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I love to code, as much as I loved math in college, but coding paid better and I'm pretty good at it. Those were my choices though b/c I want to do something I

• qprofyeh 4y ago
  He said nothing about management. What I think he means by “guiding” is more related to prompt engineering, and how “coding” will evolve from exclusively using programming and scripting languages to a wider creative landscape of generative (guiding) techniques.
• cwillu 4y ago
  It's like telling a musician to become a DJ because the point of performing is to entertain people. It's not wrong, but it's also not applicable to all people who enjoy performing an instrument.
  • brtkdotse 4y ago
    Sure, but in the time of DJs and hell, Spotify, you probably can’t expect to make a decent living as a live musician.
    • anthomtb 4y ago
      You couldn't make a decent living as a live musician well before Spotify came into existence. Source: raised and largely surrounded by musicians who either complained to high heaven about the pay or did something else to supplement their income. Engineers were a particular target of vitriol which led to me becoming one.
  • dzikimarian 4y ago
    Well that's correct, but again you can't expect you'll stay relevant if you are into Romenian-Death-Disco-Country-Rap. Your technology of choice may become exactly that in a few years.
  • twelve40 4y ago
    Yeah, but the original question was specifically about coding jobs, not hobbies, hence i think a reasonable business angle on the answer.
    • amelius 4y ago
      Perhaps coding will become a hobby, while professionals use AI tools.
      • zirgs 4y ago
        Back in the 80-90s you could earn money by making games for the NES. You can still do it - lots of documentation, emulators and other tools are available. But nobody is going to pay for it now.
        • cableshaft 4y ago
          You can still get paid for making NES games today. You just have to crowdfund it. This one raised over $180,000 just four years ago, for example: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/morphcat-games/micro-mages-a-new-game-for-the-nes https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/morphcat-games/micro-ma... This one raised $32k just this past December: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1222722105/full-quiet-a-new-adventure-game-for-the-nes-and-pc https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1222722105/full-quiet-a... Another that raised $49k: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/megacatstudios/ronius-tale-for-the-nes/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/megacatstudios/ronius-t... $55k: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artix/dungeons-and-doomknights-an-8-bit-adventurequest-f https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artix/dungeons-and-doom... $84k: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/batslyadams/super-russian-roulette-a-new-party-game-for-the-ne https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/batslyadams/super-russi... So yeah, far from an isolated incident. If you can make a slick looking campaign, you can definitely get people to pay you to make NES games.
          • mnsc 4y ago
            I don't think the person in the dm would have liked this answer. "if you build a career in developing plumbing and glue code, in the future you could have a successful Kickstarter where nostalgic developers buy your curiosities"
  • _s 4y ago
    Difference is - are you a musician who wants to earn money from playing, or just want to play for your enjoyment? You can do both, at the same time, but one has external expectations you shouldn't forget about.
  • kybernetikos 4y ago
    That's a great analogy, and it makes me wonder just how closely did Carmack himself follow this advice early in his career. I suspect that he wouldn't have got where he is without an unusually deep interest in the nuts and bolts.
    • dzikimarian 4y ago
      Well - I've read some about origin of Doom/Wolfenstein - it was definitely a mixed bag (as expected from young man), but there was definitely a focus on end result (smoother animation, better 3d), than coding just for the sake of coding.
      • kybernetikos 4y ago
        I think in context "smoother animation" and "better 3d" might be the kind of things that in this hypothetical future would be driven by ai. I think we'd be talking more about understanding story and reward mechanisms.
      • samwestdev 4y ago
        What do you mean by “mixed bag”?
        • stavros 4y ago
          If you have even a passing interest in this, you will enjoy the book Masters of Doom, which is about the early days of id software. I think that's what the GP is referring to.
        • dzikimarian 4y ago
          There's a mention in the book from the sibling post that he thought that single text slide is enough for the story background in shooters. Not necessarily truth looking at modern games. Still, even then he was far from "let's use new library, just because it's fun to play with".
  • tarsinge 4y ago
    Musician is not only performing an instrument. The analogy is more like telling instruments players that only care about virtuosity the larger point is making music for people to enjoy, from being “a guitarist” to making music. The musical piece is the product in the professional context, and AI in that context is maybe recording, DAWs and realistic synths and sounds banks.
  • numpad0 4y ago
    I think there is room for interpretation as to whether it equates to telling a musician to become a DJ, or a pianist to wear a jacket, or soldiers to strap a first aid kit on left thigh.
  • Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
    I think it's more like telling a DJ in the 80s, "Don't worry that mixing vinyls won't be a thing forever. It's not about the tools but about the product, as a DJ your job is to mix good music and you can do that with vinyls, cassettes or with MP3s."
    • finikytou 4y ago
      except that many DJ now are physically attractive people (mostly women) that don't have to know anything anymore as technology evolved to the point that all the hard stuff to learn on mixing with vinyls disapeared. I could be a DJ tomorrow with a 1hour tutorial on youtube. a few decades ago it required hard training for years and musicality.
    • joenot443 4y ago
      This is a pretty funny example because if you follow the DJ scene much, you know the barrier for entry is literally on the floor now. A 10 year old with an iPad app can beat-match and “DJ” a 2h mix together in a way that 20 years ago required thousands of dollars of gear. The tragic part is that unless someone’s got some familiarity with what “good” mixing sounds like, they wouldn’t be able to tell they’re listening to an amateur. Is this better? I donno. I play saxophone. But if there was an digital sax that let children sound as good as I can with no training, I’d definitely be feeling like some of the time I used learning good embouchure and breath control could have been better spent.
      • jfvinueza 4y ago
        The "technical" aspect of djing will never be as important as the sense of what song should go next, and there's no shortcut for that.
        • mnsc 4y ago
          To me, this is what Carmack is talking about.
        • krsna 4y ago
          Truthfully, picking what song goes next feels like a job well suited for an AI, or even just a basic recommendation system based on up and down votes. Of course there's a real time component to DJing as well. Paying attention to the crowd and how they're reacting to your mix. That's the magic that's harder to automate.
  • kirso 4y ago
    I believe you missed the point. Sure, you can entertain doing hobby music by yourself out of passion and it can have 0 listens and thats great. Keep doing what you love! The tweet however is in the context of a JOB or CAREER. If you code and produce 0 value in either saving engineering hours, saving money, producing revenue - whats the point? So the analogy is rather about having an understanding and skills of a full-stack product person that has the context to build valuable things, rather than typing on keyboard in isolation.
• bcherny 4y ago
  The advice isn’t about coding vs managing. What John is saying is to deeply understand why you’re building something, so that you can build it better. If you over focus on the what — the implementation, the language, the approach — you won’t be as good, and your work may be increasingly replaced by AI.
  • ScoobleDoodle 4y ago
    I agree but I think I’d call it the “how” rather than the “what”. You might mean “what tool”, but I also think of “what feature”.
    • nosianu 4y ago
      EDIT: Was the comment edited, or did my brain miss something? I think I perceived something else there when I wrote my response. It's still "how". Only on a higher level. For example, instead of placing the form elements exactly and designing them you describe data flow and meta info about the data to be gathered via the form, and how it looks and where elements are placed on various screens happens automatically. Writing code in a higher level vs. assembler still is coding, but you worry about very different things. Just compared with assembler, since looking back is easier than looking forward. Instead of worrying about (the few) registers and interrupts and in which RAM cells you place what you now think about very different things. It still is programming though, and you still tell the machine "how". Only on a different level. When you lead a large company instead of working with a machine on the factory floor the work is very different, you still need precision and know "how", only on a different level. Even if you have "underlings" who can think, and you can let them execute the sub tasks you create, you still have to know what you are doing, only on a higher level.
  • klabb3 4y ago
    > The advice isn’t about coding vs managing. Definitely. Carmack is no dummy, but I’d argue this comment section proves that he gave a pretty bad answer here (bad for the audience, not if you know Carmack and what he means). I guess it’s the impostor syndrome, but many programmers have an out-of-place reductionist view of their work. It’s not simple, and crud boilerplate proves little about the future prospects. Managers OTOH really are in the zone of GPT parity. At least a much larger subset of their day-to-day activities. So are many soft skills. In fact, soft communication is where LLMs shine above all other tasks, as we’ve seen over and over in the last few months. This is supported by how it performs on eg essay-style exams vs leetcode, where it breaks down entirely as it’s venturing into any territory with less training data. Now, does that mean I think lowly of managers? No, managers have a crucial role, and the ones who are great are really really crucial, and the best can salvage a sinking ship. But most managers aren’t even good. That has a lot to do with poor leadership and outdated ideas of how to select for and train them.
• yazaddaruvala 4y ago
  > It seems to me that the advice given here would be more applicable to someone who only coded long enough to move into engineering management -- anyway something about it bugs me and I don't think I'd follow it exclusively even if I was starting today The advice here is clearly meant for someone who wants to invest in themselves to provide food and shelter for themselves and/or a family in the future. (Ie “doing all this hard work for nothing… AI will make my future job obsolete”). The advice is spot on. Soft skills are hard to learn, harder to teach, and allow for flexibility with regards to the tool used. > anyway something about it bugs me and I don't think I'd follow it exclusively even if I was starting today. I’d be you like the money but don’t seem to want it as much as you want to solve deterministic puzzles (“not interested in becoming a manager” ie “not interested in maximizing career/salary growth potential). What bugs you seems to be that you can’t yet see the puzzle left for you to work on once GPT-12 makes coding obsolete and software architecturing obsolete. A long time ago I got some good feedback, “You were hired because you typically know the right answers and/or know how to find them. You were promoted because you also seem to know how to ask the right questions, and that is significantly harder.” I’m relatively certain it’s analogous to Carmak’s advice.
• tarsinge 4y ago
  Delivered value sounds like consultant talk, but it’s as simple as wanting to make a game for people to play it. Or if you’re a carpenter caring about the roof you’re building instead of just cutting wood and hammering nails. Jobs exists to serve a purpose, otherwise it’s a hobby (which is fine). Coding as an expertise will still be needed, same as having an expertise in the methods of processing wood, but we might not need coders on the assembly line anymore that we need wood cutters there.
• eps 4y ago
  Love to code is rooted in the love to create. This is not going away with the AI in the picture. It will be just different.
  • jdowner 4y ago
    I agree but I think there is concern about the perceived value that those creative skills will have.
• senbrow 4y ago
  I ultimately decided to leave tech when I realized I didn't care much about delivering value and actually just wanted to write beautiful code. The former was a nice bonus for me, but the latter was profoundly captivating. I'd unfortunately tried to make that mismatch work for too long, and as a result I completely destroyed all of my programming interest via severe burnout. If this resonates with whoever reads this: please take your passion seriously and protect it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy coding again, unfortunately.
  • the_only_law 4y ago
    Where did you go? I’ve wanted out for years. I recognized the mistake almost immediately after going professional, but I just don’t really see anything else that looks appealing without spending years of my life and a stupid amount of money “retraining” by going back to school.
    • senbrow 4y ago
      Currently in the process of figuring out my next way of making income that brings me real joy thanks to substantial savings from living frugally on FAANG comp. Lately I've been getting very much into FPV drone videography and 3D printing/design, which are both incredibly gratifying in the way programming used to be for me, but somehow even more so because the process involves mastery of physical matter on top of navigating a high-dimensional abstraction space. That being said: I don't plan on having kids and enjoy relatively low cost activities, so I don't need to make nearly as much as I did in software to support myself.
• soheil 4y ago
  You're like someone in the days of horses and buggies who rode horses not for getting from A to B but for enjoyment of riding horses. Most didn't. Programming in the traditional sense will be obsolete and people programming for the fun of it will be a niche thing.
• moffkalast 4y ago
  What bugs me about it personally is that he reduces the entire CS field to something that's there for building "products". Why the fuck does it have to all be inherently capitalistic? But if you know who he is and what he does these days, it makes sense I suppose. Can't be in that business environment day after day without going slightly nuts eventually.