> They take whatever job pays and spend decades fighting upstream.

I suspect that this affects a lot of folks in tech. There's a lot of money to be made, so people get into it. They don't really like what they do, so it's always a chore. Their work often shows it, too.

I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career.

I like the Integrity part, too. That seems to be something that's missing (from most vocations), these days. One of the reasons that I stuck with my last job for so long, was because the people I worked with, and for, had Integrity, and that's pretty important to me.

▲

steve_adams_86 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> and that's pretty important to me

The older I get, the more I realize what a critical component of personal and social relationships it is, and how deeply it reinforces virtually everything good in society. There's never a good reason to forgo it, and never a good reason to accept spending time with people who don't have it. It only leads to trouble.

I started my career in ad tech and it was often such abject misery because of this. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but a large part of the problem was working with people who had very little integrity. They were great at masking it and presenting a different persona, but ultimately, we did bad things to people and made filthy money. I don't miss anything about it.

	▲	neilv an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Like you, I've found that working with people of integrity (or some qualities closely related to that) is very important to me. Not in a "new-grad or corporate PR appropriating meaningless platitudes" kind of way. But in a "I have seen multiple times how one untrustworthy person can easily wreck all the work of a team or organization, and make their lives miserable, so averting that is a high priority" kind of way. Lately, in business context, I tend to characterize what I seek from people is "alignment". I think that many (not all) business people are still willing to buy in on that. And it will just have to be a given that the company and team goals with which people are aligned are respectable. What seems to be getting more difficult in the last few years is finding companies with respectable goals. Of course you knew to avoid any company in crypto. But now, with with a new VC gold rush of AI (often involving the same people who were happy to run crypto scams), there aren't a lot of startups that look respectable. Not all AI companies, nor companies doing AI, are bad. But how do you find a respectable one, in a gold rush?

▲

an0malous 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is conflated by the fact that most people start to enjoy things that give them a lot of money and prestige. Otherwise everyone would be in playing sports and making art, the things kids do before they care about money and prestige

	▲	galangalalgol 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I started programming at 5, making it do what I wanted it to provided dopamine. I never found a sport I enjoyed. I do like painting though. I doubt very many people get into sanitation because they love making toilets clean, but even there I'm sure a few do. Before 2000 I think it was pretty normal for people to select software as a career without considering the compensation as a factor. It wasn't excessively better than other similar choices for one.
	▲	didgetmaster an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I don't think he meant that you should enjoy your vocation more than your vacation. But life is very different if you actually enjoy going to work each day, rather than dreading it.
	▲	ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think they enjoy the money and prestige; not the work, itself. I get a real joy out of developing software. I have, for all my adult life. The fact that it paid well, was gravy. I do feel that I was incredibly fortunate to have landed into a field that I already loved. I guess that my loving it, made me much better at it. Of course, there were lots of "friction points," along the way. Working for myself, in retirement, has removed all of them. The one thing that I miss, is working in a team.

▲

jancsika 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I like the Integrity part, too.

Integrity is great. Their dapp is solid and currently offers 2,000 free prediction market tokens when signing up with your biometric data.

If you haven't signed up yet hit me up for my rec code: you'll get an extra 1,000 tokens and I get 5x credits!

▲

UncleOxidant 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I'm retired. I don't have to write software, but I spend more time writing software (for free), than I did, for most of my career.

Same. Claude/Gemini/DeepSeekV4/Qwen3.6 are enabling me to do way more experimentation than I could do on my own. 10X at least. Not getting paid for any of it, but that's OK, getting paid imposes limitations on what you can work on and imposes responsibilities that I don't care to have anymore. There's a certain kind of integrity in that as well.

▲

draftsman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you find joy in using LLMs to write software? I tried using Claude/Cursor/CodeX/etc. for personal projects and experimentation, and I found no joy in it. I learned nothing, and when my MVPs were complete, I only had a shallow understanding of how the code that powered them worked.

▲

didgetmaster an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I guess some people only enjoy the destination and don't care how they got there. These people seem to enjoy AI more than the people who want to enjoy the journey along the way.

▲

dansquizsoft an hour ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

	▲	didgetmaster 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What? For the record, I am not saying that you shouldn't ever use AI. Plenty of good programmers use it as a tool to boost their productivity or to validate things. But if you are using AI to write all your code, I think you are missing a lot. It is like when you use LLMs to write your whole paper for you, rather than to check your grammar or offer critique of something you actually wrote.

▲

ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I do, but I also use LLMs in a manner that seems drastically different, from most folks here.

I use the standard $20/ChatGPT Pro sub, and run Thinking 5.5 as a chat interface.

I use it like a "trusted personal advisor," as opposed to a "black box employee."

I'm intimately involved in almost every step of the development process. Most of what I ask from the LLM, is function-length snippets.

It's made a huge difference in the velocity and scope of my work.

I have learned that I need to be very careful, though. The LLM sometimes really borks things, and I have to rip out the garbage, and rewrite the code, myself. I can't even imagine the quality of "vibe-coded" software.

▲

t_mahmood an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't know, the flow sounds exactly the same like many other comments, that starts almost exactly like this : that I use it differently then people here ...

Maybe I'm wrong, but these comments sound more and more advertising than personal experience.

I didn't see any reason for you to type the whole LLM version following the casing so precisely, why would it matter?

▲

ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago | parent [-]

And...we have an attack...

I love this place, I really do, but this stuff gets a bit tiresome.

▲

onraglanroad an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It's a troll (based on username). Enjoy your retirement, I'll be there in a couple of years myself and hopefully doing equally useful stuff.

	▲	t_mahmood an hour ago \| parent [-]
		And you would absolutely be wrong. Why would my username make you think it's a troll? No intention to disrespect anyone, I said what the comment felt like.

▲

t_mahmood 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Interesting, why do you think it's an attack? I was skeptical, and I felt there is a common theme. if I'm wrong, I sincerely apologize, but I can't brush off the feeling.

But hey, maybe I'm really over-thinking, so I'll go off.

▲

ChrisMarshallNY 23 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'm not advertising jack. Everyone else mentions the LLM they use, along with all kinds of details, like token costs, etc. I mention it to frame the context. I don't think that using ChatGPT impresses anyone, around here.

It is not a common theme. However, when I do post something like this, I find a lot of kindred spirits, so I guess we are the "quiet ones."

Most people -the vast majority- use agents and IDE integrations; sometimes, in amazing ways. It's a very different way of using LLMs from the way that I do. Maybe the way I use it is considered "quaint," and people don't want to admit it, because they are afraid folks will make fun of them. I don't really give a rat's buttocks. I'm retired, and long past the need to feed my insecurity by accepting the judgment of others.

I am big on checking out people's profiles, when I am interacting with them. Sometimes, it makes a big difference in the way that I approach them. That's why my own profile is packed full of information. I'm not showing off -many folks here, are a lot more impressive than I am- I just want people to know who I am.

But that doesn't prevent the usual Internet Ready, Fire, Aim approach.

And one habit that I deliberately foster, is not engaging folks that want to attack me, beyond one or two mild responses. Once I say "Have a Great Day!", we're done. You can add whatever last word gives you good feelz. I won't respond.

I also don't attack. I respect this community, and engaging in troll-battles, just makes it ugly. And I could be really good at trolling; I just feel as if you can't shovel shit, without getting it on you.

▲

t_mahmood 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

I still don't get it why me being skeptical considered trolling. I don't troll. And, my comment was definitely, absolutely, not an attack.

But true, I didn't check your profile initially, so, my conclusion was uncalled for, and wrong.

So, really, was not trolling, and no attacks intended.

	▲	ChrisMarshallNY 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We're good, here. I checked out your profile (and GH profile). We probably have a lot more in common, than differences. I'm always glad to find people to interact with. I know that my HN persona is a bit "stuffy," because I'm going out of my way, not to be abrasive, and to contribute to the community, but there are folks that absolutely hate me -in a Commissioner Dreyfus kind of way-, and I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's the Apple thing. Eh, whatevs. I'm "on the spectrum," and got used to people disliking me for no reason that they can even articulate. It used to really bother me, but these days, it's just background noise. I'm actually a fairly decent chap, and probably worth getting to know.

▲

voidfunc an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like building stuff. I don't care about the code. I convinced myself over 20 years that I liked coding to get myself through the drudgery of corporate work but the reality is the building was the important thing to me. I'm able to build things quickly with AI.

▲

skinfaxi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm curious of the places you've found joy while writing software traditionally. For me, it has been in reasoning about the system, debugging issues, and discovering what works. The iterative process of eventually coming to a more complete understanding, as you stand on and build off of your prior understanding.

All of those elements are present for me while using AI to augment my output. I have started using voice to interact with my coding harness though and I think that has maybe influenced my opinion. I also don't let things go fully autonomously and look at the diffs along the way.

▲

roncesvalles an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Depends on how you use them. I'm a detail-obsessed perfectionist. I believe these qualities are what have enabled me to produce better software than most people. I use LLMs the way I can without violating these principles.

▲

paulpauper 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Given how much these jobs pay, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

▲

weinzierl 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is from 1880 and reminds me of something Dostoyevsky had written 14 years before. His quip in The Gambler was even more extreme because he spoke about working hard and saving every penny for generations with the subtext being that it makes everyone miserable.