7 ms·

remember 4 year ago we use to : have stack overflow open, documentation, obscure forums plus other tabs. An ide open with 20 tabs open each file a component, a

remember 4 year ago we use to : have stack overflow open, documentation, obscure forums plus other tabs. An ide open with 20 tabs open each file a component, a class or an interface We also use to hold entire codebases in our brain.

echelon 24d ago
And now I'm getting 10-20x as much done. I'd say the trade off is worth it. I'm struggling to scale myself even further. This tech is unreal and I have so many things I can do. For the first time, tech feels like the 90's-00's again. Everything is greenfield and exciting and big tech is struggling to figure out what to do about it. People are just hacking all kinds of stuff, and it's awesome. Feels like techno utopia.
- monegator 24d ago
  BINGO!
- noufalibrahim 24d ago
  I have mixed feelings. The barrier and time between idea and usable implementation is almost zero now. I don't have to imagine. I can just write something and see it work before making larger decisions. I really like this. Many of my ideas were abandoned because I needed to study some obscure library. Now, I can learn the parts that I find interesting and just have the AI chew through the grunt parts easily. That's the good. I started coding with a line editor on a small Casio handheld "computer" and used to keep programs in my head. I more or less knew what happened on each line without seeing the line. With larger programs, I had a mental model of what was going on where and a big part of the input to that was the effort of writing everything by hand. That's gone. It's not really important as far as the output of usable programs is concerned but there's a certain feeling of satisfaction that came with digesting a larger codebase and having it surrender it's secrets to you that's missing.
- lelanthran 24d ago
  > For the first time, tech feels like the 90's-00's again. It feels like the opposite of 90s - 00s: they were filled with periods where a person could self-study technology and get a job using those skills that few others had. Where we are going (according to the AI-proponents) is children being able to replace you. In brief; the 90s - 00s were a skill-valuation time, now we are looking at a skill devaluation time. Unless you meant to say "Just like how any kid who could write broken HTML t put up a webpage could pretend to be a skilled professional, that's where we are now"...
  - kbrannigan 24d ago
    We used to get paid to code now we think we need to pay a subscription fee just to write software. They push marketing campaigns saying Manual coding no more, just vibe code, gain 10x speed for $100. Then they hit you with hourly and weekly limits, you are wondering when you are going to get cut off. Since LLM at probabilistic it often feels like pulling the lever of a slot machine, hoping our prompt is the jackpot. To make sure we win, we come up with systems, convoluted agents, context pipelines, rags to load . It feels like it's working, then bam you reach weekly limits. (Just pay more if you want to keep winning). I think developers need to wake up. I myself started to use AI like a fancy debugger ,explainer. I make it walk me though every single line of code it writes. I notice that i run into limits less, if i get cutoff, i can still make changes
    - chermi 23d ago
      As we've clearly seen, technology is static and the price to performance will never go down. And never be infiltrated by open source.
      - kbrannigan 23d ago
        I'm not trust I was meant to be sarcastic or if you're serious I cant tell Is it true?
        echelon 23d ago
- nananana9 24d ago
  I've seen this exact comment what feels like twice a day for the last 2 years, and not once have I seen the person making it back it up and show something even remotely impressive.
  - edgyquant 24d ago
    I dislike these comments just as much. What do you want people to show you? Most of us work on projects for other people where tasks that used to take a week take a day or less. It’s also a no true Scotsman as nothing we could show would be “good enough” because it’s just the same software engineering as before but faster. But for instance I used to work in 1-2 client projects at a time and they take months now I can do 4-5 at once and they take a month. That’s a huge improvement
    - kbrannigan 24d ago
      I wonder if the project you build are more one off Disposable(sorry for my choice of words) software. Do you have project that needs to be maintained. I am also interested in your workflow. Do you Vibe code , never look at the code or do you hold the LLM agent's hand. I feel like it's a spectrum
      - edgyquant 23d ago
        I work on real projects with paying customers with the occasional mvp here, but I tend to select for people who have distribution so mvps become apps that need maintenance almost every time. If anything maintenance is where it gets easier the mvp stage is where more focus is required
    - nananana9 23d ago
      The issue is that the amount of useful software written—or more broadly, the value, or even profits, businesses are making—hasn't increased in any measurable way. I don't dispute that your tasks are taking less time, but I suspect that to be temporary. This is a forum of AI frontrunners and early adopters, so I expect it's a matter until people catch on, and recalibrate their expectations for amount of output a programmer can produce in a given timeframe. What I dispute is that this increased output amounts to actual value. There may very well be a HN-wide 10x productivity boost, if HN measures productivity in Jira tickets per day. But if that's the only measurable result, we should expect the only long term change to be a 10x increase in Jira tickets once orgs catch on.
- bschwindHN 24d ago
  Software is pretty shit these days, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Definitely doesn't feel like a utopia to me.
whateveracct 24d ago
i still do :)
- embedding-shape 24d ago
  Right, instead of having 20+ tmux panes with docs, specs and whatever, I just have 20+ tmux panes with various Codex sessions for various purposes instead, some of them been idling for days now, waiting for me to come back. Things just moved up on the abstraction-ladder, but it's still there, hidden beneath all the TUI sessions instead.
Zylokloto 24d ago
Yeah StackOverflow which was either telling you to use google or it was so specific, that no one wanted/could respond. Even a year ago when i was trying to do a hugo template manually with the help of the documentatin /tutorial, it was shit. The LLM at that time, was better helping me than the documentation.
- kbrannigan 24d ago
  But it worked and it was so useful that LLM companies siphoned their data. It was how i learned programming
  - Zylokloto 23d ago
    I personally do not remember this time of Stack Overflow. I had some helpful people helping me on IRC / Quakenet. But the hugo example i found very interesting because it was the latest hugo ducumentation and I don't think I was able to find a tutorial. I tried it without an LLM first.

echelon 24d ago

And now I'm getting 10-20x as much done. I'd say the trade off is worth it. I'm struggling to scale myself even further. This tech is unreal and I have so many things I can do. For the first time, tech feels like the 90's-00's again. Everything is greenfield and exciting and big tech is struggling to figure out what to do about it. People are just hacking all kinds of stuff, and it's awesome. Feels like techno utopia.

monegator 24d ago
BINGO!
noufalibrahim 24d ago
I have mixed feelings. The barrier and time between idea and usable implementation is almost zero now. I don't have to imagine. I can just write something and see it work before making larger decisions. I really like this. Many of my ideas were abandoned because I needed to study some obscure library. Now, I can learn the parts that I find interesting and just have the AI chew through the grunt parts easily. That's the good. I started coding with a line editor on a small Casio handheld "computer" and used to keep programs in my head. I more or less knew what happened on each line without seeing the line. With larger programs, I had a mental model of what was going on where and a big part of the input to that was the effort of writing everything by hand. That's gone. It's not really important as far as the output of usable programs is concerned but there's a certain feeling of satisfaction that came with digesting a larger codebase and having it surrender it's secrets to you that's missing.
lelanthran 24d ago
> For the first time, tech feels like the 90's-00's again. It feels like the opposite of 90s - 00s: they were filled with periods where a person could self-study technology and get a job using those skills that few others had. Where we are going (according to the AI-proponents) is children being able to replace you. In brief; the 90s - 00s were a skill-valuation time, now we are looking at a skill devaluation time. Unless you meant to say "Just like how any kid who could write broken HTML t put up a webpage could pretend to be a skilled professional, that's where we are now"...
- kbrannigan 24d ago
  We used to get paid to code now we think we need to pay a subscription fee just to write software. They push marketing campaigns saying Manual coding no more, just vibe code, gain 10x speed for $100. Then they hit you with hourly and weekly limits, you are wondering when you are going to get cut off. Since LLM at probabilistic it often feels like pulling the lever of a slot machine, hoping our prompt is the jackpot. To make sure we win, we come up with systems, convoluted agents, context pipelines, rags to load . It feels like it's working, then bam you reach weekly limits. (Just pay more if you want to keep winning). I think developers need to wake up. I myself started to use AI like a fancy debugger ,explainer. I make it walk me though every single line of code it writes. I notice that i run into limits less, if i get cutoff, i can still make changes
  - chermi 23d ago
    As we've clearly seen, technology is static and the price to performance will never go down. And never be infiltrated by open source.
    - kbrannigan 23d ago
      I'm not trust I was meant to be sarcastic or if you're serious I cant tell Is it true?
      - echelon 23d ago
nananana9 24d ago
I've seen this exact comment what feels like twice a day for the last 2 years, and not once have I seen the person making it back it up and show something even remotely impressive.
- edgyquant 24d ago
  I dislike these comments just as much. What do you want people to show you? Most of us work on projects for other people where tasks that used to take a week take a day or less. It’s also a no true Scotsman as nothing we could show would be “good enough” because it’s just the same software engineering as before but faster. But for instance I used to work in 1-2 client projects at a time and they take months now I can do 4-5 at once and they take a month. That’s a huge improvement
  - kbrannigan 24d ago
    I wonder if the project you build are more one off Disposable(sorry for my choice of words) software. Do you have project that needs to be maintained. I am also interested in your workflow. Do you Vibe code , never look at the code or do you hold the LLM agent's hand. I feel like it's a spectrum
    - edgyquant 23d ago
      I work on real projects with paying customers with the occasional mvp here, but I tend to select for people who have distribution so mvps become apps that need maintenance almost every time. If anything maintenance is where it gets easier the mvp stage is where more focus is required
  - nananana9 23d ago
    The issue is that the amount of useful software written—or more broadly, the value, or even profits, businesses are making—hasn't increased in any measurable way. I don't dispute that your tasks are taking less time, but I suspect that to be temporary. This is a forum of AI frontrunners and early adopters, so I expect it's a matter until people catch on, and recalibrate their expectations for amount of output a programmer can produce in a given timeframe. What I dispute is that this increased output amounts to actual value. There may very well be a HN-wide 10x productivity boost, if HN measures productivity in Jira tickets per day. But if that's the only measurable result, we should expect the only long term change to be a 10x increase in Jira tickets once orgs catch on.
bschwindHN 24d ago
Software is pretty shit these days, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Definitely doesn't feel like a utopia to me.

whateveracct 24d ago

i still do :)

embedding-shape 24d ago
Right, instead of having 20+ tmux panes with docs, specs and whatever, I just have 20+ tmux panes with various Codex sessions for various purposes instead, some of them been idling for days now, waiting for me to come back. Things just moved up on the abstraction-ladder, but it's still there, hidden beneath all the TUI sessions instead.

Zylokloto 24d ago

Yeah StackOverflow which was either telling you to use google or it was so specific, that no one wanted/could respond. Even a year ago when i was trying to do a hugo template manually with the help of the documentatin /tutorial, it was shit. The LLM at that time, was better helping me than the documentation.

kbrannigan 24d ago
But it worked and it was so useful that LLM companies siphoned their data. It was how i learned programming
- Zylokloto 23d ago
  I personally do not remember this time of Stack Overflow. I had some helpful people helping me on IRC / Quakenet. But the hugo example i found very interesting because it was the latest hugo ducumentation and I don't think I was able to find a tutorial. I tried it without an LLM first.