3 ms·
People who never really had these feelings about coding will turn up to tell you that you are wrong to care or that it is childish or silly to care. You are no
by dofm 2mo ago
People who never really had these feelings about coding will turn up to tell you that you are wrong to care or that it is childish or silly to care.
You are not wrong to have your feelings or to strongly identify your sense of self with your work; that is what we used to call “finding your vocation”.
I share your feelings and have been focusing my energy on learning local and open weights AI to work through it because it seems to be impossible to avoid it all entirely as a freelancer who needs to remain competitive, and a bit of righteous/ethics/sustainable process fire in my belly doesn’t hurt.
But focusing on how you feel first, and then hopefully thinking about other ways you can feel valuable, is not wrong.
You are not alone and I wish you the best.
- bah9 2mo agoI was actually surprised how few programmers enjoyed the craft. Seems like most of them are happy to "be able to do great things without boring coding"... but gathering information and setting a task is an entirely different profession. I'm always curious, what are those "great things" requiring deep technical knowledge and years of expertise that these visionaries can finally provide with the help of LLMs? I almost feel ashamed/mentally ill when i am reading how everyone is happy that their true visionnaire potential is finally unlocked while i just like to solve my silly puzzles.
- dofm 2mo agoWell you have no reason to feel ashamed or mentally ill. Everything has, in fact, changed, and it is a task for those of us who cared about what was, to try to work out what is worth caring about. As Annie Savoy says in Bull Durham, “the world is made for those who aren’t cursed with self-awareness”. You’re going to have to figure out new things to care about, but you can do it, because you found it the first time!
- bah9 2mo agoThanks! What did you found for yourself?
- dofm 2mo agoI am struggling to be honest, but I am learning how to make stuff with CAD and 3D printers and plotting my escape towards teaching (adults), because I have spoken to enough lifelong learners to know that AI is not satisfying important parts of the adult learning process. I am reconciling myself to the AI future by learning open weights tools, and I hope to learn how to use that in assistive technology. Do you enjoy explaining things?
- bah9 2mo agoSadly, I am not. But I enjoy manual labor. I am leaning towards construction/electrics. But most likely just wait couple more years and retire with enough money to never work again The irony is, my work is to train frontier llm's, so my own "child" killed my lifelong passion
- dofm 2mo agoWell, I think those jobs can’t be so easily taken away by AI, physical work is good for low morale and mood, etc., and you don’t have to do it forever? A family member got out of IT a few years ago, retrained as a specialist gardener, drew from that the confidence to retrain again as a teacher while still gardening, and now teaches. So it can be done.
- ydat 2mo ago> You’re going to have to figure out new things to care about, but you can do it, because you found it the first time! I have found many interesting things to care about. The problem is they all lack a single quality that allowed me to succeed in the realm of computers and technology: accessibility.
- dofm 2mo ago3D printers, CAD, CNC, all affordable and IMO accessible (and will run on cheap old kit). No matter what people say, LLMs are not coming for real world adaptable parametric designs any time soon. ETA: whether there is a way forward for a replacement career I don't know. But there is a way forward for a replacement interest and there are ways to use this to help people. I'm sure this is true for other things. The terrible adjustment is moving to "work-to-live" in a job where you used to find some belonging.
- atmosx 2mo ago> I was actually surprised how few programmers enjoyed the craft. In reality, it’s probably closer to 1/100 of the people who claim they do. If genuinely love the craft, LLMs should be exciting. Imagine having an LLM to discuss ideas with, learn from, and use to expand your skills when we were learning stuff. Nothing stops anyone from coding for fun, learning new languages or frameworks, or exploring new design approaches. The uncomfortable truth is that many who say they “love the craft”, loved probably more what came with mastering it... The salary, status, career prospects, and identity of being “the smart guy” with a rare and valuable skill. When that identity feels threatened, the reaction is understandable. But you know who really loves the craft? Amateurs. In the original sense of the word. People who pursue something simply because they love doing it. ps. I believe companies will need knowledgeable engineers to drive the machine. LLMs are right most of the time, but not always, and someone still needs to know enough to catch the mistakes and, more importantly, specify what should be built in the first place. You can’t write a good spec without understanding the language of the system you’re specifying, the system itself, etc. And there’s an entire ecosystem emerging around LLM engineering growing fast: infrastructure, inference optimization, model evaluation, token efficiency proxies, tooling, and more. Even setting up a solid development environment has become quite complex (tmux, agents, editor, etc). So I don’t think this a black and white situation where “LLMs will replace engineers”.