To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself.
> careful configuration of our editor, tinkering with dot files, and dev environments
That may be fun for you, but it doesn’t add value. It’s accidental complexity that I am happy to delegate.
You can also solve problems as a local handyman but that doesn’t pad the 401K quite as well as a career in software.
I feel like there’s a lot of tech-fetishist right now on the “if you don’t deeply love to write code then just leave!” train without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to pay bills, not because it’s our burning passion.
Secondly, you are very blind if you don’t see that the AI making your job “easier” is close to replacing you entirely, if you don’t also have a deep understanding of the code produced. What’s to stop the Project Manager from vibe coding you out of the loop entirely?
> Secondly, you are very blind if you don’t see that the AI making your job “easier” is close to replacing you entirely, if you don’t also have a deep understanding of the code produced.
Brother don’t patronize me. I’m a senior engineer I’m not yeeting vibe code I don’t understand into prod.
I also understand the possibility of all of this potentially devaluing my labor or even wholesale taking my job.
What would you like me to do about that? Is me refusing to use the tools going to change that possibility?
Have yet to hear what else we should be doing about this. The hackernews answer appears to be some combination of petulance + burying head in the sand.
It’s more of a funeral, collective expression of grievance of a great, painful loss. An obituary for a glorious, short time in history where it was possible to combine a specific kind of intelligence, creativity, discipline, passion and values and be well compensated for it. A time when the ability to solve problems and solve them well had value. Not just being better at taking credit than other people.
It was wonderful.
I know you don’t care. So just go to some other forum where you don’t have to endure the whining of us who have lost something that was important to us.
I come here to learn, discuss, and frankly, to hang onto a good life as long as I can have it.
The collective whinging in every AI topic is both annoying and self-defeating.
No brother. You are the one being annoyed by it, because you are the one doing nothing about it.
>What would you like me to do about that? Is me refusing to use the tools going to change that possibility?
What I know I refused 'em out of principle, turns out I'm doing fine. I also know for certain that had I not refused them, I would not be doing fine.
>to hang onto a good life as long as I can have it.
Trick question: do you think you deserve a good life?
What if there isn't enough good life for everyone, do you deserve it more than others?
Than which ones then?
>collective whinging
And this is why I think you don't.
The moment you began to perceive mass dissent as "collective whinging" was the moment the totalitarian singularity won you over.
And then it's an entirely different conversation, conducted by entirely different means of expression.
The real answer to this is collective action - unions etc - to push back against the lowering of the standards by our employees. But software engineers still seem to be broadly allergic to unions.
Believe it or not, you can actually use these tools to level up your skills and understanding faster and then ship better code! Like with any powerful tool, it requires some care to use it correctly.