| ▲ | sashank_1509 6 hours ago |
| People who hated coding, technology, problem solving and only were in it for the money love managing a bunch of agents. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of them were in technology. I hope agents quickly become good enough to completely commoditize any supposed function they perform, and forces them to leave this industry. |
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| ▲ | aroman 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| This is an extremely “all or nothing” take. I love computers and started programming in elementary school. I am having more fun now building software than I can remember. I happen to love the process of building software by coordinating agents. It’s an addictive form of flow state that I enjoy a great deal - similar to the flow state I get playing real time strategy games like Age of Empires. It’s a different kind of flow state than writing code, for sure. But to say that the only people who enjoy building software in this new way are those who hated coding, technology, or problem solving is simply untrue. |
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| ▲ | CooCooCaCha 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m glad you mentioned flow state because that’s exactly the high I’m trying to chase with AI and why I like it despite programming since elementary school as well. I realized I most enjoy higher level problem solving but don’t really enjoy implementation. Like I enjoy algorithms, data structures, memory allocation strategies, SIMD optimization, etc. But writing the code, and debugging it is tedious and takes me out of flow. And if I’m really interested in the project itself then the algorithms take a back seat and I enjoy the even higher level problem solving of building a cool project. I don’t think it makes you lesser to enjoy these things more than literally banging out code, and hunting down bugs. Perhaps I’ve written enough code that I don’t find the same joy in that. Who knows. | |
| ▲ | wartywhoa23 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | AI Astrologists have proclaimed the month of the copium neverbeenbetterium. |
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| ▲ | ertian 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That's reductive. I love writing code, but I don't love every single part of writing code. In particular, I really disliked getting stuck on some irrelevant detail, some mysterious error that had nothing to do with my code (dep issues, OS quirks, silent changes, auth failures, researching alternatives), and spinning my tires, unable to work on what I wanted to accomplish. Often I never made it through the far side; I've got a project directory littered with half-finished projects. Having an AI to figure all that junk out for me so I can focus on the thing I want to build is fantastic. I worry about losing the grip I still have, but for now I've lost some things I loved (a lot of actual code-writing, solving nice straightforward problems), but gained what might as well be superpowers to help with some real shortcomings I had. It's been a net-positive trade for me so far. And none of my personal projects have made me rich yet... |
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| ▲ | erulabs 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You can love technology and still have thought that coding was a required path to get to technology and not the ends unto itself. If someone loves building technology products that doesn't mean they were "only in it for the money". Beyond just being disparaging for no reason, you're missing the path out of the depression-pit here. |
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| ▲ | sashank_1509 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | It’s not the act of coding, you have to really hate problem solving, to love managing agents. Such people are only in it for the money, it may sound disparaging but it’s just true. If tech paid less, say minimum wage, they would all leave and none of them would ever tinker around anything in their free time. I’m not depressed, I’m just disappointed by how many folks are like that in this industry I loved. | | |
| ▲ | erulabs 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There are infinite problems and agents help us solve problems faster. Sure they're not coding puzzles, they're actual problems actual human beings have, but they're still problems. Id way rather help a school district track its roster properly than argue with eslint. I'd rather get a rocket to the moon than triage garbage collection quirks too. You're certainly welcome to miss what coding was, but being rude to engineers who are trying to build businesses is just as ridiculous and entitled as this article is. | | |
| ▲ | bah9 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Agent solve problems, you provide context It's funny how people produce tons of code they can't even read and somehow feel like they "solved the problem". Do you feel like you built the shed when you hire carpenter and ask him to do it..? And why school district need you when any highschooler can produce similar code..? | | |
| ▲ | erulabs an hour ago | parent [-] | | because writing the code was _never_ the hard part of solving problems. |
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| ▲ | sashank_1509 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If agent did all the technical work of sending a rocket to the moon, and all that was left for me was deciding whether a rocket to the moon should be built or one to mars, which is better for our “customers” and I actually enjoyed that then I would be honest and say I was never into technology, which is completely fine, majority of humanity isn’t into it. I don’t need to see why you feel the desperate need to larp as a technologist when you’re happy with letting an agent solve all the technical problems. You only think it is rude because you have tied your identity to being a technologist when you are not, I’m just saying it like it is. | | |
| ▲ | RHSeeger 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > I don’t need to see why you feel the desperate need to larp as a technologist when you’re happy with letting an agent solve all the technical problems. This is a false comparison. Agents cannot solve all the technical problems, so the entire statement falls apart. | | |
| ▲ | bah9 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | What techical problems agent can't solve exactly? | | |
| ▲ | erulabs an hour ago | parent [-] | | agents are very very far from being able to send rockets to the moon just because you prompt them to. |
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| ▲ | Apocryphon 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You’re overlooking that the point of technology- and technologists- is to ultimately serve customers. The pleasure is incidental. | | |
| ▲ | CooCooCaCha 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The point of technology is to make people’s lives better. Out of curiosity, when you take a bite of a burger do you call it a product? When you watch a movie do you call it content? | | |
| ▲ | Apocryphon 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | What you and I are saying is synonymous. I’m simply reusing language that the post I’m responding to used. And also de-glamorizing/de-romanticizing things a bit, sure. And given that fast food is the pinnacle of sustenance as a product and Hollywood has been content-brained since 1977, sure! |
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| ▲ | eric_cc an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’ve coded for 30 years. But I’ve always been motivated by outcome, imagination, intuition, & speculation. Coding was always a means to an end not the end itself. This is the funnest I’ve ever had creating software. You can feel free to cope by inventing imaginary bad guys. But the reality is that there are a wide variety of reasons people coded by hand. And people that are different than you aren’t somehow inferior or bad. |
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| ▲ | darth_avocado 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > People who hated coding, technology, problem solving and only were in it for the money love managing a bunch of agents In other words, people who just wanted to become managers. |
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| ▲ | intorio 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why did you expand it from what he said? I love technology, I enjoy being able to solve problems with technology and coding. I've always felt neutral about the actual act of coding, it was always just a means to the end and now I love that I can do more problem solving in less time and with less toil (from my view). But I guess I was just in it for the money. |
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| ▲ | sashank_1509 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | intorio 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | You've been quite rude in this thread, so I'll just say that I'm glad you were able to get paid for years for your hobby of coding. For the organization paying you, that was only ever a means to an end of solving larger organization problems that you probably never bothered to understand because you just loved the thrills you experienced writing code. | | |
| ▲ | 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | sashank_1509 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Most organizational goals for tech are just horrible for society. What is FAANG anymore but monopolizing your attention and time, and selling targeted ads, even Apple has gone into that full swing. I frankly worry about the people who actually care deeply about such organizational goals, At least I’m honest, I never cared for what my company does, I only liked the interesting technical problems it let me solve, and the high salarye it gave me, now I can only thank it for its high salary. |
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| ▲ | falkensmaize 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I got into software later in life because I wanted to be able to send my kids to college, have healthcare and not destroy my body by 50. Up until my 40s I was a landscaper who had been an amateur programmer and technologist since my teens. I worked really, really hard to get where I am. I went to a bootcamp 5 nights a week for a year after breaking my back all day at my “real job”, while also taking care of a wife and two kids. I enjoy what I do but I confess to being “in technology” because I need to earn a living not because it’s some sort of passion project. I think it’s pretty horrible to wish us all out of job so you can feel superior again. |
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| ▲ | sashank_1509 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It says a lot that you felt the need to recite an emotional sob story to try and attack my comment. Regardless, I wish you all lose your jobs to AI and be forced to leave technology and earn money elsewhere. I think it’s been a disaster to the quality of the technology surrounding us and the community that creates technology to have so many opportunists just in it for the money. |
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| ▲ | Gud 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I love all those things, started coding as a 10 year old(30 years ago). The stuff I’m building is things I could only dream of before. With LLMs, I can build things in a year that would have taken me a lifetime before. |
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| ▲ | barbazoo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > People who hated coding, technology, problem solving and only were in it for the money love managing a bunch of agents. Why do they have to hate coding, technology and problem solving, that makes no sense. They just use coding agents to write the code for them to use technology and solve problem. |
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| ▲ | hypfer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| FWIW I hate huge chunks of the industry + its inhabitants and am somewhat happy that my GPU can replace a significant amount of interactions with it and them. Let's not forget that there is this silver lining of the tech.
We can be free[1]. __ [1] Requiring a one-time payment of about $200000 + a small gas turbine |
