9 ms·

I feel with people that say that "AI have take the fun out of programming" for them, but at the same time I think to myself: is it about doing, or is it about g

by iammjm 11mo ago

I feel with people that say that "AI have take the fun out of programming" for them, but at the same time I think to myself: is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? Like I imagine someone in the past loved their job walking each night through their city, lighting up the gas-powered street lights. And then one day someone else implemented electric street lights, and the first person lost the job they loved. But in the end, its about providing light to the city streets, no? For the great majority of work, it is not about fun, but about doing something other people need or want. For me, AI allows me to realize my ideas, and get things done. Some of it might be good, some of it might be bad. I put at least as much time, attention and effort as the "real" programmers do, but my time goes into thinking and precisely defining what I want, cutting it up into smaller logical modules, testing, identifying and fixing bugs, iterating all the time.

minimaxir 11mo ago
How people derive utility varies from person to person and I suspect is the root cause of most AI generation pipeline debates, creative and code-wise. There are two camps that are surprisingly mutually exclusive: a) People who gain value from the process of creating content. b) People who gain value from the end result itself. I personally am more of a (b): I did my time learning how to create things with code, but when I create things such as open-source software that people depend on, my personal satisfaction from the process of developing is less relevant. Also, getting frustrated with code configuration and writing boilerplate code is not personally gratifying.
dlisboa 11mo ago
You like having the painting, you just don't like to paint. You can think of a painting and have it appear before you. That's OK, but surely you can see how painters wouldn't enjoy that in the slightest.
- grim_io 11mo ago
  You can still enjoy painting, but there is no guarantee that you will be paid for it.
- brandall10 11mo ago
  Historically, many master painters used teams of assistants/apprentices to do most of the work under their guidance, with them only stepping in to do actual painting in the final details. Similar with famous architects running large studios, mostly taking on a higher level conceptual role for any commissions they're involved in. Traditionally in software (20+ years ago) architects typically wouldn't code much outside of POC work, they just worked with systems engineers and generated a ton of UML to be disseminated. So if we go back to that type of role, it somewhat fits in with agentic software dev.
  - gridspy 11mo ago
    Sure, but you currently cannot teach AI models to generate novel art in the same way that you can teach a human apprentice.
    - brandall10 11mo ago
      I was addressing the 'enjoyment' factor, when at the end of the day, esp. at scale, it's a job to produce something someone paid for.
      - dlisboa 11mo ago
        That's where we're at a marked disagreement. "It's just a way to get paid" reduces every human knowledge to a monetary transaction, so the value of any type of learning is only worth what is being paid for. Thankfully the people that came before us didn't see it that way otherwise we wouldn't even have anything to program on.
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    > they just worked with systems engineers and generated a ton of UML to be disseminated. So if we go back to that type of role, it somewhat fits in with agentic software dev. I've never met one of those UML slingers that added much value.
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    And how did the master painter learn his craft, without first having been an assistant or apprentice?
glenstein 11mo ago
>For the great majority of work, it is not about fun, but about doing something other people need or want The essence of this, I think, is that a sense of craftsmanship and appreciation for craft often goes hand in hand with the ethos of learning and understanding what you are working with. So there is the issue of who rightly deserves to get the satisfaction out of the getting things done. But there's also the fact that satisfaction goes hand in hand with craft, with knowledge. And that informs a perspective of being able to do things. I finally read Adrift, 76 Days at Sea, a fantastic book about surviving in a life raft while drifting across the ocean. But the difference between life and death was an individual with an abundance of practical survival, sailing and navigation knowledge. So there's something to the idea of valuing the ability to call on hard earned deep knowledge, and a relationship to knowledge that doesn't abstract it away. Almost paralleling questions of hosting your own data or entrusting it in centralized services.
- dangus 11mo ago
  Craft is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve never even able to make a mobile app before. My skillset was just a bit too far off and my background more in the backend. Now I have a complete app thanks to AI. And I do feel a sense of accomplishment. For some people building furniture from IKEA is an accomplishment. But a woodworker building an IKEA piece isn’t going to feel great about it. It sounds like the person who made this repo didn’t need help but used the help anyway and had a bad time.
  - jackdoe 11mo ago
    > It sounds like the person who made this repo didn’t need help but used the help anyway and had a bad time. tbh, it would've taken me 10x the time, the docs are not very obvious rp2350 is fairly new, and its riscv is not used as much and is afterthought, if I was writing it for arm it would've been much easier as the arm swd docs are very clear. I am also new to the pico world. It is not easy to make myself do something when I know its going to take 10 times longer and its going to be 10 times harder, even if I know I will feel 10 times better. You know when they say "find what for you is play and for others is work"? well..
TomasBM 11mo ago
Yeah, this resonates with me. As much as I dislike not having a good mental model of all the code that does things for me, ultimately, I have to concede the battle to get things done. This is not that different from importing packages that someone else wrote, or relying on codebases of my colleagues. That said, even if I have to temporarily give up on understanding, I don't believe there's any reason to completely surrender control. I'll call a technician when things need fixing right away, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't learn (some of) the fixes myself.
tobyjsullivan 11mo ago
This reminds me of the debate around Soylent when that came out. Are meals for enjoyment, flavour, and the experience or are they about consuming nutrients and providing energy? I’d say that debate was largely philosophical with proponents on both sides. And really the answer might be that both things are true for different people at different times. Though I also observe that soylent did not, by and large, end up replacing meals for the vast majority.
gyomu 11mo ago
> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? No, this is a false dichotomy and slippery slope dangerous thinking. It’s about building a world where we can all live in and find meaning, joy, dignity, and fulfillment, which requires a balance between pursuing the ends and preserving the means as worthwhile human pursuits. If I am eating a delicious meal but the people preparing it had a miserable time, or it was prepared entirely by robots controlled by nefarious people using the profits to harm society, I don’t want it. Human society and civilization is for the benefit of humans, not for filling checkboxes above all else.
- rustystump 11mo ago
  I guess you are a vegan too right? I get this take but it is naivety. Not everything must pass the morality purity test. Did mass processed food production stop people from cooking or enjoying human made food? No it did not. The same is true in almost all domains where a form of industrialization happens.
  - nullgeo 11mo ago
    > Did mass processed food production stop people from cooking or enjoying human made food? Yeah but what if I'm getting pitted against my coworkers who are vibe coding and getting things done faster than I am. Some people write code with pride because it's their brainchild. AI completely ruins the fun for those people when they have to compete against their coworkers for productivity. I'm not in disagreement with you or the GP comment, but this it is super hard to make nuanced comments about GenAI.
    - generativenoise 11mo ago
      They are wrong however. To take the food example, the existence of processed food production creates artifacts like food deserts. If you are privileged these things don't effect you as much as you get more agency. Just the existence of quick to eat and prepare foods are going to put limits on how long you are going to be given for lunch and dinner. Even if you wanted to prepare fresh food, the system is going to make it difficult since it becomes an unsupported activity in terms of time allowances and market access.
denysvitali 11mo ago
I truly enjoy programming, but the most frustrating part for me was that I had many ideas and too little time to work on everything. Thanks to AI I can now work on many side projects at the time, and most importantly just (as you mentioned) get stuff done quickly and most of the time in good enough (or sometimes excellent) results. I'm both amazed and a bit sad, but the reality is that my output has increased significantly - although the quality might have dropped a bit in certain areas. Time is limited, and if I can increase my results in the same way as the electric street lights, I can simply look back at the past and smile that I lived in a time where lighting up gas-powered street lights was considered a skill. As you perfectly put it, it's not about the process per se, it's about the result. And the result is that now the lights are only 80% lit. In a few months / years we'll probably reach the threshold where the electric street lights will be brighter than the gas-powered ones, and you'd be a fool if you decide to still light them up one by one.
- shepherdjerred 11mo ago
  I’m in the same bucket. I absolutely love programming. What I love even more is being able to do all of these projects and fast-forward through them.
  - igravious 11mo ago
    Dunno why you got down-voted for saying this. Why down-vote someone for their personal subjective opinion?
- ta12653421 11mo ago
  THIS 8h work, 1 or 2h commute, then a little bit of self care etc - there is not much time to work on "sideprojects", unfortunately: AI is a superbooster here, as it allows to much forward much quicker than before.
zahlman 11mo ago
> Like I imagine someone in the past loved their job walking each night through their city, lighting up the gas-powered street lights. And then one day someone else implemented electric street lights, and the first person lost the job they loved. But in the end, its about providing light to the city streets, no? Lighting or extinguishing a gas lamp does not allow for creative expression. Writing a program does. The comparison is almost offensive. > For the great majority of work, it is not about fun, but about doing something other people need or want. Some of us write code for reasons that are not related to employment. The idea that someone else might find the software useful is speculative, and perhaps an expression of hubris; it's not the source of motivation. > I put at least as much time, attention and effort as the "real" programmers do, but my time goes into thinking and precisely defining what I want, cutting it up into smaller logical modules, testing, identifying and fixing bugs, iterating all the time. So does the time of the "real programmers".
- aetherspawn 11mo ago
  Not everyone needs creative expression to enjoy their job, sometimes it’s about the process (sales people, mechanics, etc)
  - agumonkey 11mo ago
    somehow mechanics share the problem solving aspect of programming
- itsdrewmiller 11mo ago
  Ok but then none of this is about you. People still make art even though artists don’t make any money, and that is wonderful. Improving productivity for actual work could let everyone have more time for creative self expression. Hasn’t seemed to work out that way in practice but maybe this time is different!
  - fl0id 11mo ago
    Under any current / capitalist system by design it won’t be different because managers/capital want to increase gains, which contradicts allowing you to keep the gains.
tjr 11mo ago
I am reminded of Dijkstra's remark on Lisp, that it "has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts." (I imagine that this is not limited to Lisp, though some languages may yield more or less results.) If we consider programming entirely as a means to and end, with the end being all that matters, we may lose out on insights obtained while doing the work. Whether if those insights are of practical value, or economic value, or of no value at all, is another question, but I feel there is more likely to be something gained by actually doing the programming, compared to actually lighting the street lamps. (Of course, what you are programming matters too. Many were quick to turn to AI for "boilerplate"; I doubt many insights are found in such code.)
allenu 11mo ago
Programming really is fascinating as a skill because it can bring so much joy to the practitioner on a day-to-day problem-solving level while also providing much value to companies that are using it to generate profit. How many other professions have this luxury? As a result, though, I think AI taking over a lot of what we're able to do has the dual issue of making your day to day rough both as a personally-enriching experience but also as a money-making endeavor. I've been reading The Machine That Changed the World recently and it talks about how Ford's mass production assembly line replaced craftsmen building cars by hand. It made me wonder if AI will end up replacing us programmers in a similar way. Craftsmen surely loved the act of building a vehicle, but once assembly lines came along, it no longer made sense to produce cars in that fashion since more unskilled labor could get the job done faster and cheaper. Will we get to a place where AI is "good enough" to replace most developers? You could always argue that craftspeople could generate better code, but I can see a future where that becomes a luxury and unnecessary if tools do most of the work well enough.
yodsanklai 11mo ago
> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? It's both. When you climb a mountain, the joy is reaching the summit after the hard hike. The hike is hard but also enjoyable in itself, and makes you appreciate reaching the top even more. If there's a cable car or a road leading to the summit, the view may still be nice, but I'll go hiking somewhere else.
Vegenoid 11mo ago
Making things is often not just about making the thing right in front of you, but about building the skills to make bigger and better things. When you consider the long view, the struggle that makes it harder to make the thing at hand is well worth it. We have long considered taking shortcuts that don’t build skills to be detrimental in the long term. This pretty much only stops being the case when the thing you are short cutting becomes totally irrelevant. We have yet to see how the atrophying of programming skills will affect our collective ability to make reliable and novel software. In my experience, I have not seen much new software that I’m happy about that is the fruit of LLMs. I have experienced web apps that I’ve been using for years getting buggier.
- teaearlgraycold 11mo ago
  I feel that too much reliance on LLMs will leave engineers with at best a linear increase in skill over time, compared to the exponential returns of accumulated knowledge. For some I fear they will actually get negative returns when using AI.
dvfjsdhgfv 11mo ago
The correct analogy would be that half of the lights wouldn't light up randomly and then you'd have to go out anyway but in a hurry and only to certain ones just do discover you need to get back 20 minutes later because there is another problem with the same light, and your boss would expect that you do everything much faster and you end up frustrated even more.
kevinsync 11mo ago
I'm a bit late to the conversation but I'm on month 4 (?) of building a (greenfield) desktop app with Claude Code + Codex. I've been coding since Pulp Fiction hit theaters, and I'm confident I could have just written this thing from scratch without LLMs with a lot fewer headaches, but I really wanted to get my hands dirty with new tools and see what they are and aren't capable of. Some brief takeaways: 1. I'm on probably the 10th complete-restart iteration; I had a strong vision for what it was going to be, with a very weak grasp on how to technically achieve it, as well as a tenuous-at-best grasp on some of what turned out to be the most difficult parts (clever memory management, optimizations for speed, wrangling huge datasets, algorithms, etc) -- I started with a CLI-only prototype thinking I could get it all together reasonably quickly and then move onto a hand-crafted visual UI that I'd go over with a fine-toothed comb. I'm still working on the fundamentals LOL with a janky UI that I'll get to when the foundation is solid. 2. By iteration 4 or 5, I realized I wanted to implement stuff that was incompatible with the less-complicated foundations already laid; this becomes a big issue when you vibe code and have it write docs, and then change your mind / discover a better way to do it. The amount of sprawl and "overgrowth" in the codebase becomes a second job when you need to pivot -- you become a glorified hedge trimmer trying to excise both code AND documentation that will very confidently poison the agents moving forward if you don't. 3. Speaking of overconfidence, I keep finding myself in situations where the LLMs (due to not being able to contextualize the entire codebase at any single time) offer solutions/approaches/algorithms that work (and work well!) until you push more data at it. For validation purposes, I started with very limited datasets, so I could hand-check results and audit the database. By the time you're at a million rows, spot-checking becomes really hard, shit starts crashing because you didn't foresee architectural problems due to lack of domain experience, etc. You start asking for alternative solutions and approaches, you get them, but the LLM (not incorrectly) also wants to preserve what's already there, so a whole new logic path gets cut, and the codebase grows like a jungle. The docs get stale without getting pruned. There's conflicting context. Switch to a different LLM and sometimes naming conventions mysteriously shift like it's speaking a different dialect. On and on. Are the tools worth it? Depends. For me, for this one, on the whole, yes; it has taken an extremely long time (in comparison to the promises of 10x productivity) to get to where I've been able to try out a dozen approaches that I was unfamiliar with, see first-hand what works and what doesn't, and get a real working grasp of how off-the-rails agentic coding can take you if you're just exploring. I am now left with some really good, relevant code to reference, a BUNCH of really misguided code to flush down the shitter, a strong mental map of how to achieve what I'm building + where things are supposed to go, and now I'm starting yet another fresh iteration where I can scaffold and piece together the whole thing with refactored / reformatted / readable code. And then actually implement the UI I've been designing lol. I get the whole "just bully the LLM until it seems like it works, then ship it" mentality; objectively that's not much different than "just bully the developer until it seems like it works, then ship it" mentality of a product manager. But as amazing as these tools are for conjuring something into existence from thin air, I really think the devil is truly in the details, and if you're making something you hope to ever be able to build upon and expand and maintain, you have to go far beyond "vibes" alone.
agumonkey 11mo ago
so far the economy is not build on getting things done alone the promise of progress is that not having to do chores will make us happier, it's partly true, and partly false people hate doing too much of too harmful things, beside that if you need me to redo your shelves, or help you get milk in the morning, i'm happy to oblige but back to the point of things getting done and the march of progress, we're entering a potential kurzweil runaway, where computer understand and operate on the world faster, better and longer than us, leaving us with having nothing to do, so we'll see, but i'm not betting a lot on that, it's gonna be toxic (big 4 becoming our main dependency, unstable and a potential depression frenzy) look at how often people say "i wanna do something that matters", "i wanna help others".. it's a bit strange to say this because we spend our lives maintaining the worlds to be comfortable, but having everything done for you all the time might not be heaven on earth (even in the ideal best case)
beefnugs 11mo ago
Once again no one is capable of coming up with a good analogy: the analogy here would be that someone comes up with occasional exploding electrical lights that sometimes create black holes to suck up all the surrounding light for a block, and then really work as intended under 60% of the time. But the city rushes to implement as recklessly and quickly as possible because promises and lies. Also the whole time its happening they keep saying not a single gas-lighter will lose their job because the blackholes need to be fed human flesh sometimes... so we will get them to do that
FloorEgg 11mo ago
I agree wholeheartedly that it's about getting things done, and is what the universe cares about. As individuals we enjoy being in flow, and when the nature of the work changes we may lose our flow and shake our fists in frustration... Change can be painful, but that's because it takes energy. From particles to atoms to cells to people to civilizations, it seems like the whole point is to get more stuff done. Why? Probably because getting stuff done is more interesting than the alternative.
al_be_back 11mo ago
>> doing, or is it about getting things done Who says the thing is done? there is a massive danger now, with the sheer amount of complexity & speed brought by ai, in that it's increasingly harder to verify / do proof-of-work. >> AI allows me to realize my ideas sure for a personal/pet project. however, when working for a customer/client, they've ideas, needs, wants and usually have their own users and shareholders to satisfy - need proof. >> lighting up the gas-powered street lights ok, no this metaphor may well be loved by ai companies, but doesn't actual work in so many levels. For one, ai (as actually provided) is not electricity or a physical system, a brain, or a mind, it's software (I use it v-selectively). Second, the job being done (lighting, or coding) is ultimately to produce / output the desired outcome for whoever ordered it - a solution to a problem - failing that it's just work and wages for the worker but no effective solution (lighting the dark side of the moon, kinda). I agree with the OP, as system complexity went up, so does the ability to keep up.
BrenBarn 11mo ago
The thing is that a large portion of what people are using AI (and tech in general) to do simply doesn't need to be done. We don't need a "smart" dental floss dispenser, or something that automatically buys toilet paper for you, or little Clippy-the-paper-clip bots popping up everywhere to ask if you need help. A lot of the tech that's coming out is a through-and-through waste of everyone's time and energy --- its users' as well as its makers'.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  I've had the same thought. What if the real reason for recent softness in software engineer hiring, is that we have almost all the software we really need? I feel like it's been a while since I even saw some software and thought "oh, I really need that!" Vs "here is something we will force you to download and install on your phone in order to do something that previously didn't require software". Like online menus in restaurants or event tickets or parking meter apps.
  - BrenBarn 11mo ago
    I think we've had almost all the software we need for years now. Most new software is small variations on existing software. In terms of software that would make you go "oh I really need that" because it's a genuinely novel type of functionality. . . it's hard for me to think what's the most recent software I use that falls into that category. Actually more common is that I use an old, working program but then it stops working for whatever reason (e.g., not compatible with latest upgrades) and then I need to look for "new" software to do the same old thing, which it often doesn't do as well as the old software.
Ekaros 11mo ago
I fully and absolutely agree future is bright. Soon we can outsource both the work and the ideas to LLMs. Make fully automated system to produce fully complete novels, music, movies, videos and software. Just prompt AI to make a movie, book, music or even SaaS. No humans involved. Absolute superior system. Just instruct LLM to start producing programs and monetizing them. No ideas needed, no effort. No thought. You can even source ideas from it. No need to think or have any personal input anymore.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- anthk 11mo ago
  >Superior Superior disasters you mean.
- krige 11mo ago
  And then we can have a second LLM read and digest the book for us. In fact, we can create a pipeline, where LLM writes, LLM reads, and then LLM leaves reviews and reddit comments, all without any human input or oversight on any of these steps, while you can do the fun stuff, like uhm, washing dishes or something.
boesboes 11mo ago
> Some of it might be good, some of it might be bad. None of it will be good, all of it will be bad. mmw
jimkleiber 11mo ago
I was reflecting on this yesterday, as I have often hated AI for generating emails and other written text, but kinda am loving it for writing code. One realization was what you said about me just wanting the code done so I can use the app. The second was that, for me, I care about the output of the code, not the code itself. Whereas with the written word, I care about the word. Perhaps if I used AI to summarize what someone wanted in the email then I would care less about the written word coming from a human, but right now I still want to read what they've written. You can say that there are programmers who want to read the code from someone else, but I don't think there's the equivalent of code abstracted away into a UI that exists for the written word (open to that being challenged). The last and maybe biggest realization is that computer language exists as multiple levels of abstraction. Machine language, assembly language, high-level language, etc. I'm not sure human languages have as many layers of abstraction, or if they do, they exist within the same language. I'll keep reflecting, just my short two cents for now.
danb1974 11mo ago
It's about writing good, easy to read and maintanable code, not "yet another piece of garbage that almost works... for me..." 10k lines that nobody including you understands? That's a liability if anywhere else than your home project that only you use Use AI as a hyper-documentation system and "show me how to" guide but not to spew code that neither it or you understand
wartywhoa23 11mo ago
> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? Forgive me some frivolousness and let me reduce this ad the inevitable absurdum: Is life about living, or is it about getting life ended?
veegee 11mo ago
[dead]
sanjayjc 11mo ago
> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? For me it is getting things done while also understanding the whole building, from its foundation up. Only with such a comprehensive mental model can I predict how my code will behave in unanticipated situations. I've only ever achieved this metal model by doing. Succinctly, "it is about doing" to guarantee I'm "getting things really done". > my time goes into thinking and precisely defining what I want I'm reminded of the famous quote "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." [1] A programming language is exactly the medium that lets me precisely define my thoughts! I think the only way to achieve equivalent precision using human language is to write them in legalese, just as a lawyer does when poring over the words and punctuation in a legal contract (and that depends upon so much case law to make the words really precise). > For me, AI allows me to realize my ideas, and get things done. More power to you! Bringing our ideas to life is what we're all after. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180427140749/https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-7.html#%_chap_Temp_4 https://web.archive.org/web/20180427140749/https://mitpress....
antoniuschan99 11mo ago
It’s about productivity and increasing it to be more competitive against other nations. Look at South Korea. No natural resources so post war plans was to base the future on human capital. It’s why the density and workforce is concentrated in Seoul.
jimbokun 11mo ago
AI Coding has the same problem as "self driving cars". Until the car can be completely trusted to drive itself and never need human intervention, the human has to stay in a weird state of not driving the car, but being completely alert and attentive and ready to resume control in an instant. This can be more tiring and stressful than just driving yourself. Vibe coding is very similar. The AI can generate code at an astounding rate. But all of it has to be examined carefully for strange errors that a human would be very unlikely to make. In both cases, it's very questionable whether there is significant savings in the time or attention of the human still in the loop vs just performing the activity completely by herself.
_betty_ 11mo ago
Daniel Pink's book "Drive" explains that true motivation comes from intrinsic factors: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. It’s not about external rewards or doing every task yourself, but about having the freedom to direct your work, the drive to improve your skills, and a meaningful purpose behind what you do. In programming, AI can free us from routine tasks, letting us focus on creative problem-solving and realizing our ideas - this aligns perfectly with what Pink calls the deeper, more fulfilling motivation to get things done in a way that matters. So, it’s less about losing fun and more about shifting to meaningful engagement and impact.
Loxicon 11mo ago
While I agree with your point that it's sometimes about getting things done, but your example is flawed. Your example about gas-powered street lights is arguing for technology evolution. But the people who say "AI have take the fun out of programming" are fighting for craftsmanship and love. Nobody ever found craftsmanship or pleasure out of lighting up gas-powered street lights. But there are a lot of programmers that value "doing" programming because it's their craft or art-form. I have never had a programming job. But I program all day to serve my customers for the products I created. Because it's my art-form. I love "doing" it (my way!). It will get done. I just want to be the person to do it.

by iammjm 11mo ago

minimaxir 11mo ago

How people derive utility varies from person to person and I suspect is the root cause of most AI generation pipeline debates, creative and code-wise. There are two camps that are surprisingly mutually exclusive: a) People who gain value from the process of creating content. b) People who gain value from the end result itself. I personally am more of a (b): I did my time learning how to create things with code, but when I create things such as open-source software that people depend on, my personal satisfaction from the process of developing is less relevant. Also, getting frustrated with code configuration and writing boilerplate code is not personally gratifying.

dlisboa 11mo ago

You like having the painting, you just don't like to paint. You can think of a painting and have it appear before you. That's OK, but surely you can see how painters wouldn't enjoy that in the slightest.

grim_io 11mo ago
You can still enjoy painting, but there is no guarantee that you will be paid for it.
brandall10 11mo ago
Historically, many master painters used teams of assistants/apprentices to do most of the work under their guidance, with them only stepping in to do actual painting in the final details. Similar with famous architects running large studios, mostly taking on a higher level conceptual role for any commissions they're involved in. Traditionally in software (20+ years ago) architects typically wouldn't code much outside of POC work, they just worked with systems engineers and generated a ton of UML to be disseminated. So if we go back to that type of role, it somewhat fits in with agentic software dev.
- gridspy 11mo ago
  Sure, but you currently cannot teach AI models to generate novel art in the same way that you can teach a human apprentice.
  - brandall10 11mo ago
    I was addressing the 'enjoyment' factor, when at the end of the day, esp. at scale, it's a job to produce something someone paid for.
    - dlisboa 11mo ago
      That's where we're at a marked disagreement. "It's just a way to get paid" reduces every human knowledge to a monetary transaction, so the value of any type of learning is only worth what is being paid for. Thankfully the people that came before us didn't see it that way otherwise we wouldn't even have anything to program on.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  > they just worked with systems engineers and generated a ton of UML to be disseminated. So if we go back to that type of role, it somewhat fits in with agentic software dev. I've never met one of those UML slingers that added much value.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  And how did the master painter learn his craft, without first having been an assistant or apprentice?

glenstein 11mo ago

>For the great majority of work, it is not about fun, but about doing something other people need or want The essence of this, I think, is that a sense of craftsmanship and appreciation for craft often goes hand in hand with the ethos of learning and understanding what you are working with. So there is the issue of who rightly deserves to get the satisfaction out of the getting things done. But there's also the fact that satisfaction goes hand in hand with craft, with knowledge. And that informs a perspective of being able to do things. I finally read Adrift, 76 Days at Sea, a fantastic book about surviving in a life raft while drifting across the ocean. But the difference between life and death was an individual with an abundance of practical survival, sailing and navigation knowledge. So there's something to the idea of valuing the ability to call on hard earned deep knowledge, and a relationship to knowledge that doesn't abstract it away. Almost paralleling questions of hosting your own data or entrusting it in centralized services.

dangus 11mo ago
Craft is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve never even able to make a mobile app before. My skillset was just a bit too far off and my background more in the backend. Now I have a complete app thanks to AI. And I do feel a sense of accomplishment. For some people building furniture from IKEA is an accomplishment. But a woodworker building an IKEA piece isn’t going to feel great about it. It sounds like the person who made this repo didn’t need help but used the help anyway and had a bad time.
- jackdoe 11mo ago
  > It sounds like the person who made this repo didn’t need help but used the help anyway and had a bad time. tbh, it would've taken me 10x the time, the docs are not very obvious rp2350 is fairly new, and its riscv is not used as much and is afterthought, if I was writing it for arm it would've been much easier as the arm swd docs are very clear. I am also new to the pico world. It is not easy to make myself do something when I know its going to take 10 times longer and its going to be 10 times harder, even if I know I will feel 10 times better. You know when they say "find what for you is play and for others is work"? well..

TomasBM 11mo ago

Yeah, this resonates with me. As much as I dislike not having a good mental model of all the code that does things for me, ultimately, I have to concede the battle to get things done. This is not that different from importing packages that someone else wrote, or relying on codebases of my colleagues. That said, even if I have to temporarily give up on understanding, I don't believe there's any reason to completely surrender control. I'll call a technician when things need fixing right away, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't learn (some of) the fixes myself.

tobyjsullivan 11mo ago

This reminds me of the debate around Soylent when that came out. Are meals for enjoyment, flavour, and the experience or are they about consuming nutrients and providing energy? I’d say that debate was largely philosophical with proponents on both sides. And really the answer might be that both things are true for different people at different times. Though I also observe that soylent did not, by and large, end up replacing meals for the vast majority.

gyomu 11mo ago

> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? No, this is a false dichotomy and slippery slope dangerous thinking. It’s about building a world where we can all live in and find meaning, joy, dignity, and fulfillment, which requires a balance between pursuing the ends and preserving the means as worthwhile human pursuits. If I am eating a delicious meal but the people preparing it had a miserable time, or it was prepared entirely by robots controlled by nefarious people using the profits to harm society, I don’t want it. Human society and civilization is for the benefit of humans, not for filling checkboxes above all else.

rustystump 11mo ago
I guess you are a vegan too right? I get this take but it is naivety. Not everything must pass the morality purity test. Did mass processed food production stop people from cooking or enjoying human made food? No it did not. The same is true in almost all domains where a form of industrialization happens.
- nullgeo 11mo ago
  > Did mass processed food production stop people from cooking or enjoying human made food? Yeah but what if I'm getting pitted against my coworkers who are vibe coding and getting things done faster than I am. Some people write code with pride because it's their brainchild. AI completely ruins the fun for those people when they have to compete against their coworkers for productivity. I'm not in disagreement with you or the GP comment, but this it is super hard to make nuanced comments about GenAI.
  - generativenoise 11mo ago
    They are wrong however. To take the food example, the existence of processed food production creates artifacts like food deserts. If you are privileged these things don't effect you as much as you get more agency. Just the existence of quick to eat and prepare foods are going to put limits on how long you are going to be given for lunch and dinner. Even if you wanted to prepare fresh food, the system is going to make it difficult since it becomes an unsupported activity in terms of time allowances and market access.

denysvitali 11mo ago

I truly enjoy programming, but the most frustrating part for me was that I had many ideas and too little time to work on everything. Thanks to AI I can now work on many side projects at the time, and most importantly just (as you mentioned) get stuff done quickly and most of the time in good enough (or sometimes excellent) results. I'm both amazed and a bit sad, but the reality is that my output has increased significantly - although the quality might have dropped a bit in certain areas. Time is limited, and if I can increase my results in the same way as the electric street lights, I can simply look back at the past and smile that I lived in a time where lighting up gas-powered street lights was considered a skill. As you perfectly put it, it's not about the process per se, it's about the result. And the result is that now the lights are only 80% lit. In a few months / years we'll probably reach the threshold where the electric street lights will be brighter than the gas-powered ones, and you'd be a fool if you decide to still light them up one by one.

shepherdjerred 11mo ago
I’m in the same bucket. I absolutely love programming. What I love even more is being able to do all of these projects and fast-forward through them.
- igravious 11mo ago
  Dunno why you got down-voted for saying this. Why down-vote someone for their personal subjective opinion?
ta12653421 11mo ago
THIS 8h work, 1 or 2h commute, then a little bit of self care etc - there is not much time to work on "sideprojects", unfortunately: AI is a superbooster here, as it allows to much forward much quicker than before.

zahlman 11mo ago

> Like I imagine someone in the past loved their job walking each night through their city, lighting up the gas-powered street lights. And then one day someone else implemented electric street lights, and the first person lost the job they loved. But in the end, its about providing light to the city streets, no? Lighting or extinguishing a gas lamp does not allow for creative expression. Writing a program does. The comparison is almost offensive. > For the great majority of work, it is not about fun, but about doing something other people need or want. Some of us write code for reasons that are not related to employment. The idea that someone else might find the software useful is speculative, and perhaps an expression of hubris; it's not the source of motivation. > I put at least as much time, attention and effort as the "real" programmers do, but my time goes into thinking and precisely defining what I want, cutting it up into smaller logical modules, testing, identifying and fixing bugs, iterating all the time. So does the time of the "real programmers".

aetherspawn 11mo ago
Not everyone needs creative expression to enjoy their job, sometimes it’s about the process (sales people, mechanics, etc)
- agumonkey 11mo ago
  somehow mechanics share the problem solving aspect of programming
itsdrewmiller 11mo ago
Ok but then none of this is about you. People still make art even though artists don’t make any money, and that is wonderful. Improving productivity for actual work could let everyone have more time for creative self expression. Hasn’t seemed to work out that way in practice but maybe this time is different!
- fl0id 11mo ago
  Under any current / capitalist system by design it won’t be different because managers/capital want to increase gains, which contradicts allowing you to keep the gains.

tjr 11mo ago

I am reminded of Dijkstra's remark on Lisp, that it "has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts." (I imagine that this is not limited to Lisp, though some languages may yield more or less results.) If we consider programming entirely as a means to and end, with the end being all that matters, we may lose out on insights obtained while doing the work. Whether if those insights are of practical value, or economic value, or of no value at all, is another question, but I feel there is more likely to be something gained by actually doing the programming, compared to actually lighting the street lamps. (Of course, what you are programming matters too. Many were quick to turn to AI for "boilerplate"; I doubt many insights are found in such code.)

allenu 11mo ago

Programming really is fascinating as a skill because it can bring so much joy to the practitioner on a day-to-day problem-solving level while also providing much value to companies that are using it to generate profit. How many other professions have this luxury? As a result, though, I think AI taking over a lot of what we're able to do has the dual issue of making your day to day rough both as a personally-enriching experience but also as a money-making endeavor. I've been reading The Machine That Changed the World recently and it talks about how Ford's mass production assembly line replaced craftsmen building cars by hand. It made me wonder if AI will end up replacing us programmers in a similar way. Craftsmen surely loved the act of building a vehicle, but once assembly lines came along, it no longer made sense to produce cars in that fashion since more unskilled labor could get the job done faster and cheaper. Will we get to a place where AI is "good enough" to replace most developers? You could always argue that craftspeople could generate better code, but I can see a future where that becomes a luxury and unnecessary if tools do most of the work well enough.

yodsanklai 11mo ago

> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? It's both. When you climb a mountain, the joy is reaching the summit after the hard hike. The hike is hard but also enjoyable in itself, and makes you appreciate reaching the top even more. If there's a cable car or a road leading to the summit, the view may still be nice, but I'll go hiking somewhere else.

Vegenoid 11mo ago

Making things is often not just about making the thing right in front of you, but about building the skills to make bigger and better things. When you consider the long view, the struggle that makes it harder to make the thing at hand is well worth it. We have long considered taking shortcuts that don’t build skills to be detrimental in the long term. This pretty much only stops being the case when the thing you are short cutting becomes totally irrelevant. We have yet to see how the atrophying of programming skills will affect our collective ability to make reliable and novel software. In my experience, I have not seen much new software that I’m happy about that is the fruit of LLMs. I have experienced web apps that I’ve been using for years getting buggier.

teaearlgraycold 11mo ago
I feel that too much reliance on LLMs will leave engineers with at best a linear increase in skill over time, compared to the exponential returns of accumulated knowledge. For some I fear they will actually get negative returns when using AI.

dvfjsdhgfv 11mo ago

The correct analogy would be that half of the lights wouldn't light up randomly and then you'd have to go out anyway but in a hurry and only to certain ones just do discover you need to get back 20 minutes later because there is another problem with the same light, and your boss would expect that you do everything much faster and you end up frustrated even more.

kevinsync 11mo ago

I'm a bit late to the conversation but I'm on month 4 (?) of building a (greenfield) desktop app with Claude Code + Codex. I've been coding since Pulp Fiction hit theaters, and I'm confident I could have just written this thing from scratch without LLMs with a lot fewer headaches, but I really wanted to get my hands dirty with new tools and see what they are and aren't capable of. Some brief takeaways: 1. I'm on probably the 10th complete-restart iteration; I had a strong vision for what it was going to be, with a very weak grasp on how to technically achieve it, as well as a tenuous-at-best grasp on some of what turned out to be the most difficult parts (clever memory management, optimizations for speed, wrangling huge datasets, algorithms, etc) -- I started with a CLI-only prototype thinking I could get it all together reasonably quickly and then move onto a hand-crafted visual UI that I'd go over with a fine-toothed comb. I'm still working on the fundamentals LOL with a janky UI that I'll get to when the foundation is solid. 2. By iteration 4 or 5, I realized I wanted to implement stuff that was incompatible with the less-complicated foundations already laid; this becomes a big issue when you vibe code and have it write docs, and then change your mind / discover a better way to do it. The amount of sprawl and "overgrowth" in the codebase becomes a second job when you need to pivot -- you become a glorified hedge trimmer trying to excise both code AND documentation that will very confidently poison the agents moving forward if you don't. 3. Speaking of overconfidence, I keep finding myself in situations where the LLMs (due to not being able to contextualize the entire codebase at any single time) offer solutions/approaches/algorithms that work (and work well!) until you push more data at it. For validation purposes, I started with very limited datasets, so I could hand-check results and audit the database. By the time you're at a million rows, spot-checking becomes really hard, shit starts crashing because you didn't foresee architectural problems due to lack of domain experience, etc. You start asking for alternative solutions and approaches, you get them, but the LLM (not incorrectly) also wants to preserve what's already there, so a whole new logic path gets cut, and the codebase grows like a jungle. The docs get stale without getting pruned. There's conflicting context. Switch to a different LLM and sometimes naming conventions mysteriously shift like it's speaking a different dialect. On and on. Are the tools worth it? Depends. For me, for this one, on the whole, yes; it has taken an extremely long time (in comparison to the promises of 10x productivity) to get to where I've been able to try out a dozen approaches that I was unfamiliar with, see first-hand what works and what doesn't, and get a real working grasp of how off-the-rails agentic coding can take you if you're just exploring. I am now left with some really good, relevant code to reference, a BUNCH of really misguided code to flush down the shitter, a strong mental map of how to achieve what I'm building + where things are supposed to go, and now I'm starting yet another fresh iteration where I can scaffold and piece together the whole thing with refactored / reformatted / readable code. And then actually implement the UI I've been designing lol. I get the whole "just bully the LLM until it seems like it works, then ship it" mentality; objectively that's not much different than "just bully the developer until it seems like it works, then ship it" mentality of a product manager. But as amazing as these tools are for conjuring something into existence from thin air, I really think the devil is truly in the details, and if you're making something you hope to ever be able to build upon and expand and maintain, you have to go far beyond "vibes" alone.

agumonkey 11mo ago

so far the economy is not build on getting things done alone the promise of progress is that not having to do chores will make us happier, it's partly true, and partly false people hate doing too much of too harmful things, beside that if you need me to redo your shelves, or help you get milk in the morning, i'm happy to oblige but back to the point of things getting done and the march of progress, we're entering a potential kurzweil runaway, where computer understand and operate on the world faster, better and longer than us, leaving us with having nothing to do, so we'll see, but i'm not betting a lot on that, it's gonna be toxic (big 4 becoming our main dependency, unstable and a potential depression frenzy) look at how often people say "i wanna do something that matters", "i wanna help others".. it's a bit strange to say this because we spend our lives maintaining the worlds to be comfortable, but having everything done for you all the time might not be heaven on earth (even in the ideal best case)

beefnugs 11mo ago

Once again no one is capable of coming up with a good analogy: the analogy here would be that someone comes up with occasional exploding electrical lights that sometimes create black holes to suck up all the surrounding light for a block, and then really work as intended under 60% of the time. But the city rushes to implement as recklessly and quickly as possible because promises and lies. Also the whole time its happening they keep saying not a single gas-lighter will lose their job because the blackholes need to be fed human flesh sometimes... so we will get them to do that

FloorEgg 11mo ago

I agree wholeheartedly that it's about getting things done, and is what the universe cares about. As individuals we enjoy being in flow, and when the nature of the work changes we may lose our flow and shake our fists in frustration... Change can be painful, but that's because it takes energy. From particles to atoms to cells to people to civilizations, it seems like the whole point is to get more stuff done. Why? Probably because getting stuff done is more interesting than the alternative.

al_be_back 11mo ago

>> doing, or is it about getting things done Who says the thing is done? there is a massive danger now, with the sheer amount of complexity & speed brought by ai, in that it's increasingly harder to verify / do proof-of-work. >> AI allows me to realize my ideas sure for a personal/pet project. however, when working for a customer/client, they've ideas, needs, wants and usually have their own users and shareholders to satisfy - need proof. >> lighting up the gas-powered street lights ok, no this metaphor may well be loved by ai companies, but doesn't actual work in so many levels. For one, ai (as actually provided) is not electricity or a physical system, a brain, or a mind, it's software (I use it v-selectively). Second, the job being done (lighting, or coding) is ultimately to produce / output the desired outcome for whoever ordered it - a solution to a problem - failing that it's just work and wages for the worker but no effective solution (lighting the dark side of the moon, kinda). I agree with the OP, as system complexity went up, so does the ability to keep up.

BrenBarn 11mo ago

The thing is that a large portion of what people are using AI (and tech in general) to do simply doesn't need to be done. We don't need a "smart" dental floss dispenser, or something that automatically buys toilet paper for you, or little Clippy-the-paper-clip bots popping up everywhere to ask if you need help. A lot of the tech that's coming out is a through-and-through waste of everyone's time and energy --- its users' as well as its makers'.

jimbokun 11mo ago
I've had the same thought. What if the real reason for recent softness in software engineer hiring, is that we have almost all the software we really need? I feel like it's been a while since I even saw some software and thought "oh, I really need that!" Vs "here is something we will force you to download and install on your phone in order to do something that previously didn't require software". Like online menus in restaurants or event tickets or parking meter apps.
- BrenBarn 11mo ago
  I think we've had almost all the software we need for years now. Most new software is small variations on existing software. In terms of software that would make you go "oh I really need that" because it's a genuinely novel type of functionality. . . it's hard for me to think what's the most recent software I use that falls into that category. Actually more common is that I use an old, working program but then it stops working for whatever reason (e.g., not compatible with latest upgrades) and then I need to look for "new" software to do the same old thing, which it often doesn't do as well as the old software.

Ekaros 11mo ago

I fully and absolutely agree future is bright. Soon we can outsource both the work and the ideas to LLMs. Make fully automated system to produce fully complete novels, music, movies, videos and software. Just prompt AI to make a movie, book, music or even SaaS. No humans involved. Absolute superior system. Just instruct LLM to start producing programs and monetizing them. No ideas needed, no effort. No thought. You can even source ideas from it. No need to think or have any personal input anymore.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
anthk 11mo ago
>Superior Superior disasters you mean.
krige 11mo ago
And then we can have a second LLM read and digest the book for us. In fact, we can create a pipeline, where LLM writes, LLM reads, and then LLM leaves reviews and reddit comments, all without any human input or oversight on any of these steps, while you can do the fun stuff, like uhm, washing dishes or something.

boesboes 11mo ago

> Some of it might be good, some of it might be bad. None of it will be good, all of it will be bad. mmw

jimkleiber 11mo ago

I was reflecting on this yesterday, as I have often hated AI for generating emails and other written text, but kinda am loving it for writing code. One realization was what you said about me just wanting the code done so I can use the app. The second was that, for me, I care about the output of the code, not the code itself. Whereas with the written word, I care about the word. Perhaps if I used AI to summarize what someone wanted in the email then I would care less about the written word coming from a human, but right now I still want to read what they've written. You can say that there are programmers who want to read the code from someone else, but I don't think there's the equivalent of code abstracted away into a UI that exists for the written word (open to that being challenged). The last and maybe biggest realization is that computer language exists as multiple levels of abstraction. Machine language, assembly language, high-level language, etc. I'm not sure human languages have as many layers of abstraction, or if they do, they exist within the same language. I'll keep reflecting, just my short two cents for now.

danb1974 11mo ago

It's about writing good, easy to read and maintanable code, not "yet another piece of garbage that almost works... for me..." 10k lines that nobody including you understands? That's a liability if anywhere else than your home project that only you use Use AI as a hyper-documentation system and "show me how to" guide but not to spew code that neither it or you understand

wartywhoa23 11mo ago

> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? Forgive me some frivolousness and let me reduce this ad the inevitable absurdum: Is life about living, or is it about getting life ended?

veegee 11mo ago

[dead]

sanjayjc 11mo ago

> is it about doing, or is it about getting things done? For me it is getting things done while also understanding the whole building, from its foundation up. Only with such a comprehensive mental model can I predict how my code will behave in unanticipated situations. I've only ever achieved this metal model by doing. Succinctly, "it is about doing" to guarantee I'm "getting things really done". > my time goes into thinking and precisely defining what I want I'm reminded of the famous quote "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." [1] A programming language is exactly the medium that lets me precisely define my thoughts! I think the only way to achieve equivalent precision using human language is to write them in legalese, just as a lawyer does when poring over the words and punctuation in a legal contract (and that depends upon so much case law to make the words really precise). > For me, AI allows me to realize my ideas, and get things done. More power to you! Bringing our ideas to life is what we're all after. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180427140749/https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-7.html#%_chap_Temp_4 https://web.archive.org/web/20180427140749/https://mitpress....

antoniuschan99 11mo ago

It’s about productivity and increasing it to be more competitive against other nations. Look at South Korea. No natural resources so post war plans was to base the future on human capital. It’s why the density and workforce is concentrated in Seoul.

jimbokun 11mo ago

AI Coding has the same problem as "self driving cars". Until the car can be completely trusted to drive itself and never need human intervention, the human has to stay in a weird state of not driving the car, but being completely alert and attentive and ready to resume control in an instant. This can be more tiring and stressful than just driving yourself. Vibe coding is very similar. The AI can generate code at an astounding rate. But all of it has to be examined carefully for strange errors that a human would be very unlikely to make. In both cases, it's very questionable whether there is significant savings in the time or attention of the human still in the loop vs just performing the activity completely by herself.

_betty_ 11mo ago

Daniel Pink's book "Drive" explains that true motivation comes from intrinsic factors: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. It’s not about external rewards or doing every task yourself, but about having the freedom to direct your work, the drive to improve your skills, and a meaningful purpose behind what you do. In programming, AI can free us from routine tasks, letting us focus on creative problem-solving and realizing our ideas - this aligns perfectly with what Pink calls the deeper, more fulfilling motivation to get things done in a way that matters. So, it’s less about losing fun and more about shifting to meaningful engagement and impact.

Loxicon 11mo ago

While I agree with your point that it's sometimes about getting things done, but your example is flawed. Your example about gas-powered street lights is arguing for technology evolution. But the people who say "AI have take the fun out of programming" are fighting for craftsmanship and love. Nobody ever found craftsmanship or pleasure out of lighting up gas-powered street lights. But there are a lot of programmers that value "doing" programming because it's their craft or art-form. I have never had a programming job. But I program all day to serve my customers for the products I created. Because it's my art-form. I love "doing" it (my way!). It will get done. I just want to be the person to do it.