Ask HN: Am I old? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Am I old?

16 pointszwilderrr33 comments

I don't think I'm old, but I get great joy in writing a simple utility function by hand, without ai. Just yesterday I wrote a function that removes the ending punctuation from a string, if present, and adds a period instead. I also wrote onDone, onSubmit, and onCancel handlers using more than my tab key.

Yet it seems to me that this is quickly becoming the stuff of an older generation, of people who move slowly, of a dying breed who care about silly things like craft and form.

Don't get me wrong--I'm all over AI, especially at work where speed also counts. But there's something so satisfying in writing code without AI that it makes me wonder if, in fact, I'm quickly becoming irrelevant.

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Why not both?

I'm in my mid-50s. I enjoy writing a simple utility function by hand. I care about craft and form.

But, I also care about increased productivity, exploring new technologies, and the wonders of AI.

Being into one doesn't negate the other.

I believe this says more about the tendency for our minds to close off to new ideas and stimulus as we get older. There's a reason that most people's "ideal era" is in their high school years.

I urge you to foster more resilience and adaptability and shun the traps of "back in my day-ism".

I'm 61, and old Turbo Pascal/Delphi/Lazarus programmer when I get the chance. I've just decided to see what my GitHub copilot subscription can really do for me in implementing something like metamine[1], a language I first learned about here on HN that includes a magically equals[1].

It's slow going, learning how to use a virtual assistant to get things done, but it's patient with me, as well. Eventually, however (and to stay relevant to the conversation here), I've started exploring how the code works, and fixing bugs on my own.

Once I get the framework to the point where anyone can try it out, I hope to then go through and understand every freaking line of code, and expand it from there. You're not alone in the desire to grok everything you write. There's a lot of power in that knowledge.

Then I'll re-implement it in Turbo Pascal under MS-DOS... just to prove a point. ;-)

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I'm a similar age, and encountered Pascal as a learning language in college in the 80s. And then Delphi!

I use AI extensively in work, but I try to restrict its usage in my side projects because of the same reason as yours -- I enjoy writing programs and figuring out things, so I will definitely leave the hard part to myself, and the boilerplate part to AI. Even in work I still try to figure out the algos/proper design by myself first.

I currently pretty much only use A.I. when I get stuck (or sometimes if I want some help writing the scaffolding for unit tests). If I'm not stuck then I don't use it. There may come a day when I don't think it'll be worth the time to code myself when I'm not stuck, but that day is not today.

But then again I may be considered old, too (I'm in my 40s).

I don't think it's a great idea to become too reliant on it, just like it's not a great idea to only know how to copy+paste code from Stack Overflow. If you use it too much the coding muscle gets weak and you will become less able to identify when something is done incorrectly or in a less than ideal way because of this corner case or business requirement.

I want to be able to understand your point. For those who enjoy programming, writing code is indeed a pleasure. I spent the whole day today writing a JavaScript serialization package, and even though I know someone has already done it, I am still willing to write a new one for my specific scenario. On the other hand, I think that although AI seems friendly to newcomers (inexperienced developers), it is actually more friendly to experienced developers because you can have AI help you complete some tasks and then review them yourself. Inexperienced developers have difficulty accurately pinpointing problems when they encounter issues, causing AI to keep going in circles and hitting walls.

What's my point? That's a phenomenal question. I think my point was to see if anyone else out there shared my existential state. Now, of course I knew someone did, but there's really nothing like a good ol' confirmation from the other.

My experience is similar to yours. LLMs are helpful but the code that I write directly, from my own thinking, fits better and feels more satisfying.

Craftsmanship brings joy different from the one of productivity.

Not sure if because age, or because I use Ruby, a beautiful, terse language, but I like the process.

Often I close Cursor and fire up SublimeText for a simpler, quieter process.

I think people who can do this stuff, and enjoy it, are able to use AI more effectively.

I just spent most of the day going back and forth with AI over stuff, and it kept getting more and more complex. Someone who didn't know any better would probably just take it and run with it, but I worked along with it, offering up more elegant suggestions to bring it back down to earth, where other people might be able to actually understand what it is trying to do.

I still get the most joy from writing tiny little scripts that help me (or others) do something useful.

Do you want to do work or do you want to do your hobby?

If you get joy out of digging with your bare hands then you should do that. When you're doing work, use a shovel or heavy machinery if you want to get to the valuable output sooner.

There's always going to be room for craftsmen.

No, there's always going to be room for craftsmen who make things better than machines do.

In other words, there isn't always going to be room for craftsmen.

The 20th and early 21st century is the only time in human history when humans both 1) had machines that can make things and 2) the things machines made weren't better.

That's a blip. From now on, there'll be no comparison. The only reason to want something made by a craftsman is philosophical: "I want something markedly worse, but knowing it's been made by human hands".

The key is knowing when and how to use both.

If you can be twice as fast with something using AI and you're actively choosing not to use it, then yeah you're just being stubborn. Get over it or risk getting the boot.

There will be times though where you need to finish that last 10% of coding because the model just isn't refined enough for whatever task you're giving it. And from what I've experienced so far, that last 10% ends up being 70% of the work, which is where your expertise will come in.

I cannot think of any environment in which getting code fast is of paramount importance (ok, maybe in hackathons and the advent of code). In work based environments, the bottleneck is not writing code is human interaction (understanding requirements, making trade offs and communicating them, listening to feedback, etc.)

If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later. Yes, the things you say are where the bottlenecks typically lie, but it's a cycle so the faster you can get working code out the sooner you can enter the other parts of the cycle. In theory anyway.

Teams who use agile mostly release on a set schedule not immediately. Getting that function a few minutes quicker but introducing a blackhole you don't understand but you hope works in production but can't rely on the tests AI made seems foolish.

I've had instances now where the code generated by copilot has saved me roughly an hour or more without turning into a can of worms. Your mileage is going to vary depending on the language and framework you're using.

For example, one instance for me was with winforms. I wanted to know how to recursively expand a list box. It's not a hard task, but it's just something that's tedious since I need to go research the documentation to see how a list box control actually behaves and what properties I need to manipulate. This is a very solved problem. What good is there in me re-solving it when someone has already done so?

That's where using AI is helpful without it being foolish.

> If you follow agile one of the tenets is getting working code to users fast in order to get feedback sooner rather than later.

There's no mention of that anywhere in the manifesto

  Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  Working software over comprehensive documentation
  Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  Responding to change over following a plan

It's mostly saying to focus on active factors more than rigid rituals so that that the product evolves faster and in the right direction. There's no mention on pumping code out as fast as you can.

I was going by this:

https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Specifically:

"Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software."

I guess there are religious texts, and then there are the interpretations of those texts.

I failed to see how AI assistance can make the cycle faster. The actual writing code is a very small part after the initial cycle. The most important aspect is to have a theory of the software (or the part you own) so that you can contrast it with requirements. Such theory is hard to get without a close relationship with the code.

I get joy from money appearing into my account to exchange for goods and services. I have plenty of things I enjoy doing outside of work that don’t involve computers - spending time with friends and families, exercise, travel, concerts, etc.

And yes I’m old - 50. I started programming in assembly on the Apple //e in 1986 and haven’t written a line of code since 1996 that I haven’t gotten paid for.

I both like to code but am lazy enough to hate the monotony of doing the same thing over and over. While I do use AI regularly, I also use an extensive collection of code generators that are deterministic that help me skip past the boring part. Doing something novel (to me) is fun, creating a form UI for the 1000th time is not very fun.

It's the same with math -- those with a deep understanding will be able to do it by hand.

Everyone else will take the easy route -- higher immediate productivity but overall capable of less.

Same feeling here, also I think this is relevant : https://i.imgur.com/WMXCqCk.png

I don't see that we're gonna lose that satisfaction you describe anytime soon. But if everything I typed is via prompt engineering, yeah I'll be a little sad.

Regardless of developments in your career or avocation, you're not irrelevant (and never will be). Don't make it your identity.

Those handlers... (Reaches for the tab key)

lol

I don't think you're old, I just think that you enjoy the activity of programming.

It is like hearing about manual cars.

The American mind is unable to comprehend a clutch and a stick.

If you have to ask you know the answer :D

But seriously LLMs are great for a dew things and are getting better... But this is early days ... they are limited and try to do everything ... One day we all might have Jarvis at home

But not yet

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