[delaminator]

Yeah, likewise. I didn't type this comment. I created my own Alexa-style Voice to text typist, using whisper and Rust. I've never typed a line of Rust in my life. making projects that would have taken months before. I'll do them in an evening, using my iPhone. This morning alone I've created a Auto Green Screen Program for my webcam. so I can put my own effects on it, like in Teams. - while I was at work doing my normal day. just dropping in now and again and giving it another prompt.

[hombre_fatal]

Funny you say that. Last month I vibe-coded a whisper.cpp setup where I hold super+semicolon, speak, and release, and then it injects a transcription of what I said into whatever has focus. The only reason I looked at the code was curiosity and to impart some aesthetic preferences on it.

Before it, I was using https://wisprflow.ai/ for ez transcription since I would never have had the energy to build it myself nor work out the kinks.

We really are the last generation of software engineers, aren't we.

[delaminator]

I disagree with the last generation. I think what is going to change is what we actually do not whether we do it or not.

Speaking in metaphors: someone still needs to build the fixings, bricks, wires, pipes and tiles and paint and tools to put them all together someone has to still come up with the building.

I used to work in construction and I've watched the sophistication of all the pieces get better and better over time. Insulated floors, heated floors, push fit pipes, RCDs instead of fuses, better materials, resin driveways. I live in a new build house, I'm not nostalgic for a sandstone cave.

I've built some crazy things these past few months, I've got a voice control computer with head tracking mouse. Apart from the actual voice transcription model and the neural network model that works out where my face is, I could have built it all by hand. With enough data, I could probably have even made the face position model, but I simply wouldn't have taken these on. They just sound too monumental.

And then we've got the perfect is the enemy of the good. As programmers, we want to produce things that are better for everybody else. So when we start building a library we start considering how all the people are going to use it. Now simply don't care. If it's a bit rough around the edges it doesn't matter because it's for me. And if you want one for yourself, you can prompt it into existence.

I'm a component builder as well. And now I can build polished components that are great for future use. Not only that, they're fully documented. I just wish I wasn't pushing 60. I'm feeling the joy of being with my new computer - 15 again seeing more possibilities than ever.

I've faced serious burnout in this industry. Fed up of another round of read to database, write to database, present data from database. Spending days fiddling with forms, add this box, make this box bigger, that button's got the wrong text. Now I can just say those things out loud into a text box and switch to another text box and build something more complex.