I loved coding in the past, but no matter what I do at this point, I can’t find a reason to anymore that’s actually necessary
I loved coding in the past, but no matter what I do at this point, I can’t find a reason to anymore that’s actually necessary
18 comments
It seems like these AI is turning out to be like some harmful drugs.
And, sometimes, I know models will write it in a way I don't like, over-engineering is common.
But, I mostly use models for more than few lines of code or code that isn't in a familiar project.
The app is entirely written by a human without AI in TypeScript. I am writing this because data integration is a ridiculously expensive commercial market ripe for disruption. There are so many companies that get hooked into automation solutions like MuleSoft only to bleed cash and beg to get off of it but don’t know how.
I divide the code into two types: one is the working code that needs to solve problems, so I will focus most of my energy on adjusting the environment for the LLM, to help the LLM write code better. The other is when I want to do and research certain things, I need to know the principles of certain things, so I will focus on looking at this part of the code and understand it myself.
The huge environmental and societal cost of LLMs, maybe?
Why do these questions implying writing code is a thing of the past keep coming?
Anthropic pretend in their S1 filling that they spend $3B in marketing, there's no need to help them really.
In my experience, very few people who don't write shell scripts (Bash, Zsh, POSIX, etc.) know how to use a Unix shell effectively. For example, if a person never writes loops when using a Unix shell interactively, they have not yet achieved personhood.
I don't use AI at all and I don't see the appeal.
It's just addictive deskilling and false confidence. Why would I want to trade away my understanding of my codebases and my honed ability to produce, debug and predict problems ahead of time for that?
I already see what it has done to my coworkers, why would I want to join them?
At home, I manually create utility apps for personal and family use using niche languages like GAMBAS (a VB6 clone), and I've found that AI isn't really good at it. Besides, with the kind of simple utilities I make, it's far more easier to just do it myself than to fight with the AI (and then there's also the issue of long-term maintenance - if it's something I coded, it's far more easier for me to fix it, update it etc than to rely on AI for eternity).
In the case of GAMBAS, I originally picked it up because I missed the days I used to code in VB6. I recall chruning out small utilities like it was no big deal (and I was still in school at the time)! So GAMBAS, as a spiritual successor to VB6, was a natural choice for me - and it's also cross-platform, which is great because some of my family members use Linux, whereas others use Windows.
Before GAMBAS I used to use Delphi, which had a similar RAD environment with Lazarus. But Lazarus is a bit clunky, compared to the polished experience of Embarcadero Delphi (which is Windows-only, unless you pay for cross-platform). So when GAMBAS came along, I first played around with it just for fun, but then over the course of time it became pretty solid and capable, so I switched to it full-time for my GUI needs.
The next project is going to be a browser-based character sheet for an RPG game a friend of mine is trying to resurrect.
I'm writing slightly less code thsn I used to - but only slightly. The difference is mostly tests and refactors and semi-boilerplate stuff. I still live in an IDE.
So am I just a dinosaur at this point, and the entire sw industry has just relocated to agent harnesses and software factories? Because I see comments on hn quite regularly where people claim not to have written code for six months or whatever, and give the impression that traditional coding is anachronistic.
Or are there, in fact, plenty of (very many) people outside the hn bubble who are "still writing code" for various reasons - and who probably will be for quite some time?