5 ms·

Programming is nice because you have lots of different scales of structure to think about, and your program slowly comes together. You see it improving over tim

• vasco 3mo ago
  Have you seen what most people do for jobs all day? They do repetitive brainless things, not always new and interesting work. For all of those people, doing this is at least something you do sitting down alone in an office and so they will be queueing to do this.
  • GPerson 3mo ago
    I’ve also had menial jobs, like most people.
  • dgellow 3mo ago
    And LLMs are what make so many jobs feel repetitive and brainless. Jobs that were engaging, interesting, from which people were learning, developing expertise over time, are now prompting + babysitting agents
    • vasco 3mo ago
      The point is most people's jobs are like that. So it doesn't matter how interesting it was or that who did it before doesn't like it anymore because there's a queue of people lined up to do the brainless new version of the job.
      • dgellow 3mo ago
        It obviously does matter. The industry was built by people who care about the underlying details and want to engage with the hardware and software at a deep level. That has traditionally been the way people develop expertise - the exact thing you need to effectively use LLMs for anything else than boilerplate work. Ironically agentic stuff pull us away from from that
        • vasco 3mo ago
          The point really went over your head. New people don't give a shit how it was done before. Do you care that your clothes aren't hand made?
      • ryan_n 3mo ago
        Why would it not matter? Maybe it doesn't matter to you that you have to spend your life doing brainless miserable work, but a lot of people don't like or want that. Just because "a lot of people experience x awful thing" doesn't mean "it doesn't matter that programming is now x awful thing because a lot of people experience that". That makes no sense.
    • andrewflnr 3mo ago
      Many jobs have been repetitive and brainless since long before LLMs. I hate AI as much as the next guy, but come on.
      • dgellow 3mo ago
        Lots of people job wasn’t. Now it is. A lot of people in software went into this field because they actually feel satisfied engaging with systems and their implementations. Managing a fleet of agent is the exact opposite of what is engaging about software development.
• Thanemate 3mo ago
  >I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. It feels like binge watching Netflix shows. It's just power fantasy. It's amazing the first couple of times but as it wears off and becomes the new norm you forgot how being the one who decides which thing does what feels like. Luckily (or unluckily?) the industry only cares about the end result, and flushes out people who used to reward for their passion and dedication naturally.
  • whstl 3mo ago
    A lot of this is from non-tech workers wanting to expand their repertoire as well. They have no clue what they're doing programming-wise, and in some cases this is perfectly fine, but after years of SaaS, some people are taking it to extremes, and spending millions of tokens on things that could be a spreadsheet or a note in the calendar. Just recently we had someone deliver a report in the format of a 200.000 LOC application that requires several clusters to run, for example. It does all querying in real time from clandestine APIs, or by crawling existing systems. The person who asked for the report asked for it not to be deployed.
  • eddieroger 3mo ago
    I get nothing of the power fantasy, of it, but I do get joy out of vibe coding. As I've gotten older, the amount of ideas I have here and there has remained constant, while the time I have, or brain power at the end of the day when I can work on my passion projects, has diminished. What was once basically a second day job at night became family time, baths, dinner, etc. So while I may be too exhausted to sit and code, I am not too tired to sit and type my ideas, or discuss a single feature I want to see, or review what's there. I get joy that ideas are getting out of my head faster despite less brainpower to get them there. I can always grab the reigns and take over myself, but that's not the kind of thing that wins against going to bed.
• vidarh 3mo ago
  > I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. It feels like binge watching Netflix shows. I get joy out of it because it solves actual problems I have that I don't have time to solve manually, or don't want to. E.g. I just recently had Codex add a mechanism for two-level virtual desktops because I wanted groups of them. An hour later I had two-level virtual desktops in my wm that worked exactly how I wanted it, with support for it in my desktop switcher. I could write it myself, but why would I? I love writing code for various projects, but sometimes I just want the outcome.
  • jatora 3mo ago
    This. And the AI detractors in this thread are the same I think, and are virtue signalling.
    • GPerson 3mo ago
      I’m not virtue signaling? I’ve shared exactly my experience. People experience reality differently and that’s not some affront on you.
      • deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]
      • jatora 3mo ago
        Woops i responded to the wrong comment sorry!
  • deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  • GPerson 3mo ago
    For me that’s a slippery slope. It’s not really clear what parts of my hobby project are the good parts and what parts are unfulfilling. When I start including AI too much I end up feeling that none of it is fulfilling. When I do things manually I feel pride in the details however, even though those same details on another day would make me feel like I’m wasting my precious life. I spent 2 months having Opus build a demo for a project I dreamt of for 15 years, but somehow now I can’t feel interested in it. I’m trying to avoid this. A good use case for me has been using AI to help me acquire all primary source documentation on a topic and then prepare a curated sequence of study based on a small demo I’d like to build. Keep in mind I’m talking about how I’m approaching creative programming in my personal free time.
• armchairhacker 3mo ago
  In the past I’ve experimented with many different programming paradigms. I think my AI coding benefits from that experience. I want to find new paradigms to write extensible, modular systems with AI, a problem that is still open. One thing I’ve learned is that when implementing a complex system, no paradigm eliminates the need to write lots code (covering many ugly edge-cases) tests, which previously required lots of boring, slow work, but AI is very good at that so maybe can make it less boring and faster.
• FeepingCreature 3mo ago
  > I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. What? It's the simplest thing in the world. You get the product. Isn't that the point of all programming? You want a thing and you speak a magic incantation and then you have the thing, to keep and use. > even if this thing is any good, someone with real capital can just direct a future AI at it to take it from me, so I’m not really gaining. This kind of sounds like you're writing code for social credit. Like, you don't actually want the thing, you want to be "the person who made the thing". If you want the thing for its own sake, nobody can take it from you and what somebody with capital does on their own services does not harm your use one whit.
  • GPerson 3mo ago
    Well I used to imagine I’d make a business out of the thing. I also would sometimes think the thing could give me professional opportunities.
    • FeepingCreature 3mo ago
      Sure. I do agree that AI is a problem in this sense: programmer skill as a hiring differentiator is becoming a lot less legible these days. It just feels personally odd to be the reason you do the thing. When I encountered my first programmable computer I very quickly realized that I wanted to do more of it, and not too much later that this was the thing I would spend the rest of my life doing. That it was also very commercializable, I have always considered as a kind of happy accident.
      • GPerson 3mo ago
        That’s my experience, starting at 10 years old and trying to figure out how the the moving pictures were in the screen. I didn’t say that was the reason though. A person has a lot of wants and needs right? I’m not following why it’s strange to want to be skilled and engage with the craft itself based on that part of the message to be honest. Maybe I’m misunderstanding. I tried to convey in my first post that I’m gonna keep programming for no material gain and no way of producing anything of value for others. I am worried about how I’ll support myself but this thread is about the hobby.
• newswasboring 3mo ago
  > Programming is nice because you have lots of different scales of structure to think about, and your program slowly comes together. Programming is nice cause of this for you. Other people have other preferences. When I got my first LED to blink, I wasn't thinking about the elegance of my code. Same for when moved sprites or made a async stateless compute system for MATLAB analysis. There are people who are driven by the artifacts they produce. That's just how our brains are wired I guess, outcome oriented. I see nothing wrong in that. Btw, I feel like there is this view that all people using agents are the apocryphal "vibe coders". That is just not true. The process of creation remains the same. Break it down into smaller pieces. Work those pieces till a piece it done. Make sure it all comes together. People seriously using these agents are not writing "implement gta6. Make no mistakes".
  • GPerson 3mo ago
    Programming has a lot of nice features and accurately capturing them all in a hacker news comment isn’t that easy, so maybe you could have some consideration for that in the future. I also want effects to happen in the world. I also like the slow process of craft. I’m anticipating not a very far away future when “implement gta 6” will not be that different from torrenting gta 3 in the 2000s. The current agent era feels very ephemeral. You’re choosing to interpret some version of AI based programming that you enjoy with what I think is the common interpretation of vibe coding. If you like your process then go ahead with it. I’m not stopping you. You seem to want the AI supported gratification and the feeling of process and craft. So make your process and think of it however you like. There’s literally nothing I can or would do to get in your way.
    • newswasboring 3mo ago
      Your comment seems unnecessary aggressive. Did I offend you in any way? I just gave my perspective.
      • GPerson 3mo ago
        Yea the wording that it was some way or another “for you” came across as aggressiveness so I responded in kind.