I feel zero sense of sadness about how things used to be. I feel like the change that sucked the most was when software engineering went from something that nerds did because they were passionate about programming, to techbros who were just in it for the money. We lost the idealism of the web a long time ago and the current swamp with apex reptiles like Zuckerberg is what we have now. It became all about the bottom line a long time ago.

The two emotions I personally feel are fear and excitement. Fear that the machines will soon replace me. Excitement about the things I can build now and the opportunities I’m racing towards. I can’t say it’s the most enjoyable experience. The combo is hellish on sleep. But the excitement balances things out a bit.

Maybe I’d feel a sense of sadness if I didn’t feel such urgency to try and ride this tsunami instead of being totally swept away by it.

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dinkumthinkum 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I see developers talking about this idea of intense and unimaginable excitement about AI. It seems orgasmic for them, like something the hardest drugs couldn't fulfill them. I find it very strange. What exactly is so exciting? I'm not disagreeing but when you say "opportunities I'm racing towards," what does that mean? This idea of "racing towards" sounds so frenetic, I struggle to know what that could mean? What I see people doing with AI is making slop and CRUD apps and maybe some employee replacement systems or something but I don't see this transcendental experience that people are describing. I could see a mortgage collapse or something like that, maybe that's what is so exciting? I don't know.

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adriand 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> What exactly is so exciting? I'm not disagreeing but when you say "opportunities I'm racing towards," what does that mean? This idea of "racing towards" sounds so frenetic

For me specifically it means two products, one that is something I have been working on for a long time, well before the Claude Code era, and another that is more of a passion project in the music space. Both have been vastly accelerated by these tools. The reason I say “racing” is because I suspect there are competitors in both spaces who are also making great progress because of these tools, so I feel this intense pressure to get to launch day, especially for the first project.

And yes it is very frenetic, and it’s certainly taking a toll on me. I’m self-employed, with a family to support, and I’m deeply worried about where this is all going, which is also fuelling this intense drive.

A few years ago I felt secure in my expertise and confident of my economic future. Not any more. In all honesty, I would happily trade the fear and excitement I feel now for the confidence and contentment I felt then. I certainly slept better. But that’s not the world we live in. I don’t know if my attempts to create a more secure future will work, but at least I will be able to say I tried as hard as I was able.

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simonw 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Getting a 53% performance boost on a 20+ year old codebase by running a bunch of experiments is pretty exciting to me: https://github.com/Shopify/liquid/pull/2056

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discreteevent 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Developers make these kinds of improvements all the time. Are you saying that it would have been impossible without AI?

	▲	simonw 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That codebase existed for 20 years and had contributions from nearly 200 people. Sure, they could have come up with those optimizations without AI... but they didn't. What's your theory for why that is?

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cableshaft 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, I have a backlog of at least 20 graveyard game projects that I stopped working on from one frustration or another over the past 20 years, or getting excited by a new exciting idea and leaving it alone, that I wouldn't mind resurrecting and finally putting some of them out there. Even if not a ton of people play them.

In fact it being easier to get them out there I might care less that they should be marketable and have a chance to make serious money, as opposed to when I was sinking hundreds of hours into them and second guessing what direction I should take the games to make them better all the time.

The art wasn't the problem (the art wasn't great, but I could make functional art at least), it was finding the time and energy and focus to see them through to completion (focus has always been a problem for me, but it's been even worse now that I'm an adult with other responsibilities).

And that hasn't always been the issue, I did release about a dozen games back in the day (although I haven't in quite a few years at this point).

Of course someone may say 'well that's slop then', and yeah, maybe by your standards, sure. These games aren't and never were going to be the next Slay The Spire or Balatro. But people can and do enjoy playing them, and not every game needs to be the next big hit to be worth putting out into the world, just like not every book needs to be the next 1984 or Great Gatsby.

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wiseowise 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> What exactly is so exciting?

Money, opportunity, status. It is all status games. Think of it as a nuclear war on old order and new players trying to take the niche. Or maybe commies killing whites and taking over Russia?

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k32k 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think those comments are signalling something much deeper about the individual.

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kaffekaka 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Signalling what? Please expand.

	▲	cindyllm 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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antod 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the rise of Facebook was possibly my first sense that our victory for "open" on the web was going to be short lived. Eg our (well not mine, I never used it) comms were moving to proprietary platforms.

Then with AWS our infra was moving to proprietary platforms. Now our dev tools are moving to expensive proprietary platforms.

Combined with widespread enshittification, we've handed nearly everything to the tech bros now.