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I miss all the programming articles. It feels like everyone has given up with the very idea of ever writing code now and the entire practice of making software

I miss all the programming articles. It feels like everyone has given up with the very idea of ever writing code now and the entire practice of making software has been handed over to AI.

rvz 15d ago
Maybe all this time we were just in a ZIRP bubble and the people who claimed to be "interested in programming" were just grifting to the top all along.
- echelon 15d ago
  I've always been interested in "building". Programming was always just the means to do so. I got into it at a very young age, but the syntax and the languages were just the means to an end of building and creating. I'm academically interested in algorithms and data structures and distributed systems architectures, but I have no desire to actually code those things by hand. You're probably not hand-writing your software in assembler. Next to nobody will be writing code in 2050. It was always just a stepping stone.
  - claudeslop 15d ago
    [flagged]
  - archagon 15d ago
    AI is not an abstraction and it cannot be the foundation for the next layer up, like assembly can. I think you are categorically wrong.
    - skeledrew 15d ago
      Maybe there is no next layer. This is it, and it'll just be iterated on for decades.
sanderjd 15d ago
I also experience this as a great loss, but honestly yes, I can't get excited about perfecting the craft of writing computer code now that there are AI systems that have done so. I'll always be sad about this! But the flip side is that I'm way more excited about what I can do with software, now that it's so much easier to write.
- huurtehoog 15d ago
  I experience quite the opposite. I'm quite excited about the value my skills are gaining in relative terms. An entire generation of potential competition is getting addicted to the subsidized corporate tooling. Voluntarily!
  - bspammer 15d ago
    The future is open models running on your device. No subsidized corporate tooling required. There will never be a reckoning for the people who are letting their coding skills atrophy. I don't like it either, but that's the way it is.
    - huurtehoog 15d ago
      I don't wish anyone any reckoning. But I can see and feel less competition for my niche knowledge and I welcome it.
      - sanderjd 14d ago
        What niche knowledge? It seems to me that applying general knowledge to new niches has never been easier.
        huurtehoog 14d ago
        Yeah I know it's not obvious. And very lucrative and very freeing, having this sort of knowledge and leveraging it. Especially after clients have suffered the new found arrogance of non-experts riding on LLM output. Look, let me be perfectly clear: if you're getting what you want out of your job and your personal projects, hobbies, whatever you do with your time, awesome! If you feel like the trade-offs of including LLMs in your workflows are good for you, great! Just don't delude yourself into thinking this new technology, this new tool, is free of trade-offs. Net positive for you? Ok if you think so go for it. I haven't found the inclusion of LLMs in my activities beyond replacing the broken state of traditional search worth it. That's it. I'm not against it, I just don't find myself getting net positive value from deferring to code generated by these tools, is all I am saying. Nothing more, nothing less than that simple statement. Not for me.
jedberg 15d ago
Reddit's /r/programming is very well moderated, and they specifically don't allow articles about AI, unless it's programming AI. You should check it out.
- someguynamedq 14d ago
  Sounds like their head is in the sand
barrell 15d ago
Same. I miss the excitement around programming. New languages, new tricks, weird hacks, odd projects. I have little to no interest in AI coding - I try it every couple months but always regret it, git reset, and go back to coding by hand. It feels quite lonely these days. The general energy and enthusiasm from hn was a big source of motivation, or maybe community. Now using hn feels quite isolating. I do see the occasional post about going back to hand coding though, and their frequency seems to be on the rise, so hopefully that correction continues (I don’t need to see no AI, to each their own, just would be nice to see an equal amount of hand coding content one day)
ellis0n 15d ago
There are already too many articles about programming and new things are constantly being invented even with AI. For example, I created a programming language called ACPUL by hand designed for humans and there are still articles about it that have yet to be written. Programming will become like esports. Maybe out of the 30 million programmers who can program without AI, only 5 million will remain, but that is still a large number.

I miss all the programming articles. It feels like everyone has given up with the very idea of ever writing code now and the entire practice of making software has been handed over to AI.

rvz 15d ago

Maybe all this time we were just in a ZIRP bubble and the people who claimed to be "interested in programming" were just grifting to the top all along.

echelon 15d ago
I've always been interested in "building". Programming was always just the means to do so. I got into it at a very young age, but the syntax and the languages were just the means to an end of building and creating. I'm academically interested in algorithms and data structures and distributed systems architectures, but I have no desire to actually code those things by hand. You're probably not hand-writing your software in assembler. Next to nobody will be writing code in 2050. It was always just a stepping stone.
- claudeslop 15d ago
  [flagged]
- archagon 15d ago
  AI is not an abstraction and it cannot be the foundation for the next layer up, like assembly can. I think you are categorically wrong.
  - skeledrew 15d ago
    Maybe there is no next layer. This is it, and it'll just be iterated on for decades.

sanderjd 15d ago

I also experience this as a great loss, but honestly yes, I can't get excited about perfecting the craft of writing computer code now that there are AI systems that have done so. I'll always be sad about this! But the flip side is that I'm way more excited about what I can do with software, now that it's so much easier to write.

huurtehoog 15d ago
I experience quite the opposite. I'm quite excited about the value my skills are gaining in relative terms. An entire generation of potential competition is getting addicted to the subsidized corporate tooling. Voluntarily!
- bspammer 15d ago
  The future is open models running on your device. No subsidized corporate tooling required. There will never be a reckoning for the people who are letting their coding skills atrophy. I don't like it either, but that's the way it is.
  - huurtehoog 15d ago
    I don't wish anyone any reckoning. But I can see and feel less competition for my niche knowledge and I welcome it.
    - sanderjd 14d ago
      What niche knowledge? It seems to me that applying general knowledge to new niches has never been easier.
      - huurtehoog 14d ago
        Yeah I know it's not obvious. And very lucrative and very freeing, having this sort of knowledge and leveraging it. Especially after clients have suffered the new found arrogance of non-experts riding on LLM output. Look, let me be perfectly clear: if you're getting what you want out of your job and your personal projects, hobbies, whatever you do with your time, awesome! If you feel like the trade-offs of including LLMs in your workflows are good for you, great! Just don't delude yourself into thinking this new technology, this new tool, is free of trade-offs. Net positive for you? Ok if you think so go for it. I haven't found the inclusion of LLMs in my activities beyond replacing the broken state of traditional search worth it. That's it. I'm not against it, I just don't find myself getting net positive value from deferring to code generated by these tools, is all I am saying. Nothing more, nothing less than that simple statement. Not for me.

jedberg 15d ago

Reddit's /r/programming is very well moderated, and they specifically don't allow articles about AI, unless it's programming AI. You should check it out.

someguynamedq 14d ago
Sounds like their head is in the sand

barrell 15d ago

Same. I miss the excitement around programming. New languages, new tricks, weird hacks, odd projects. I have little to no interest in AI coding - I try it every couple months but always regret it, git reset, and go back to coding by hand. It feels quite lonely these days. The general energy and enthusiasm from hn was a big source of motivation, or maybe community. Now using hn feels quite isolating. I do see the occasional post about going back to hand coding though, and their frequency seems to be on the rise, so hopefully that correction continues (I don’t need to see no AI, to each their own, just would be nice to see an equal amount of hand coding content one day)

ellis0n 15d ago

There are already too many articles about programming and new things are constantly being invented even with AI. For example, I created a programming language called ACPUL by hand designed for humans and there are still articles about it that have yet to be written. Programming will become like esports. Maybe out of the 30 million programmers who can program without AI, only 5 million will remain, but that is still a large number.