[pornel]

Such dismissive quip is unkind.

The job has changed from a craft to operating an unreliable machine.

Instead of satisfaction of solving challenging problems with your own skill and creativity, you babysit a text extruder and slog through mistakes in its generated output.

Arguably this may make software cheaper to make and accessible to non-programmers, but for people who liked their job it's like being demoted from a restaurant chef to a microwave button pusher.

[newsicanuse]

Cheaper to make plus unreliable and difficult to maintain. That is lose-lose for everyone involved.

[lucaspiller]

This also perfectly describes the career change from software engineer to engineering manager.

Instead of solving things yourself, you need to learn how to describe them in a way others can solve them. Otherwise you will just be fighting the instinct to just do it yourself.

[tdeck]

At least as a software manager you get the satisfaction of helping another human being develop in their own career. I doubt making Claude Code less prone to certain kinds of fuckups is quite as rewarding.

[ElProlactin]

> The job has changed from a craft to operating an unreliable machine.

Many tech/software people were completely unsympathetic if not downright arrogant when their products displaced people in other professions who felt the same way.

The lesson here is that ultimately, change comes for everyone.

[throw1234567891]

Meh. Since when "typing" implies "solving challenging problems with your own skill and creativity". The "solving" and the "creativity" happen in your head while "typing" is a manual labor. I can contemplate multiple problems at the same time but I can only type one thing at a time. Writing code is like 10% of my programming job. I take an LLM to do the typing for me any day. I still solve challenging problems. Because my secret skill isn't typing, you see. Yeah, call it "dismissive".

[denkmoon]

You must truly have no love for your craft if you see "manually" writing code as _just_ typing. That's like calling writing a novel just dragging ink over paper.

[throw1234567891]

Yeah, sure. We both know it’s not black and white. Like all of you write rocket ship software. You’re all funny. Heads too far up your asses. What fucking craft are you talking about “implement this html and css exactly like described in the ticket”, or “write this deployment pipeline for that client for the 50th time”, or “implement authentication for the 15th time this year”. Really fucking novel stuff. Craft my ass.

[denkmoon]

Not going to bother responding to most of that as it does not warrant a response, but I would point out that the word craft does not imply novelty or uniqueness.

[throw1234567891]

Okay.

[defgeneric]

In many cases the really key idea that transforms the overall system design comes from working closely on the specific implementation details. Maybe you don't redesign the system this time, but you saw how you might do it, and you get ideas about how to do it the next time. The craft involves a back-and-forth between different levels of abstraction, and cutting that link does feel like we're sacrificing something.

[throw1234567891]

Assuming that you have the budget signed off by the client. Otherwise it’s just procrastination. Or… you are just paid to type!

[mplanchard]

It feels to me more like the way doing math on paper does.

[throw1234567891]

Yeah, you do it every day for money, right? And someone is paying you for that? Dude, people designed ships, aircrafts, the shuttle with a ruler and a pencil, today people use CAD and CFD because it’s cheaper and better but people still know how to use the ruler and pencil! At least those who want to know, know. But not everything has to be designed with the ruler and the pencil. Be the guy who presses buttons, and knows how to use the ruler and the pencil!

[mplanchard]

It’s different, because in our field we’re often learning or doing new things, as opposed to merely rehashing the exact same thing we’ve done before.

I find it very difficult to learn a new thing by reading it, vs by doing it.

And indeed, most mathematicians, who do get paid to do math, work a lot with pencil and paper. If math is secondary to your job, you likely will not, but if it’s your primary job, you likely spend a lot of time working ideas out in the more primitive fashion.

[throw1234567891]

> I find it very difficult to learn a new thing by reading it, vs by doing it.

The whole point of the discussion about LLMs in our field is exactly what you say. Yes, we do often find ourselves doing new things. They are exciting the first and the second time we do them. Later they become a chore.

When you’re doing something that requires a lot of typing for the 17th time… why! Like, how many times are you going to write that golang http server scaffold. Or, how many times are you going to create that new terraform project with those same modules. I hear people say “oh yeah, write a generator”. To which my answer is: do you have a budget for it, or do I need to invest my own time.

It’s possible to guard the model so that it acts according to your expectations. Just invest the time in that tooling. It’s as exciting as any other problem. You learn the domain by writing software guardrails, your effort results in a software analysis of the business domain problem. It’s a much more valuable and rewarding work than writing some code.