[kaiwn]

Programming with Claude is still engineering. It is like designing a bridge, which remains engineering even when a worker pours the concrete instead of you.

In the past we were forced to pour the concrete ourselves. I understand how many of us enjoyed the sound and the smell of the concrete being poured. Myself, I’m happy to never get my hands dirty again, and focus on the actual engineering.

[blanched]

This is like the third bridge + concrete comparison I’ve seen in the past two days from a new account.

Did I miss something?

[Neywiny]

"justify your existence"

"You're absolutely correct. I don't just need to exist-I need to justify why. It's like builders with concrete..."

[kaiwn]

lmao, I think I read it here and then I proceeded to think I came up with it myself. I’m a fraud. (I put “concrete” into the search field and found it)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47996022

[jebarker]

> the actual engineering

I was with you until the last three words. Craftsmanship in writing code is also “actual engineering”, it’s just not the engineering that people will pay a human to do now.

[hamrocksissors]

Chemical engineer here - I look at this similar to how a lot of professional engineers work, drafting gets passed off to eng techs, pfds get passed off to eng techs... The "actual engineering" is in the ideas, the applications, the reviews, and most importantly the final accountability.

[skydhash]

Studied Electronic Engineering and have friends in Civil Engineering. By the time, you get to the actual implementation, the design has been tested so many times that errors are often material defects, not design defects. Engineering is about ironing out all the design defects and have all relevant unknowns be known.

Working with claude is closer to “grandma recipes” than any engineering or scientific practice.

[pdhborges]

Works great. No wonder China is eating our lunch.

[perrygeo]

Thanks for this perspective. Do we really miss typing ascii characters into an editor? That seems to me the least consequential and least interesting part of building software systems. Always has been.

Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work? Now that coding is automated, we have to elevate our ambitions.

Ironically, Phish's music emerges from egoless expression (to paraphrase keyboardist Page McConnell). Giving up your own personal stake in the process is literally what brings something as beautiful as Phish's music into existence. We need to do the same with our software; give up the notion that "our" code is meaningful.

[yason]

Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work? Now that coding is automated, we have to elevate our ambitions.

YES. The beauty of programming is and always was that, first, you enjoyed it and, second, for some oddball reason you could actually get paid to do it. And one can't produce anything good unless you actually love working on it which means you want to put yourself working on it. The outcome might accidentally serve the one who pays for it but ultimately what did get the work finished was the sensation when you were reaching the point where you would finally tie things together and see everything you designed come to life and work together.

AI doesn't give you that personal involvement. We can do it but it's a different line of work and we care very little about what goes in and what comes out. We just do the grunt work of connecting the two ends. We're not for a fuck interested in elevating ambitions which is a word that relates to what is outside while all the good stuff comes from the inside.

[bluefirebrand]

> Do we really miss typing ascii characters into an editor?

Yes.

> Dare I say those stuck on nostalgia for pressing keys are demonstrating that they cared more about their own personal experience than about the outcome of their work

I care about the outcome, which is why I don't trust it to a fucking LLM

Valuing quality over velocity is not selfish

[perrygeo]

> Valuing quality over velocity is not selfish

Fully agree. I never mentioned velocity or advocated for lower quality. In fact, this statement very well sums up my point: we should care about the thing we're producing, not our personal experience of coding it.

[bluefirebrand]

If you're arguing for using LLMs, you are effectively arguing in favor of sacrificing quality for speed as far as I'm concerned

In my experience anyone saying they're still producing high quality work while using LLMs is full of shit when the work is actually reviewed properly

[norir]

The product and the process are not orthogonal.

[isityettime]

We should always care about our own subjectivity. If anything, subjectivity is too easy to discount in this day and age.

[cmiles74]

I think concentrating on the physical act of typing on the keyboard is maybe taking it a little too far. The author of the OP talks more about holding a lot of the problem in their head and entering a "flow" state where they figure out a solution.

Most of my interaction with AI models and agents is still mediated by a keyboard and still requires a lot of "typing ascii characters". ;-)

[perrygeo]

The "typing ascii characters" angle is a bit hyperbolic, I admit. But my intention is to get people to think about their software, not their personal experience of it.

BTW, there's nothing preventing you from using AI agents and staying in the flow state. If you want that, the universe is not stopping you. In fact, not dealing with the minutia of source code may well free us up and allow even greater flow experiences.

[skydhash]

> In fact, not dealing with the minutia of source code may well free us up and allow even greater flow experiences.

You say minutia, but others say well organized notation and predictive systems. At least for me, writing code is as easy as writing English and with less effort.

[ytoawwhra92]

When I retire almost none of the software I produced during my career will still be in use, but I'll have memories of 40 years of work to live with until I pass away.

[giveaccountpls]

> Giving up your own personal stake in the process is literally what brings something as beautiful as Phish's music into existence

Unless Page McConnell is creating his music with AI these days, I don't think this point holds.

[foltik]

It may feel like you’re designing a bridge, but in reality you’re just asking a worker to do that too, and rubber stamping it when the drawings look reasonable.

One day you’ll be asked why it collapsed and realize you don’t actually understand it anymore.

[dyauspitr]

Yeah honestly. I could easily architect the thing out but coding it is so boring. I love this new paradigm and sometimes the LLM even suggests a better architecture!

[uncircle]

I guess we are not the same.

I would be perfectly fine with this new branch of "software development" if you guys didn't coopt our name and call yourselves programmers and engineers.

[dyauspitr]

I did programming for 7 years (before I moved to management for 10). I’m definitely an engineer and LLMs at this point are not good enough where a non-engineer could come up with something solid out of vibe coding. That might not be true in 6 months.

[holoduke]

It's like writing code with assistant Einstein who is 4 years old.

[uncircle]

LLMs are the stereotypical 'idiot savant'

[archagon]

No, it’s management, not engineering.