Been coding for about 30 years now, am I the only one who still LIKES to code? Who still LIKES to try writing a new approach to something, watching it fail, figuring out what went wrong, taking notes, learning from mistakes, and noticing improvements in their own code? Cuz it’s starting to feel like it. Web development already lost me with the culture of “glue a bunch of bulky shit together that you didn’t write and call yourself a ‘dev’ to the ladies” but this AI shit is getting absurd. And it doesn’t even work! Look at how shitty all the operating systems are getting. Look at all the total slop on the app stores. It’s depressing as hell.
We need to build a culture that values process and making beautiful things for their own sake, not simply Pile Dollars Higher, which is killing the planet and making us all miserable.
That requires basically killing all major shareholders. They are the ones who enshittified and toxified the gaming industry, same applies to basically any industry they put their little grabby hands on.
It was literally Epstein that started it lol. Since activation/blizzard were integral to his operation and learning psychology through gaming (funny to think the big gold seller in wow was Steve fucking bannon). This timeline can’t be real.
Of course many people like it. It’s literally a highly addictive loop. But when you are a senior developer on a team, it’s kind of a waste of resources for most projects. Writing code is not the hard part.
I wish people would just be a little more honest. When they say “writing code” they actually mean hunting through stack overflow for bits of code you can string together. Take stack overflow out of the loop for argument sake. Your a unicorn information superhighway ninja. Snowcrash hasn’t left your bedside for decades. Mountain Dew and volt cans litter the floor space of your home …and you’re still just orchestrating a bunch of libraries you never saw the source code of.
I think a lot of people built their identity on being coders and that’s why they hate where the industry is going.
Right there with you. I suck at it but I still find the pursuit worthwhile!
This crap is brought to you by the people who are positively baffled that someone would want to learn to make music, and enjoy the process, instead of just have it generated so they can hit “publish” and supposedly be making money off of it with zero real effort besides “having an idea.”
I never got round to doing it properly. Just simple stuff, but i get a little braingasm when it finally does what I want it to and I kind of understand why.
Made a simple game last time, following tutorials and trying to stitch others code to cobble together roughly what im trying to do. Tested a new feature by having it change colour when you hit the object at certain angles. I forget what it was supposed to do, that was just to test the concept works.
My wife couldn’t understand why I was jumping around the room shouting WOOOOO when it actually did it.
I also do. One unique important thing that agents rob you of is time with your code - you don’t get to craft it so you remember just as well as you would have if you copied answers for a test.
That’s an excellent point. With my larger personal projects, which I have to put away for weeks at a time due to my (not-at-all-programming) job, I can come back and (more or less) dive right back in because I used patterns and organizational structures familiar to me. And if I’m digging into a particular thing, I can eventually remember all the trials and tribulations that went into the decisions I made to get to that point.
With AI code you get none of that, like you said. I can’t imagine not knowing or understanding why something works the way it does, and releasing it, with my name on it, for others to use.
Student: “Hey, thanks for the Bash script! It didn’t know you could use the mapfile built-in to populate an array using standard input lines without a while loop. mapfile -t my_array < <(seq 1 10) is really handy!”
Vibe coding guru: “I have no idea what you’re talking about. That sounds like plumbing. You should let AI handle those details. Focus on the big picture.”
All of the software I use is broken to shit. If major corps can release broken shit software to waste my time all day then seems like shipping broken code is actually the norm. So if it works then you are one step ahead regardless if you use ai or not.
Also, as a pro artist (and you all are similar), no one gives a fucking shit about the tools or software or how much blood you spilled (or didn’t) making what you made as long as they can use it.
I too enjoy actually writing code. I feel fortunate that I was able to make a career out of something I enjoy so much. I am not sure that most people had that experience. Alas, it seems like the industry is paying me to set up guardrails and supervise AI agents. I am not sure how long this will last, but at least I know that I will always be able to enjoy programming as a hobby if nothing else.
Yeah, I think it used to be like that, then because programming paid a lot everyone started wanting those jobs even if they didn’t like actual programming.
I’m glad you have enjoyed it as a career. I never even tried – I have a dumb rule that I won’t do anything I truly love for work. I guess because I don’t want others ruining it. lol
It’s a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I have much less time and patience for personal software projects. I prefer to do carpentry or sports as a change of pace. On the bright side though, the experience I’ve gained from working professionally makes the projects I do tackle go much more smoothly than when I was an amateur.
I had the same problem with translating back in the day. I really liked tackling a text in a foreign language. In the end all the pros of computer-aided translation boiled down to lining the pockets of translation agencies with even more money while paying translators peanuts.
Been coding for about 30 years now, am I the only one who still LIKES to code? Who still LIKES to try writing a new approach to something, watching it fail, figuring out what went wrong, taking notes, learning from mistakes, and noticing improvements in their own code? Cuz it’s starting to feel like it. Web development already lost me with the culture of “glue a bunch of bulky shit together that you didn’t write and call yourself a ‘dev’ to the ladies” but this AI shit is getting absurd. And it doesn’t even work! Look at how shitty all the operating systems are getting. Look at all the total slop on the app stores. It’s depressing as hell.
~25 years here and I started getting bored about 15 years ago.
We need to build a culture that values process and making beautiful things for their own sake, not simply Pile Dollars Higher, which is killing the planet and making us all miserable.
That requires basically killing all major shareholders. They are the ones who enshittified and toxified the gaming industry, same applies to basically any industry they put their little grabby hands on.
Not a bad idea.
It was literally Epstein that started it lol. Since activation/blizzard were integral to his operation and learning psychology through gaming (funny to think the big gold seller in wow was Steve fucking bannon). This timeline can’t be real.
Lucky of you…
Of course many people like it. It’s literally a highly addictive loop. But when you are a senior developer on a team, it’s kind of a waste of resources for most projects. Writing code is not the hard part.
Scrolled way too far for a lucid take like yours.
This seems to be a bit of an echochamber.
I wish people would just be a little more honest. When they say “writing code” they actually mean hunting through stack overflow for bits of code you can string together. Take stack overflow out of the loop for argument sake. Your a unicorn information superhighway ninja. Snowcrash hasn’t left your bedside for decades. Mountain Dew and volt cans litter the floor space of your home …and you’re still just orchestrating a bunch of libraries you never saw the source code of.
I think a lot of people built their identity on being coders and that’s why they hate where the industry is going.
I love coding and learning new languages. I’d rather move to another industry than reviewing vibe coded crap all day long.
Right there with you. I suck at it but I still find the pursuit worthwhile!
This crap is brought to you by the people who are positively baffled that someone would want to learn to make music, and enjoy the process, instead of just have it generated so they can hit “publish” and supposedly be making money off of it with zero real effort besides “having an idea.”
I never got round to doing it properly. Just simple stuff, but i get a little braingasm when it finally does what I want it to and I kind of understand why.
Made a simple game last time, following tutorials and trying to stitch others code to cobble together roughly what im trying to do. Tested a new feature by having it change colour when you hit the object at certain angles. I forget what it was supposed to do, that was just to test the concept works.
My wife couldn’t understand why I was jumping around the room shouting WOOOOO when it actually did it.
Reject their web development culture and make your own sites that run smoothly on devices using a fraction of the bandwidth theirs do.
I also do. One unique important thing that agents rob you of is time with your code - you don’t get to craft it so you remember just as well as you would have if you copied answers for a test.
That’s an excellent point. With my larger personal projects, which I have to put away for weeks at a time due to my (not-at-all-programming) job, I can come back and (more or less) dive right back in because I used patterns and organizational structures familiar to me. And if I’m digging into a particular thing, I can eventually remember all the trials and tribulations that went into the decisions I made to get to that point.
With AI code you get none of that, like you said. I can’t imagine not knowing or understanding why something works the way it does, and releasing it, with my name on it, for others to use.
Student: “Hey, thanks for the Bash script! It didn’t know you could use the
mapfilebuilt-in to populate an array using standard input lines without a while loop.mapfile -t my_array < <(seq 1 10)is really handy!”Vibe coding guru: “I have no idea what you’re talking about. That sounds like plumbing. You should let AI handle those details. Focus on the big picture.”
All of the software I use is broken to shit. If major corps can release broken shit software to waste my time all day then seems like shipping broken code is actually the norm. So if it works then you are one step ahead regardless if you use ai or not.
Also, as a pro artist (and you all are similar), no one gives a fucking shit about the tools or software or how much blood you spilled (or didn’t) making what you made as long as they can use it.
I too enjoy actually writing code. I feel fortunate that I was able to make a career out of something I enjoy so much. I am not sure that most people had that experience. Alas, it seems like the industry is paying me to set up guardrails and supervise AI agents. I am not sure how long this will last, but at least I know that I will always be able to enjoy programming as a hobby if nothing else.
Yeah, I think it used to be like that, then because programming paid a lot everyone started wanting those jobs even if they didn’t like actual programming.
I’m glad you have enjoyed it as a career. I never even tried – I have a dumb rule that I won’t do anything I truly love for work. I guess because I don’t want others ruining it. lol
It’s a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I have much less time and patience for personal software projects. I prefer to do carpentry or sports as a change of pace. On the bright side though, the experience I’ve gained from working professionally makes the projects I do tackle go much more smoothly than when I was an amateur.
I had the same problem with translating back in the day. I really liked tackling a text in a foreign language. In the end all the pros of computer-aided translation boiled down to lining the pockets of translation agencies with even more money while paying translators peanuts.