who isn't an owner or somehow locating a lucrative niche specialty is more or less globally flattening into similar states of declining real wages for almost everyone. Meanwhile, megacorp capital owners and their enabling corrupt government regimes are more and more resembling racketeering and organized crime syndicate aristocracies with extreme wealth distribution disparities that generally aren't getting any better. The situation of greater desperation for income invariably drives people to non-ideal choices: a. Find a new field of work that make less money b. Sacrifice ethics to work at companies that cause greater harm in exchange for more money c. Assume the on-going risks of launching a business or private consulting practice d. Stay and agree to greater demands for productivity, inconvenience, bureaucracy, and micromanagement for less pay e. Give up looking for work, semi-retire, and move to somewhere like another state or country where the cost-of-living cheaper --- 0. It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.