The Citizen Developer | Hacker News Reader

The Citizen Developer

massdriver.cloud

58 pointsmetal1389 comments

My criteria is very simple, could you handwrite the code if you needed to. Could you write this code without the LLM writing it for you. Could you write this code without the IDE auto-completing it for you. You could take it all the way to, could you write the assembly if you needed to. Of course, the complexity of the ask and the timeline has to be commensurate with the power of your tooling at each level.

Do civil engineers need to be able to personally manufacture prestressed concrete? Or do they need to know the properties of materials and how to test their designs?

Do you think that programming is analogous to pouring concrete???

Manufacturing concrete is not the same as pouring it.

A distinction without a difference.

As a past civil engineer, I can't manufacture concrete.

But I still could calculate and write an electrical design project and draw all necessary plans and schemes without touching PC once – if I have a ruler, few pens and enough time (I would have to reference standards, but I did have most standards in print version)

I doubt your metaphor really fit. Was manufacturing ever an engineer job?

Many specialties contribute to the manufacture of prestressed concrete. Materials scientists, chemical engineers, metallurgical engineers, mechanical engineers, structural engineers, tooling engineers to design casting beds, quality control engineers, etc.

But in the early days of prestressed concrete (1920, 1930), a single civil engineer performed all of these functions.

The point is that the role of the modern civil engineer has changed and specialized over the decades. You can be a very competent civil engineer without having the knowledge or experience needed to perform every specialty.

Just because our ancestors in the 1940s handwrote binary sequences, and in the 1950s they handwrote assembly, and in the 1960s they handwrote FORTRAN, doesn't mean that today's software engineers need to be able to do any of that.

They don't need to because that's usually not what the job calls for, but I would think most people who call themselves software engineers believe they would be able to work at a job where they wrote FORTRAN instead of Python. It's just another programming language, you just have to spend a month to learn it. Assembly is just another programing language. Opcodes is just assembly without syntactic sugar. But of course that's not what my job calls for today, but if it did, it's not really any different in my mind from any new job where I'm doing something different, but just applying my software skills slightly differently.

New person in sales joined my company a few months ago and on the very first introduction they handed me a vibe coded app and asked me to review it for them and put it into production. Haven't spoken to them since. They haven't proposed anything else since then either to engineering. You may think it harsh but they didn't even ask my name, what my specialization was, etc.

Engineering to these folks is a one-and-done endeavour. You just prompt and fire it off and ride off into the sunset, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. They never see the work that goes on after the launch party. The midnight debugging sessions, the database migrations, the DNS failures, debates over which auth provider to use, the list goes on. Until the "citizen developer" is willing to engage in the less "sexy" part of software engineering, the world will move on without them as well.

"Everyone is an engineer" sounds like something you hear right before a building collapses and kills 300 people

A vanishingly small percentage of the software in the world has failure modes that kill people. To say the analogy you're making is "only partly applicable" would be very generous..

No, but a shocking amount of unappreciated software can cost a TON of money if it fails, even briefly, which is another disaster scenario.

More software than you'd think can get people killed, though.

And more software than you'd think is running inside a barely-understood SCADA package that runs user scripts, which can now be authored by AI the user doesn't understand, and that can result in either or both of the above outcomes. This is true in just about every city in the world, several times over.

Software engineers have to understand that they aren't the only flavor of engineer, and even if "everyone is a [software] engineer" was the intended statement, it demonstrates excessive hubris. Many real engineers do work on systems with failure modes that kill people.

Yeah, right.

That usually requires a 3 to 5 year degree, and possibly professional exam.

Having the AI do the work doesn't make one an engineer.

Just like one doesn't become a writer by owning a typewriter or a word processor.

Among other reasons, one doesn't become a writer by owning a typewriter because typewriters don't write for you.

Depends on the model.

How about owning a typewriter that types on its own?

That makes the typewriter the actual writer and you the credit-taker, just like in present ghostwriting arrangements

> the credit-taker

Isn’t this what society already largely rewards? See the personality cults around CEOs and not even founders.

Nevertheless, those books aren't sold for the writing style, but because they're about the cult leader. So not the "writer" is prized (ghost or not) but the personality.

Still doesn't make you a writer.

May I ask how you became credentialed in gatekeeping? Did you study gatekeeping in school, obtain a gatekeeping degree and pass the gatekeeping professional associations exam?

No? Then you are not qualified to say that other people are not qualified!

Do you see the absurdity of your position now?

If someone or something does the writing for you, you are, by definition, not a writer.

But this is an unrealistic view of how AI works. You don't say "make this" and get a finished product. It is very much a back and forth process, very much like a boss to their employee. And I imagine most people have experienced presentations where your boss claims credit (ideally mentioning you at some point) for the result.

Then you can call yourself "editor", if you want to even "editor in chief". But you're still not the writer.

Like the Great Automatic Grammatizator?

And in civilized countries you need like 10 years of professional mentorship after the degree.

Whatever you can accomplish using AI without experience is now worthless. Sure that rando can now get a customized website hosted on Vercel with some struggling through setting up GitHub etc. That work is no longer interesting. It’s slop the same as a restaurant showing AI images of food. It’s digital plastic. AI on autopilot creating code, text, images or video is nothing more than a curiosity.

> AI on autopilot creating code, text, images or video is nothing more than a curiosity.

I wouldn’t say it’s lacking value. Maybe digital plastic is the perfect metaphor. Plastic is disposable and probably bad for the environment. But useful for all sorts of weird little tasks. Plastic is everywhere despite its weaknesses because sometimes you just want a thing shaped like this.

I’ve got a little personal data archive going back 20 years. But unfortunately it’s suffering bit rot. Last night I discovered the main hard drive storing it is suffering read failures - the zfs checksums aren’t matching. I pulled out Claude and told it to make a program that could make, maintain and verify a sidecar database of file hashes and reed-Solomon parity data so I can fix some small percent of bit rot that the drive experiences. A 10% increase in file size is worth it for the peace of mind of knowing that footage of my late grandma will still exist when I’m her age. (I have backups, but the backups might also suffer bit rot and I might not even know).

Claude’s program isn’t art. I’m not putting it on my resume. If I had infinite time I’d love to make something like this lovingly by hand. But I’m busy. And Claude can make something in an hour or two which solves my problem. Nice.

Is it slop? Yes. Is it useful? Absolutely.

Hate to be that guy but wasnt the solution here to buy a new drive instead of trust claudes slop is long term maintaining your drive and not just looking like its doing a good job?

It's definitely an option. Though I'd really need 2 drives - one replacement, and a mirror. And then I could set up weekly sweeps which check zfs checksums to guard against bit rot. And just hope that bitrot never affects the same file on both drives at the same time.

I also don't want all my backups to be in the same physical location. If I copy some files with zfs to another drive, I'd also like to check that there wasn't an error in the copying process. Maybe I can use zfs to make mirror images - which probably copies the hashes?

Yeah, I could use zfs to do some of this. But having a sidecar checksum database is easier to work with across filesystems. And Reed-Solomon error correction is able to correct bit rot much more cheaply than using physically duplicated drives. I wouldn't mind buying a mirror set a year or two ago, but storage is so expensive now.

Filesystems in general aren't very good at protecting against silent bitrot, since it doesn't happen that much on spinning copper. But it happens a lot more than we'd all like to admit on modern SSDs. And zfs doesn't support Reed-Solomon error correction.

> Though I'd really need 2 drives - one replacement, and a mirror.

Yea, with just a single drive it's not really a backup is it?

> If I copy some files with zfs to another drive, I'd also like to check that there wasn't an error in the copying process.

That's what rsync is for.

> I wouldn't mind buying a mirror set a year or two ago, but storage is so expensive now.

Prices went up, yes but not that much to be fair. And I think it mostly affected M2 disks.

Here's my very limited notes on HDD prices.

In 21 october 2023, a 22 TB disk cost me 0.37 SEK per gigabyte.

In 28 may 2026, a 26 TB disk cost me 0.36 SEK per gigabyte.

Both were WD red disks.

> In 28 may 2026, a 26 TB disk cost me 0.36 SEK per gigabyte.

The best price I can find for a 24gb+ hard drive is $1250 AUD for a 24gb Seagate Barracuda drive, at my local computer store. They're a similar price on amazon. Amazon US has refurbed drives too, which are a little cheaper but not much.

$1250 for 24gb is $52AUD per gigabyte, or 353 Swedish Krona per gigabyte.

actually a writer is just someone who writes

COBOL

Visual Basic

Low-Code

Power Platform

Although AI substantially changes the situation the hard part of being an engineer was never the code.

A technician is defined by the tools they work with, an engineer is defined by the problems they can solve. Taking a dozen different business processes and stakeholders and figuring out how to actually solve the problems they have is engineering.

Good. IT broadly and unnecessarily adopted the complexity of mega-sites that serve hundreds of millions of users even when their actual user base was in the hundreds. AI allows competent and detail-oriented people with technical knowledge to again create useful internal tools in hours or day instead of the "never" timeline from gatekeeping developers.

I don't want to be rude, but if you're retired by now you should stay retired.

Your comment fits a pattern I see on HN all the time from the older crowd that was promoted to management way too early in their career. It's not helping.

I've noticed a near 1:1 overlap of people who advocate against shadow development, and people experiencing status anxiety about the fact that AI has proven that they barely pass the bar.

Some arguments about shadow development and IT are valid, like security and who takes ownership after the original developers leave, but they don't really account for the reality that organizations expand constantly, business needs are perpetually exploding and most development shops are so mired in business requirements and bureaucracy that there's genuinely no value involved with interacting with them.

You do realize that you're making the exact same arguments as a dictator who just commandeered a tank, right?

> business needs are perpetually exploding

Ignorance is perpetually overthinking. If you want to be an engineer, you should quit your current role and reapply instead of ranting on here.

Ooooh, a blast from the past from me in a discussion about No Code:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034221

I was very anti it then - it was clearly Consultancy BS; but now non-devs really do have much more scope to create things that were only possible by software engineers before - and yes that creates challenges for us professionals.

But I no longer sneer at "The Citizen Developer" as an idea; its time has come.

Ah yeah, if I ask a company to design and build me a bridge, I'm a bridge engineer!

Anyone can buy a table saw. Doesn't make you a carpenter and it doesn't mean you can/should build anything.

In case you yourself do not own a table saw, I should point out that table saws don't rip, cut, or mill stock for you. It's like saying "buying a hammer doesn't make you a carpenter".

At what point does whacking something together yourself with a hammer make you a carpenter? You would think that even with carpentry there is a spectrum from ignorant rube to master craftsman. If you fire and forget a LLM agent at a problem, where does that land you on the spectrum?

It doesn't, it's just that people keep making comparisons between AI and basic tools of specific trades, but none of those tools work the way AI does.

(I mean, I guess as soon as you start whacking things together with a hammer, you technically sort of are being a carpenter, but that's not the point.)

Tools can be more or less automated. Using a CNC for example doesn't necessarily mean that I qualify as an aspiring machinist. Similar to AI a CNC happily carries out a course of action largely independent of the operator.

I think whacking things together with a hammer is the act of building (however inexpertly) whereas carpenter (and other titles) convey something about expertise, mindset, or the intent to hone skills. The DIYer might or might not qualify as an amateur carpenter/electrician/plumber/whatever.

So far the closest analogy I've come up with to coding agents is a 3D printer. Captures the amount of effort and the quality of the outputs.

Or, in the words of Morris Day, "It takes more than a hat to call yourself a chef."

More people have the capability now, but not necessarily the experience or understanding.

The hat : chef analogy is even less apposite than the table saw! At least the table saw serves an important function in that trade.

Culinary hats serve the important purpose of helping catch stray hairs, not unlike a hairnet.

Walk into a fine dining restaurant kitchen and count the number of chefs hats you see.

Capability? I have to push back on that (AI sounding joke, yes).

Point is, if I give a person a calculator, it doesn't even make them the tiniest bit of a mathematician. Nor if I give them a pencil, either. The tool never, ever makes the tradesperson.

Whatever's happening with LLMs, it's not making people programmers. It's how you use the tool, which validates that.

Wait: a calculator doesn't make you a mathematician because you have to know math to get the calculator to do anything. A pencil does even less for you. You can't say any of that about AI.

Entering 2x2 in the calculator, gives you 4, just as looking up the answer on a chart. Yet no one would give you the title of "mathematician" for doing so.

AI doesn't make you an expert. Or even a professional in any field. First, AI is terrible at cogent work, without someone driving it. And even if you do get it to do all the work, then that's not you doing it.

"Hi, I asked a coder friend to write an app, I'm a developer", nope!

> You can't say any of that about AI.

It’s weird though, LLMs still don’t seem very good at magically enabling most non developers able to make software. I’ve tried with a couple people - mostly for curiosity’s sake. Even when they have pressing needs that software could solve, they’re really resistant to talking to the machine about them. Then they don’t know what to actually ask the ai to do. Regular people don’t seem to know what use cases are. Or what a design mockup is. They don’t know what a website is, or what the limitations are. The llm could help guide them through all of this, but the people I’ve sat down in front of the machine didn’t ask the machine to guide them through the process at all.

Of course, if you only know how to vibe code, that doesn’t make you an engineer. But I’m no longer convinced that LLMs make developers pointless. If anything, so far they seem to make our skills much more valuable. With LLMs, I can get a lot of low quality work done quickly if that’s what the project calls for.

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it's pretty obvious what parent poster was implying. Pedantic nitpicks add nothing to the discussion.

edit: sigh, fucking rate limits are such a dumb mechanic if you want quality long-form discussion. By the time I can reply nobody will be looking at their replies.

anyways LLMs might displace "programmers" in the way that 3D CAD software replaced draftsmen, but software engineering, the actual design and architecture skill, isn't going anywhere. I can use carpentry tools to build a bridge over a creek but I'm not qualified to build a bridge carrying Interstate traffic.

It is obvious what the parent poster is saying, and it's substantively wrong. Give someone a table saw and they're essentially no closer to being a woodworker. It's tricky to use a table saw (trickier still to use it safely).

These tool analogies are self-soothing for programmers who see agents is simple tools of their trade. But the point of articles like this is that AI agents are more like spreadsheets --- only more so. They're devices that allow normal people without training or aptitude to do things with computers that only programmers were doing before. They displace programmers.

In that sense, the closest physical analogy to a coding agent is probably a 3D printer. But: a really good 3D printer, into which hundreds of billions of dollars had been invested entirely for the purpose of making the printer work weirdly well even for people who have no interest in the different kidns of filament spools.

My thing got a little heat but I didn't see for a couple days, so I thought I'd just let it stand. But it's late and I'm reading through my old comments and, while it's necro, thought I'd do a reply here.

I'm more than OK with people writing their own software, indeed the main thing I like about the free software movement is that it makes it much easier for people to do that. It's empowering. I don't have a 3D printer, but I like the idea. I think people should be able to build as much of their own stuff as they want. I have a caveat though, which I'll get to at the end.

As far as my personal motivation, I--and most SWEs I know--don't really want to build the kinds of things people are using LLMs to build: audio players, billing software, whatever. I also don't think most backend apps, frontend apps, web frameworks, whatever should exist, and whether they were written by people or LLMs doesn't really factor in. More to the point, I think it's crazy that SWEs and tech workers generally make 8474x what other people make, and I think we've provided dubious value for that remittance, to say nothing of the investment, so knocking us down a peg would be putting things to rights. But, candidly, while I wouldn't love losing my job because of LLMs, I don't think that's happening writ large and I don't think it will happen to me specifically, at least not directly or any time soon. Maybe it matters to you that I don't make beaucoup bucks, maybe it doesn't. Anyway, do with all that what you will.

Kara Swisher has this great line--dunno if it's originally hers--where some social media person is going on about citizen journalists opening up news and how great it is, and she says that makes about as much sense as citizen surgeons. In the same vein, I don't think a person unaccustomed to designing complex systems should try, just like I don't think someone inexperienced at building a house or a car or a plane should try. I still think this even if we have a one-button mystery machine that play-doh's out an object that seems like it may actually fly a couple of people one town over, and even usually safely does. I think we oughta slap a huge fucking label on the side of that machine that says "we have no idea how this works, and we vouch for it not at all" (I've not yet been goaded into reading the ToS for OpenAI or Anthropic, thank Dark Lord Satan, but I would put $5 down that they assume no liability for anything their models do).

So my caveat, and the point of my post, curtly and regrettably expressed via analogy, is that people should feel free to build whatever they want, but they shouldn't build anything they'll seriously rely on. They won't know enough to verify that whatever they build is fit for purpose (and, sweet Satan give me strength, you can't just ask the LLM to verify it for you). Only experts can do that.

Also for color, I do own a table saw, as well as some others, which I used very (very, holy shit) unsafely to do a terrible finishing carpentry job on my house and some other odd jobs. My warning to all readers is Google how table saws can fuck you up, and do not ever stand behind the wood you are sawing because the blade can literally shoot it into you, or IDK at least shoot it at you really fast.

In case anyone missed it, tptacek is saying that ai is different than just a tool. Tool analogies are not good.

A better analogy is, now you have what seems like an increasingly intelligent personal assistant that can do any cognitive work that you ask it to do, to increasingly better result, has retrograde amnesia, no accountability, entirely middle of the road morality, access to the internet... eh this isn't really a good analogy either.

Don't forget that when you're using it in your own domain you can at least catch its many mistakes and hallucinations, but "Citizen Devs" aren't going to have a knowledge base to do that.

I often wonder whether computer programmer said these kinds of things about spreadsheets, and how mere office workers would never have the knowledge base to build serious programs with them. Remember, before Visicalc, every spreadsheet was a program built by a computer programmer.

> table saws don't rip, cut, or mill stock

They actually do all of that

you missed the "for you"

Not for you! You have to actually know how to do that, and physically push the stock through the blade. If you know zero about a table saw, you're more likely to turn a piece of wood into a projectile than to cross-cut it accurately. Again: not something you can say about a coding agent.

The saw does them for you but it doesn't operate itself. Perhaps I read it too literally.

Owning a slave that does all those things still doesn't make you a carpenter.

The first step in becoming a carpenter is to become a bad carpenter.

I cannot disagree here in theory; but to say that: "The first step to become a doctor is NOT to be a bad doctor, its to go to medical school"

Bomb squad technician seems more pertinent here.

Doctors different mate. There a shit ton of people who just bought a table saw and now are good carpenters.

The claim I responded to was nothing but weak elitist gatekeeping. Such people should think really hard why they are how they are. It's ob obnoxious.

Remember "Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers". There's a reason they go together..

>There's a reason they go together..

They're all self-regulating professions with licensing bodies and professional standards?

Agreed, and I in no way meant to be pedantic. I think I did a bad job of articulating point of - where do we draw the line? How many tables did the "people who just bought a table saw" sell before they were "good carpenters". With AI, there are lots of people who think they are "good carpenters".

Here in the US; the head of HHS and DOD decided that flu vaccines were no longer mandatory; until the flu exploded on military bases. I am not taking a position here because I genuinely do not know what the answer to this is but I do think it is as important as it is interesting.

I many ways I think AI amplifies the "The Dunning-Kruger" by an order of magnitude; I think this could be one of the defining issue of our time.

For me I say this: I don't need to draw a line for other people.

If I choose to hire someone for a job, I really don't care how they got there. Be it self taught or through school or university.

Drawing a line always means you take away opportunity, which isn't yours to take.

What if you hire a firm to build you a 25-storey office tower? Do you care if the firm's structural engineer actually went to engineering school?

I sure do.

Chevron Deference

What about it

It is what ensured that people enforcing specific laws had actual expertise in said area.

I think you're not understanding what I wrote. Feel free to try again.

>I think you're not understanding what I wrote.

Entirely possible.

>Feel free to try again.

Feel free to add clarification.

I'd recommend a battery powered circular saw instead of a table saw to get started.

Yes comrade, we are all equalizing for three people to become multi-trillionaires.

The level of propaganda reaches Maoist proportions.

Found this post super interesting. I've personally run into similar, and built a really lightweight k8s operator and claude skill that lets the citizen devs deploy to an eng/IT managed internal k8s cluster. Keeps things safe (non-public), and can update it as they get more advanced.

Including software developers. Mathematicians tops unless the touch something outside code. An engine is literally multiple disciplines in one. I tired of SDs thinking they are engineers without touching hardware.

I've been using Claude to plan out some personal projects, and at first it seems like it can do anything!

But as I've used it, I've noticed that it overcomplicates everything and often even forgets what it previously said, and makes decisions that contradict it.

The AIs need a firm guiding hand, like a lead developer would give junior and mid-level programmers, and even occasionally to a senior developer that went off the rails for personal obsessions.

For instance, I was just trying to have it make a simple shopping list app. I had Claude take my old shopping info from the Google Keep list we use (it keeps the old checked-off items) and get the latest grocery ad, and produce a list of suggestions. It was amazing! I decided I want to send that info to a server, have a checklist there, and then keep the info for later so the AI could do it again.

After a lot of questioning (via Matt Pocock's skills, which are great) it was so complicated I finally yelled at it for overcomplicating everything, and told it how simple I wanted it to be, again.

It kept insisting on IDs for products, IDs for stores, IDs for store sections... Even after I told it no IDs. I finally said it a few more times in different ways.

It's finally getting back to the simple webapp that I imagined. It needed a lot of handholding to get it there.

And it's the kind of thing I would see from devs that were inflexible and had to see things a certain way.

I'm not ruling out that it could eventually get over this phase, but I have a feeling it'll always be something that needs handling.

My other project right now was naturally complex, and needed a lot of that stuff, and things have been going better, but I still correct it rather a lot, even on things I'd previously told it.

is it going to be like YouTube, where everyone was a video artist suddenly?

A rising tide lifts all boats. It doesn’t mean the sea is made of boats

Hack the planet!

There's lots of caveats asterisks & limitations, sure sure sure: we hear you Technically Correct repliers, here to spread your Well Actually naysayings.

But at the end of the day: heck yes. So much heck yes. Even if you are not engineering well, just the ability to have your agent go in and do reconissance of systems. "Reverse engineer this Bluetooth protocol for my device" or what I'm doing now, "reverse engineer my epaper display controller"... People have an incredibly powerful tool for assessing the world, for finding out.

And I for one strongly believe that will beget the great virous circle of lovely lovely fucking around. A wheel that is humanity's best invention, best motivation, best traction, best side, and one that any self proclaimed Hacker if any spirit ought be out of their seats cheering raving with excitement happy for.

Who wants to do business with Massdrivel after this?

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