Comment by mnau
Comment by mnau a day ago
This makes me depressed. LLMs will take the most enjoyable part of my job and I will be stuck reviewing or fixing bugs in their "it-compiles" codebase.
Comment by mnau a day ago
This makes me depressed. LLMs will take the most enjoyable part of my job and I will be stuck reviewing or fixing bugs in their "it-compiles" codebase.
Same. I've resurrected side projects and done months of work on them overnight, getting to my true end goals. Creating software is fun. Wrangling a bunch of opinionated libraries and plumbing together systems with terrible ergonomics (i.e. webpack, maybe web development generally?) is bs work I'm glad to not have to do.
I have a slightly different take on it.
Creating software is indeed fun, but the most enjoyable aspects are the "a-ha" moments after you overcome a tricky problem, the confidence boost from creating something that works in an efficient and elegant way, and the dopamine hits associated with those events.
"AI" tools can alleviate some of the tedium of working on plumbing and repetitive tasks, but they also get rid of the dopamine hits. I get no enjoyment from running machine-generated code, having to review it, and more often than not having to troubleshoot and fix it myself.
To me, creating software is not as much about the destination, but about the journey. About the process itself. Yes, some of it is not enjoyable, but overall, there is much more I like about it than not.
Same. I've coded professionally my whole life. I've never enjoyed it as much as I'm doing now and I'm the most productive I've ever been.
I am sorry this made you feel depressed. I think there are some positives to consider too though:
1. More people that wanted to make games can.
Thanks to unreal engine, you don't need to be a Tim Sweeney level-expert to make compelling games. I see LLMs as another abstraction in the same spirit.
2. You get more leverage
The more abstractions you have, the more you can do with less. This means less bureaucracy, more of a chance to make _exactly_ what you wanted.
I understand how the craft changes underneath you, and that can feel depressing, but if we see it as tools, I think there's lots of good ahead.
Will they ? I don't know why -okay- but I am still suspicious about such claims. This is impressive, but I would be more convinced if the codebase was more complex, that is a toy and uninspiring implementation of a _very_ basic game, the most enjoyable part of your job surely lies in a place that is beyond this "pre-prototype" (almost tutorial-y) state.
I could be wrong of course, and it may be true that your work will change very soon. Maybe someone else has better examples to propose ?
You have agency. There is no invisible hand stopping you from continuing to do what you enjoy.
It's the same when I hear people complain about how complex new UI frameworks are. The web still runs perfectly well on simple html, CSS, and Javascript. There is not federal police force that will arrest you for not using React.
There is invisible hand, literally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
Yes, I can do it. In my free time. But that part of my job that was enjoyable? Poof. Not anymore. Can't compete, get on with times, be more productive.
I spend a 40% of my "alive" time in work. It's a massive downgrade.
> There is invisible hand, literally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
Companies preferring React over vanilla Javascript != you can't build sites with vanilla JavaScript anymore. Sites LITERALLY still work that way.
> I spend a 40% of my "alive" time in work. It's a massive downgrade.
This martydom with front-end frameworks is crazy to me. Guess what? You're a software developer. You actually have a lot more power tahn you think. And this "roll over and play dead while whining about every advancement in technology because you feel left behind" is exactly the reason you feel the way you do.
> That invisible hand exists and had always existed, it's the market.
I have never heard a client say "Man, glad you used React". Literally nobody cares what framework you use to build your site. Nobody.
If you didn't know any better you'd think all software developers are chained in a basement where they have absolutely no power to do anything but build React sites.
You sound like a freelancer or something. Every single company I interviewed for in the last couple of years as a full stack dev *required* experience in React/Vue/Angular 2+. With old school js/html/css you wouldn't even pass CV screening. Best you could get with that is some wordpress gig for peanuts.
There is a lot of data shuttling or shuffling in enterprise applications and if agents can write that part, so be it. I can spend more time on the harder business and technical problems that require creativity and working through the options and potential solutions. Even here, the speed to write multiple different experiments in parallel, is fantastic.
As for “it-compiles” that is nothing new. I have written code that I go back to later and wonder how it ever compiled. I have a process now of often letting the agent prototype and see if it works. Then go back and re-engineer it properly. Does doing it twice save time? Yeah, cause who’s to say my first take on the problem would have been correct and now I have something to look at and say it is definitely wrong or right when considering how to rebuild it for long term usage.