5 ms·

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, and recreation). When friends start dying within 10 years of your age, it's a hell of a wake up. "I wish I'd made more throw away apps I never use" ... said no one on their death bed, ever.

nba456_ 4mo ago
Of course it is. Young people are always more eager to adapt new tech while older people yell at clouds. AI usage is MUCH higher among young people.
- mschuster91 4mo ago
  > Young people are always more eager to adapt new tech while older people yell at clouds. That's not just because young people have time like GP explained, but it is also because young people haven't been through the endless rounds of getting beaten up at work over daring to suggest that the "old ways" of one's superiors might be outdated, inefficient or just plain wrong.
- a3764 4mo ago
  No, GenZ is AI critical, no matter what a one-liner optimized model trained to discredit comments says.
  - Barbing 4mo ago
    GenZ is AI critical Rest is a little stretch
  - nba456_ 4mo ago
    GenZ might be outspoken and booing commencement speakers, but the usage numbers don't lie.
    - bdangubic 4mo ago
      I would trust usage numbers as much as I trust DJT when he said we defeated inflation :)
- goatlover 4mo ago
  Not sure the college graduating class feels great about AI.
Aurornis 4mo ago
I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code. People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do. People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster. The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the AI and seeing what comes out the other end. Some of the projects they boast about having built aren't even usable projects, like when they had it mock up a UI of a product and then got bored and moved on to the next before writing a backend.
- dingnuts 4mo ago
  [dead]
- groundzeros2015 4mo ago
  I don’t think this is the full picture. Plenty of people who like writing code are happy to delete code too.
  - Aurornis 4mo ago
    When you write the code you learn from writing the code. When you have an LLM produce something and then delete, you didn’t learn much.
    - yoyohello13 4mo ago
      This is it for me. I can put up with a lot of struggle and non-sense if I feel like I'm actually developing some knowledge or skill. Vibe coding is a lot of the non-sense but little of the system knowledge actually sticks. Unless you very diligently try to understand every line, you're just as oblivious about the problem as you were when you started. At that point though the AI isn't making you any faster.
    - CamperBob2 4mo ago
      you didn’t learn much. And that's entirely your fault, not the LLM's.
johndhi 4mo ago
Agreed with this until the last sentence, haha! I recently have been building throwaway apps and it has helped me scratch a bucket list itch I've had since childhood. Father is a programmer but I could never figure it out until vibe coding.
jwr 4mo ago
Similar age here. And I have similar thoughts, although not about AI specifically. AI helps me get more done and not spend time on trivia and yak shaving, which is great. I do get more projects done, but those are projects I always wanted to do, just never had the time (or, sometimes the motivation, because of yak shaving tasks). I think the biggest difference is that I no longer care about what people think about me and how I am perceived, so the motivation to publish my work went down to near zero. I used to build open source stuff, I no longer want to spend time on preparing stuff for publishing, making it available, dealing with people who will inevitably want something of me eventually. There just isn't enough time. I can still be baited into responding on HN for some reason, and I am trying to work on that, because that is the ultimate waste of time.
ALittleLight 4mo ago
I don't understand the "deathbed" perspective. Are you going to wish you made more hackernews comments on your deathbed? Probably not. Does this mean you should stop using hackernews? If you optimized for minimizing deathbed regret perhaps you'd regret that on your deathbed! If I have cogent thoughts on my deathbed I expect they'll be along the lines of "I wish I wasn't dying" and not regretting the many ways I enjoyed my time on Earth (which includes vibe coding apps nobody uses).
- throwaway98797 4mo ago
  yea find this so unproductive as we grow we change that is life lots of things i cared deeply about 10 years ago that i don’t even remember now i find self loathing a previous version of yourself to be a by product of religious thinking yes the original sin is that you were born but for now you can enjoy your life do so
CrzyLngPwd 4mo ago
I'm also in my fifties, and sold my first software (6502 assemblewr) when I was 17! My younger self was always excited when the latest tech came out, when the latest MSDN arrived, etc. But the last 15 or so years, I totally lost interest. I still love writing code but the desire for the latest and greatest had fade. These LLMs were dogshit for a while, but I would keep returning to them. Now I am excited again. I work on a large web project with lots of legacy that is slowly being rewritten and copilot and codex are helping a lot by first writing tests for the old code, and then converting to the new. I thought we'd never finish, but now I can see how we can do it. It's brought a bit of the fun back into the game.
sgustard 4mo ago
Well, making throw-away things you never use could also be the definition of a hobby ... and hobbies are arguably good, and differ from "work" in that your goal is not to ship a product, but to scratch an itch. For some people AI assisted vibe coding scratches an itch. For others, not. Of course some hobbies turn into an unhealthy obsession, but that's not a new phenomenon.
csomar 4mo ago
In my experience meeting people in real life, age wasn't the factor but programming experience. More seasoned developers tend to push back on letting LLMs run the full show. Less experienced ones are more open to it. Those with no experience at all, they are all in.
stanmancan 4mo ago
This lands for me. I’m pushing 40 and over the last few years I’ve definitely been eliminating distractions. Anything with scrolling or algorithms meant to suck you in is gone. Deleting apps and blocking websites on my phone to prevent distractions. Phones getting much less use. Just yesterday replaced my Apple Watch with a regular watch.
lelanthran 4mo ago
> "I wish I'd made more throw away apps I never use" ... said no one on their death bed, ever. Yeah, it does make me wonder though - have these AI boosters never written their own tools before? I've written, for my own personal use, literally thousands of tiny little bash scripts, vim scripts, emacs scripts, Python programs, C programs, etc. I still daily use a music player (wish wrapper around mpg123) that I did in 2001[1]! And yet, I'd be the first to admit that, for each 1000 things I wrote, probably 1 got permanent use for a significant length of time; the value, over time, to me was the lessons learned. Now people are going through that cycle faster (i.e. instead of doing 5000 persona-use programs over 30 years, they're doing it in a single year), but the end result is still going to be the same - no one is ever gonna use it, including themselves! It comes with an additional downside - you don't actually learn anything by having the AI generate your programs for you. -------------------------------- [1] In case anyone is interested why I wanted a wrapper - it uses the locatedb so that I don't have to search for my mp3s: #!/usr/bin/wish # Copyright Lelanthran K. Manickum 2002, provided under BSD license # set version "1.0" proc playSong {songname} { set rc [catch { exec killall -9 mpg123 }] if {$songname=="\[Stop Playback]"} { .midFrame.lblPlaying configure -text "Stopped" return 0; } set rc [catch { exec mpg123 --loop -1 "$songname" & }] if {$rc==0} { .midFrame.lblPlaying configure -text "Playing: $songname" } } proc locateSongs {pattern} { .lstResults delete 0 999999999 set tmpvar [split [exec locate -i "*$pattern*.mp3"] "\n"] .lstResults insert 0 "\[Stop Playback]" foreach title $tmpvar { .lstResults insert 1 $title } } frame .topFrame frame .midFrame entry .topFrame.entSearchString -text "Search String" button .topFrame.btnSearch -text "Search" -command {locateSongs [.topFrame.entSearchString get]} listbox .lstResults -yscrollcommand {.sby set} -xscrollcommand {.sbx set} scrollbar .sby -orien vert -command {.lstResults yview} scrollbar .sbx -orien horiz -command {.lstResults xview} label .midFrame.lblPlaying -text "Stopped" locateSongs "" focus .topFrame.entSearchString bind .topFrame.entSearchString <Return> ".topFrame.btnSearch invoke" bind .lstResults <Double-B1-ButtonRelease> {playSong [.lstResults get active]} bind .lstResults <Return> {playSong [.lstResults get active]} grid .topFrame -row 0 -column 0 -sticky nsew grid .topFrame.entSearchString -column 0 -row 0 -sticky nsew grid .topFrame.btnSearch -column 1 -row 0 -sticky nsew grid .midFrame -column 0 -row 1 -sticky nsew grid .midFrame.lblPlaying -column 0 -row 0 -sticky nsew grid .lstResults -column 0 -row 2 -sticky nsew grid .sby -column 1 -row 2 -sticky nsew grid .sbx -column 0 -row 3 -sticky nsew grid rowconfigure .topFrame 0 -weight 1 grid columnconfigure .topFrame 0 -weight 1 grid rowconfigure . 2 -weight 2 grid columnconfigure . 0 -weight 2 wm protocol . WM_DELETE_WINDOW { set rc [catch { exec killall -9 mpg123 } ] destroy . } wm title . "Simple Music Player - v$version" wm geometry . 700x500
footy 4mo ago
I'm 39 and the post resonates with me too. I think it's more a temperamental or values thing than an age one, but I might be wrong.

nba456_ 4mo ago

Of course it is. Young people are always more eager to adapt new tech while older people yell at clouds. AI usage is MUCH higher among young people.

mschuster91 4mo ago
> Young people are always more eager to adapt new tech while older people yell at clouds. That's not just because young people have time like GP explained, but it is also because young people haven't been through the endless rounds of getting beaten up at work over daring to suggest that the "old ways" of one's superiors might be outdated, inefficient or just plain wrong.
a3764 4mo ago
No, GenZ is AI critical, no matter what a one-liner optimized model trained to discredit comments says.
- Barbing 4mo ago
  GenZ is AI critical Rest is a little stretch
- nba456_ 4mo ago
  GenZ might be outspoken and booing commencement speakers, but the usage numbers don't lie.
  - bdangubic 4mo ago
    I would trust usage numbers as much as I trust DJT when he said we defeated inflation :)
goatlover 4mo ago
Not sure the college graduating class feels great about AI.

Aurornis 4mo ago

I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code. People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do. People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster. The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the AI and seeing what comes out the other end. Some of the projects they boast about having built aren't even usable projects, like when they had it mock up a UI of a product and then got bored and moved on to the next before writing a backend.

dingnuts 4mo ago
[dead]
groundzeros2015 4mo ago
I don’t think this is the full picture. Plenty of people who like writing code are happy to delete code too.
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  When you write the code you learn from writing the code. When you have an LLM produce something and then delete, you didn’t learn much.
  - yoyohello13 4mo ago
    This is it for me. I can put up with a lot of struggle and non-sense if I feel like I'm actually developing some knowledge or skill. Vibe coding is a lot of the non-sense but little of the system knowledge actually sticks. Unless you very diligently try to understand every line, you're just as oblivious about the problem as you were when you started. At that point though the AI isn't making you any faster.
  - CamperBob2 4mo ago
    you didn’t learn much. And that's entirely your fault, not the LLM's.

johndhi 4mo ago

Agreed with this until the last sentence, haha! I recently have been building throwaway apps and it has helped me scratch a bucket list itch I've had since childhood. Father is a programmer but I could never figure it out until vibe coding.

jwr 4mo ago

Similar age here. And I have similar thoughts, although not about AI specifically. AI helps me get more done and not spend time on trivia and yak shaving, which is great. I do get more projects done, but those are projects I always wanted to do, just never had the time (or, sometimes the motivation, because of yak shaving tasks). I think the biggest difference is that I no longer care about what people think about me and how I am perceived, so the motivation to publish my work went down to near zero. I used to build open source stuff, I no longer want to spend time on preparing stuff for publishing, making it available, dealing with people who will inevitably want something of me eventually. There just isn't enough time. I can still be baited into responding on HN for some reason, and I am trying to work on that, because that is the ultimate waste of time.

ALittleLight 4mo ago

I don't understand the "deathbed" perspective. Are you going to wish you made more hackernews comments on your deathbed? Probably not. Does this mean you should stop using hackernews? If you optimized for minimizing deathbed regret perhaps you'd regret that on your deathbed! If I have cogent thoughts on my deathbed I expect they'll be along the lines of "I wish I wasn't dying" and not regretting the many ways I enjoyed my time on Earth (which includes vibe coding apps nobody uses).

throwaway98797 4mo ago
yea find this so unproductive as we grow we change that is life lots of things i cared deeply about 10 years ago that i don’t even remember now i find self loathing a previous version of yourself to be a by product of religious thinking yes the original sin is that you were born but for now you can enjoy your life do so

CrzyLngPwd 4mo ago

I'm also in my fifties, and sold my first software (6502 assemblewr) when I was 17! My younger self was always excited when the latest tech came out, when the latest MSDN arrived, etc. But the last 15 or so years, I totally lost interest. I still love writing code but the desire for the latest and greatest had fade. These LLMs were dogshit for a while, but I would keep returning to them. Now I am excited again. I work on a large web project with lots of legacy that is slowly being rewritten and copilot and codex are helping a lot by first writing tests for the old code, and then converting to the new. I thought we'd never finish, but now I can see how we can do it. It's brought a bit of the fun back into the game.

sgustard 4mo ago

Well, making throw-away things you never use could also be the definition of a hobby ... and hobbies are arguably good, and differ from "work" in that your goal is not to ship a product, but to scratch an itch. For some people AI assisted vibe coding scratches an itch. For others, not. Of course some hobbies turn into an unhealthy obsession, but that's not a new phenomenon.

csomar 4mo ago

In my experience meeting people in real life, age wasn't the factor but programming experience. More seasoned developers tend to push back on letting LLMs run the full show. Less experienced ones are more open to it. Those with no experience at all, they are all in.

stanmancan 4mo ago

This lands for me. I’m pushing 40 and over the last few years I’ve definitely been eliminating distractions. Anything with scrolling or algorithms meant to suck you in is gone. Deleting apps and blocking websites on my phone to prevent distractions. Phones getting much less use. Just yesterday replaced my Apple Watch with a regular watch.

lelanthran 4mo ago

> "I wish I'd made more throw away apps I never use" ... said no one on their death bed, ever. Yeah, it does make me wonder though - have these AI boosters never written their own tools before? I've written, for my own personal use, literally thousands of tiny little bash scripts, vim scripts, emacs scripts, Python programs, C programs, etc. I still daily use a music player (wish wrapper around mpg123) that I did in 2001[1]! And yet, I'd be the first to admit that, for each 1000 things I wrote, probably 1 got permanent use for a significant length of time; the value, over time, to me was the lessons learned. Now people are going through that cycle faster (i.e. instead of doing 5000 persona-use programs over 30 years, they're doing it in a single year), but the end result is still going to be the same - no one is ever gonna use it, including themselves! It comes with an additional downside - you don't actually learn anything by having the AI generate your programs for you. -------------------------------- [1] In case anyone is interested why I wanted a wrapper - it uses the locatedb so that I don't have to search for my mp3s: #!/usr/bin/wish # Copyright Lelanthran K. Manickum 2002, provided under BSD license # set version "1.0" proc playSong {songname} { set rc [catch { exec killall -9 mpg123 }] if {$songname=="\[Stop Playback]"} { .midFrame.lblPlaying configure -text "Stopped" return 0; } set rc [catch { exec mpg123 --loop -1 "$songname" & }] if {$rc==0} { .midFrame.lblPlaying configure -text "Playing: $songname" } } proc locateSongs {pattern} { .lstResults delete 0 999999999 set tmpvar [split [exec locate -i "*$pattern*.mp3"] "\n"] .lstResults insert 0 "\[Stop Playback]" foreach title $tmpvar { .lstResults insert 1 $title } } frame .topFrame frame .midFrame entry .topFrame.entSearchString -text "Search String" button .topFrame.btnSearch -text "Search" -command {locateSongs [.topFrame.entSearchString get]} listbox .lstResults -yscrollcommand {.sby set} -xscrollcommand {.sbx set} scrollbar .sby -orien vert -command {.lstResults yview} scrollbar .sbx -orien horiz -command {.lstResults xview} label .midFrame.lblPlaying -text "Stopped" locateSongs "" focus .topFrame.entSearchString bind .topFrame.entSearchString <Return> ".topFrame.btnSearch invoke" bind .lstResults <Double-B1-ButtonRelease> {playSong [.lstResults get active]} bind .lstResults <Return> {playSong [.lstResults get active]} grid .topFrame -row 0 -column 0 -sticky nsew grid .topFrame.entSearchString -column 0 -row 0 -sticky nsew grid .topFrame.btnSearch -column 1 -row 0 -sticky nsew grid .midFrame -column 0 -row 1 -sticky nsew grid .midFrame.lblPlaying -column 0 -row 0 -sticky nsew grid .lstResults -column 0 -row 2 -sticky nsew grid .sby -column 1 -row 2 -sticky nsew grid .sbx -column 0 -row 3 -sticky nsew grid rowconfigure .topFrame 0 -weight 1 grid columnconfigure .topFrame 0 -weight 1 grid rowconfigure . 2 -weight 2 grid columnconfigure . 0 -weight 2 wm protocol . WM_DELETE_WINDOW { set rc [catch { exec killall -9 mpg123 } ] destroy . } wm title . "Simple Music Player - v$version" wm geometry . 700x500

footy 4mo ago

I'm 39 and the post resonates with me too. I think it's more a temperamental or values thing than an age one, but I might be wrong.